<p>wow, there’s a lot to respond to. I’ll break this up in to multiple posts.</p>
<p>artsmarts</p>
<p>“I think this discussion about representational art being good or not is sort of a moot point.”</p>
<p>I haven’t made a single value judgement against representational art. While it might be an interesting discussion, I don’t think it would be particularly serviceable to the kind of person who goes to sites like these looking for help. I’m not trying to dismiss one kind of art for another. I’m saying it’s all valid, it’s all important. Yet, reacting o the first article, my point was and is that the author privileges one kind of art over all others and therefore misrepresents the notion of skills. I’m not making this up.</p>
<p>example: </p>
<p>“He gave me a syllabus that included stitching a rug, throwing a pot, and silk-screening a T-shirt.”</p>
<p>“Perhaps the art world at large wants nothing to do with skill or talent.” </p>
<p>I suppose stitching rugs, ceramics, and silk-screening have nothing to do with talent or skill? At least with drawing you can learn a great deal on your own with a group of peers. Yet to do ceramics or silkscreening you need facilities and technicians to teach you to operate equipment and understand the chemical processes that occur (I’m unsure about the process of rug making but I suspect that the circumstances required to produce a rug by hand would be similar).</p>
<p>“Now what do we do about all that talk of technical skill in these cases?”</p>
<p>Abandon them. There are two pints to consider. Firstly:Those conceptual art guys hire people to fill studios and produce work. That collective group produce works the kind which ranges from the hundred thousands to millions) have the same talent and technical ability found in mainstream Hollywood production crews. Even if the conceptual artist’s only function is to come up with ideas, the fact remains that the works wouldn’t be produced without a highly skilled group to fabricate the pieces. Though, there are conceptual artists who make or perform “work” that doesn’t require technical ability.</p>
<p>In which case point 2: Remember why I brought up that list (and the list of galleries, shows, fairs etc). I believe that woodwinds used it as a point that artists aren’t selling work because of a lack of representational skills. My response was that most artists who are financially successful are not representational painters and that the relationship between technical ability and financial success is typically arbitrary, let alone the relationship between representational skills and financial success in the gallery system in the art world or even representational painters and the discipline of painting. I won’t say that representational painters are a small niche in painting (as they are in the art world), but they are certainly not a dominant group anymore. </p>
<p>My point was that, by itself, representation skills were irrelevant since the most financially successful artists aren’t representational painters and because it is a niche area in the contemporary art world (with people still moaning the cliche exclamation “painting is dead”).</p>
<p>“I’m a huge Chuck Close fan by the way and feel that he transcends representational and in some ways I think of him as beyond or removed from that definition.”</p>
<p>Perhaps, but wouldn’t excluding Chuck Close mean that the are no strictly representational painters on that list?</p>
<p>“There are many different “markets” for “art.” If the San Antonio gallery is representative of what sort of work you are discussing then I think Timkerdes and you are comparing apples and oranges and never the twain shall meet.”</p>
<p>The armory show has large groups of artists who price their work from the tens of thousands to the millions. Tala Madani prices her small paintings at $10,000 and medium sized paintings to about $50,000 or more on average.</p>
<p>[tala</a> madani - Google Search](<a href=“http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&site=imghp&tbm=isch&source=hp&biw=954&bih=539&q=tala+madani&oq=tala+madani&gs_l=img.1.0.0l2j0i24l8.1910.7914.0.9883.11.9.0.2.2.0.782.2353.1j3j4j6-1.9.0...0.0.0..1ac.1.17.img.imjbqHtfYyg]tala”>http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&site=imghp&tbm=isch&source=hp&biw=954&bih=539&q=tala+madani&oq=tala+madani&gs_l=img.1.0.0l2j0i24l8.1910.7914.0.9883.11.9.0.2.2.0.782.2353.1j3j4j6-1.9.0...0.0.0..1ac.1.17.img.imjbqHtfYyg)</p>