While in Paris, I thoroughly burned out on Picasso. His work is everywhere. A case of too much too often, and I'm a fan of his.

I'm starting to get into Renoir -- to look at - not to collect. :D

Some people buy art because of how it makes them feel... then a few years later they ask themselves WTF was I thinking!

I bought a bunch of Patrick Nagel Lithos (s&n) in the late '80s. My house is a small cape cod. I don't have a wall in my house big enough for these. now I'm asking myself WTF was I thinking! I wish I had the money now and not the art.

Yeah cruise ships are awesome places to sell art. Kind of thinking that I might want to try and go that route some day.

As for the straight cut gears in my truck, yes they are loud, sometimes louder than the engine, but not as loud as you would think. Personally I find the sound soothing, and even my wife likes the sound. Much easier to rev match when downshifting when you can hear everything ;)

I guess this explains why I see so many art galleries on Hawaii.

I never bought anything there but I do have a nice Koa wood bowl that I probably paid three times what it was worth. :D

I remember when Nagel died (1987 I think). His prints went up dramatically in value. The problem is there were so many prints produced, Nagel flooded his own market.

It's the same with Thomas Kincaid.

i know a rich dude, who went to London , and bought what looked like scrap metal, randomly welded into some random shape..
payed like a mil for it, and is now often used by guests who need to take a leak at his extravagant garden parties

was once seen him swallowing heartpills down with Scotch as he hun on the phone calling other rich friends going : "i'm back!!! party at my house tonight", just 20 minutes after he got home from a 3 days visit regarding tickyticker problems...

A Nagel Limited Edition Litho (Series of 15) will now bring all of $20.00. I still have a bunch unframed, I bought them when I had no taste.

bought those last week? :D

Thomas Kincaid: "Painter of Blight"

As a contemporary artist myself I can tell you it is an exclusive club with numerous nuances, it is quite unregulated to boot. A Drug dealer has more boundaries than an Art dealer. (I often say that when giving lectures to art students) If you seriously want to learn I can recommend a few books which will help shed the scales from your eyes. You could start with the wildly entertaining and alternately dull: "On the Way to Work" Gordon Burn interviews Damian Hirst. The truth is about the living contemporary artists who are making such big prices is that they are charming and they stepped in ****. Also their art work is sometimes great. Hollywood is kind of similar. Is Keanu Reeves a good actor? No. But he gets 12 million a picture. Real estate prices are crazy too but at least you can plant corn on it or strike oil. With a dead artist, well, it is a bit about a very limited supply the rest is up to the artists 'work' and contribution to the history of art. Controlled by clever people the prices can get astronomical. I think Mr. Hirst has made some great pieces and some great pieces of crap. He is quite the showman and has managed his career cleverly. He is also generous, a bit of a simpleton and at the same time brilliant.

Anyway not understanding is a big part of it, you are half way there my friend.

We just rented a documentary called, "Who the #$&% is Jackson Pollock?"

A 73 year old retired truck driver bought a painting for $5 from a thrift store. A friend said it looked like it was done by Jackson Pollock. The woman spent the next 10 years trying to convince the art community that this was a $50 million painting. She was offered $2 million and turned it down. Later she was offered $9 million... and turned it down. Why??? Because she thinks it's worth $50 million.

Here's the full story.

Whoever did the Painting spent a great deal of time and effort in creating a dense image, and its good. BUT Pollacks images were generally not so dense, with more open areas.

art is in the heart of the beholder

Some people want to be challenged. Others want to be held and told everything is ok. Neither is right or wrong.

I'm not a huge Rothko fan, but Kandinsky and most of the Bauhaus speaks to me.

We have some contemporary abstracts that make people stop and say "Wow!".

I did a labor trade- Turned an old garage into an art studio, and in exchange got some great art. Some was painted with us and our very contemporary house in mind, some was just so good we had to have it, and they said take it.

We like it, don't care what anybody else thinks. Everybody else happens to be amazed. That's a bonus, I guess.

Their work is now in several high-end galleries, and sells for thousands.

I don't care about the value, I don't want to be challenged, I just think our house looks cool.

Back to the original question, to understand abstract art (which I assume is the question, as for most people, modern=abstract) you have to have a pretty detailed knowledge of the art that preceded it, and how it was viewed in the time it was created, by both the artists and the public alike. Often, a certian painting style became popular (with the artists, if not the public) as a reaction to what came before it. This is all a bunch of work and best left to art historians.

To appreciate modern art, or any art for that matter, you just have to like it. This is much easier; either you like it, or you don't. No reason is required, nor any understanding. A positive response to a piece of art is often something you feel as much in your gut as you do in your head.

Keep in mind, many pieces of art were created that fall outside the boundaries of simple visual depictions of something that you recognise. Also, art doesn't have to be photo-realistic to be good. It's much easier to paint in that style successfully, than to paint like Rembrandt, or Renoir. Even works by Rothko and Pollock, as simple as they look, are harder to duplicate than you might imagine, particularly Rothko, if you paint using the same techniques he used.

Pollock and Rothko happen to be among my favorites, with Van Gogh, Gerhard Richter, Robert Bechtle and countless others.

JR

It's easy to explain:

Modern, or "contemporary" art is designed so that people with no talent can get rich off of people with no taste.
There are fools out there who are willing to spend a fortune so that they can pretend they are trendy, hip, cool, sophisticated, whatever.
So they spend huge piles of cash on stupid junk. They think it makes them cool, and it does to others who are as mentally and socially challenged as they are (keeping up with the jones') but to normal folks it makes they stupid. Andy warhol and his cambells soup can is a good example. He got rich and famous for nothing except that people pretended it was cool to hang out with him or be associated with him and everyone else bought into the scam. They stood in line with they $$$$ hanging out their butts, hoping to get their shot at coolness. BAH!

Sammy,
De Kooning also hated Warhol.
An easy target but he is not that simple. Money grubbing maybe but it is not as simple as that. There is a phenomenal shallowness with Warhol it is almost zenlike. Some claim he had Ausburgers (sp?) syndrome. Perhaps that is why he was so visionary? Who knows?

I love a lot of modern art for its creativity. But for those of you who don't get it here is a funny one. Yves Klein IKB 94 went for $2.9M. He spent something like 2 years finding the right blue and now it is patented.

http://forums.pelicanparts.com/uploa...1182716762.jpg

http://ec1.images-amazon.com/images/...AL._SS500_.jpg

It repels me. Yet I cannot look away.

exactly!