I think there are one or two Vettriano paintings that go a little deeper; Elegy for a Dead Admiral, for instance. The wind tearing at the formal diners' hair speaks volumes if you think about the way so many of his subjects are harking back to a dead age, in the teeth of endlessly advancing reality. Ture, he doesn't deliberately work layers of meaning and reference into his paintings, but there's also the point that while art may be that which conceals art, if it conceals it to the point where the greatest minds in history can't unearth it again then it's overdone. I don't enjoy things that I can't work out for myself given a few hints; those movies that are full of references to "classics of the genre" just annoy me, because they can't be appreciated properly without context not everyone should have. Art IMNSHO should work for both the aficionado and the amateur; that's the attitude I take to my writing, certainly.
Getting back to the subject, what I like about Vettriano personally is two things: the snapshot quality of the scenes that invites the imagination to run wild and fill in the context - which my mind happens to have a great love of doing - and secondly the way he paints light; his pictures really do feel like they have shape and form, almost as if you could step into them and touch the people, talk to the passers-by, and that's something I really like in an artist.
I think the scope for the viewer to self-insert into the work is probably what makes him so popular, actually; people like people, and they especially like people they understand, so if they can see themselves in something, they'll like it. Vettriano hints at a lot of background, at emotions and scenarios (flatteringly glamorous ones at that) but leaves the fine detail up to the viewer, who promptly comes up with their own backstory based largely on how they would feel or want to feel in the situation they imagine the painting expresses. I take advantage of this tendency in my fellow humans all the time - omit the detail, and 99% of the time people will just magically fill in the blank and assume you did what everyone else would do. Excellent for covering your tracks ;)
Well, Vettriano's work isn't actually bad, just a little… insipid.
Yes, it can be enjoyed. A bit. But there are a lot of other artists out there, such as Munch, Breughel, Constable, Delacroix, Dali, Magritte, Dadd, Bosch, Escher, da Vinci, Panini, Rembrandt, Arcimboldo, as well as more modern and/or obscure painters like Giger, Julian Murphy, Achilleos, Simon Patterson, Paul Kidby and Alan Lee. A lot of that stuff is universally accessible and appealing, despite there being a lot more to it than to Vettriano's work.
Given the competition, I'm not sure he's worthy of much attention.
Giger and Bosch are accessible? They may be "better" artists in the please-the-critics sense of the word, but they are very definitely *not* things I'd want hanging in my living room. Geesh - being greeted every morning by Necronom I (http://www.giger.com/Posters/PosterInfo01.jsp) or one of those women with penile pieces of technology shoved into various orifices is not my idea of fun. I had one of his landscape paintings up for a while in my room as a finalist, and I had to take it down because it gave me the creeps in the evenings..
Well, firstly, I didn't claim all that stuff is universally accessible, just a lot of it. Secondly, things don't have to be "nice" to be universally accessible.
While normal people might not put Giger on their wall, an awful lot of people have that album by Emerson, Lake and Palmer. Still more have seen Alien. Doesn't that count as accessibility?
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(no subject)
Date: 2004-04-19 05:11 pm (UTC)Getting back to the subject, what I like about Vettriano personally is two things: the snapshot quality of the scenes that invites the imagination to run wild and fill in the context - which my mind happens to have a great love of doing - and secondly the way he paints light; his pictures really do feel like they have shape and form, almost as if you could step into them and touch the people, talk to the passers-by, and that's something I really like in an artist.
I think the scope for the viewer to self-insert into the work is probably what makes him so popular, actually; people like people, and they especially like people they understand, so if they can see themselves in something, they'll like it. Vettriano hints at a lot of background, at emotions and scenarios (flatteringly glamorous ones at that) but leaves the fine detail up to the viewer, who promptly comes up with their own backstory based largely on how they would feel or want to feel in the situation they imagine the painting expresses. I take advantage of this tendency in my fellow humans all the time - omit the detail, and 99% of the time people will just magically fill in the blank and assume you did what everyone else would do. Excellent for covering your tracks ;)
(no subject)
Date: 2004-04-19 05:48 pm (UTC)Yes, it can be enjoyed. A bit. But there are a lot of other artists out there, such as Munch, Breughel, Constable, Delacroix, Dali, Magritte, Dadd, Bosch, Escher, da Vinci, Panini, Rembrandt, Arcimboldo, as well as more modern and/or obscure painters like Giger, Julian Murphy, Achilleos, Simon Patterson, Paul Kidby and Alan Lee. A lot of that stuff is universally accessible and appealing, despite there being a lot more to it than to Vettriano's work.
Given the competition, I'm not sure he's worthy of much attention.
(no subject)
Date: 2004-04-20 01:46 am (UTC)Giger and Bosch are accessible? They may be "better" artists in the please-the-critics sense of the word, but they are very definitely *not* things I'd want hanging in my living room. Geesh - being greeted every morning by Necronom I (http://www.giger.com/Posters/PosterInfo01.jsp) or one of those women with penile pieces of technology shoved into various orifices is not my idea of fun. I had one of his landscape paintings up for a while in my room as a finalist, and I had to take it down because it gave me the creeps in the evenings..
(no subject)
Date: 2004-04-20 02:45 am (UTC)While normal people might not put Giger on their wall, an awful lot of people have that album by Emerson, Lake and Palmer. Still more have seen Alien. Doesn't that count as accessibility?
(no subject)
Date: 2004-04-20 02:50 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2004-04-20 03:59 am (UTC)I wish I had more of his stuff. I'd love to put a couple on the wall and watch people try and get their heads around it. :-)