A lot of people on Instagram are praising this artist. Can any other fellow artist here tell me what the fuck I’m missing or is this just more money laundering ? The artist is Robert Nava
It's supposedly intentional, from an interview with him
In college, we learned how to draw very realistic, like photoreal. By the time I was 12 or 13 years old, I could actually draw in that style, and I like to think that I was pretty good. We also learned how to paint in the Renaissance style and all those traditional techniques. After we learned advanced painting, the teacher would give us feedback like, “Okay, now you’re artists. You don’t even have to create in these styles or what we just taught you.” I was kind of cheering that comment on because I went completely the opposite way. When I was 12 or 13, I could already draw and paint like Velasquez, but it took me a lifetime to learn how to draw like a kid again.
I agree to a certain extent. To me hyper-realism is the most boring art style imaginable, though I'd certainly never spend 100k on this painting, even if I won the lottery.
I’m not saying stuff needs to realistic and I personally hate photo realism with a few exceptions, but this? There’s so many fake basquiat and people intentionally making “bad” paintings already on Instagram. Why’s this special?
IDK, this guy got a MFA from Yale art school, and fulfills every stereotype imaginable for an up and coming Brooklyn 'artist'. So I think a lot of people look at those credentials and think, "hey everybody else thinks this guy's special so he must be".
Hey you can totally agree with the theory behind drawing like a child and think it sucks visually.
So he’s just stealing from Picasso, then. “It took me four years to paint like Raphael, but a lifetime to paint like a child.”
Yeah, key difference is Picasso knew not to paint like a child when the painting's subject demanded it.
Well, yeah. Also Picasso was Picasso and had an astonishing eye for color, composition, everything that makes a piece succeed. I mean, the colors alone on this shark are so bad, so boring.
I was just surprised this guy basically quoted Picasso to explain himself. Like, now I’m gonna compare you to Picasso, and it’s not looking so good for you.
This ⬆️ I have a very real emotional response when I see a Picasso, Guston, or Basquait. All artist that “paint like children” but with them there’s an interplay between the subject, composition, and color that keeps me interested. I don’t see that here
It’s almost like “painting like a child” isn’t literally about making art that a child would make, but about rethinking how we see and understand the world and breaking away from social inhibitions that can keep the artist from taking risks.
I could honestly see an OK piece being developed from this shark if you built up lots of bright colors and made the focal point the mouth. Why is the mouth all the way on the left? It’s the most interesting part.
They're good because they're trying to see the subject like a child would, but still paint it like a world class artist.
basquiat also has this ironic but sincere shit that hits me like a truck
"oh is this guy paraphrasing picasso? oh no you're citing the actual quote, my bad. wait, the quote didnt go that way right? omg he really did steal picasso didnt he"
you're missing that this artist could quite literally put anything which reflects light onto any medium in any arrangement and people would praise his art because he's good at bullshitting
All the well-to-do folks of leisure gather at my fancy art exhibition, where I carefully explain the complex and well-educated process employed to create felt tip marker drawings of T-Rexes on motorcycles.
I don't particularly like this art, but this is the most clichéd critique imaginable
Isn't that kinda the point of the high art world though? Like when avant garde was more popular they said "you just don't get it" as a way to hand wave criticism. Now the obvious criticism is that it looks pretty childish which is true, but I can absolutely see some fart sniffing art critic saying "that's the point dummy"
In reality all high art is just a way to move big money between benefactors and if their shitty kids are making art like 8 year olds then that's the art they're gonna buy.
Yes, however, it's a critique usually applied unfairly to abstract or process art. This is just a shitty finger painting of a shark.
The artist literally describes their art as childish and paraphrased (without attribution lol) the Picasso line about having to relearn to make art like a child.
So no, saying your dumb painting looks like finger painting from an nine year old is a completely accurate critique.
I don't know a whole lot about art admittedly, but I'm not one of those people who bangs on about modern art being shit.
I don't get this though. Is it some sorta cleaver statement or rebuttal against the idea that art should need some level of technical skill and mean something?
Art with any reach can't "mean" anything because that would inevitably lead to art that means "capitalism needs to be destroyed". So we have this horseshit or abstract art that's just shapes and bullshit.
Edit: just to be clear, there's plenty of modern art I like that is actually good. This exhibition at MCA Chicago a few years ago is one of my favorites ever. But the messages one would take away from this about the internet and the modern age--about the alienation, the ennui, the chintzy fakeness, the commodification of every aspect of our lives, down to turning our very identities into a fucking brand--would lead any serious person to deeply questioning why things are like this and how we can change them for the better. And that's why most modern art isn't like that, and is mostly dumb finger paint nonsense that means nothing.
Unpleasant to look at. Too much white, clashing garish pink. Nothing unique or original to it. There's no composition/story/theme/idea. The only thing I get looking at it is a headache.
I'm far more a fan of realism, but I can respect a childish-style drawing. This is just crap though.
The medium is in fact Robert's shit and he ate weird things to get the right hue shit to come out of his bunger prior to applying it to canvas.
This reminded me that if you take enough "Keep Tahoe Blue" stickers you can make them say "Eat Blue Poop".
capitalism is antithetical to art because art made first and foremost for profit is no art at all
It was cooler when I wasn't seeing it quite right and it looked like a half shark half insect with a horn (top blue part of shark) staring into a disembodied mouth. It didn't make it a much better painting or anything but at least the concept was better than shark.
