Why did Pablo Picasso never get called an asshole?

Maybe people were too scared of being labelled too stupid to get his "work"...Like in "The Emperor's new clothes" by Hans Christian Andersen.

"Plot summary

An emperor of a prosperous city who cares more about clothes than military pursuits or entertainment hires two swindlers who promise him the finest suit of clothes from the most beautiful cloth. This cloth, they tell him, is invisible to anyone who was either stupid or unfit for his position. The Emperor cannot see the (non-existent) cloth, but pretends that he can for fear of appearing stupid; his ministers do the same."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Emperor's_New_Clothes

Comments

Do you understand his work?
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by Halskiisaklink on February 9th, 2009
No - I think it's grotesque, self-indulgent crap...but that's just me.
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by Marky Mark on February 9th, 2009
But you understand the whole depicting forms from multiple angles at once thing, right?
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by Halskiisaklink on February 9th, 2009
Is it supposed to mean something?...depicting forms from multiple angles.
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by Marky Mark on February 9th, 2009
Yes, he wanted to push the boundaries of art and the canvas and, among other things, he felt trying to depict forms from multiple angles at once was a way of achieving that. He was also a master in the classical sense at a young age, but decided that he would cover more ground if he went back to his roots and learned how to draw like a child again.
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by Halskiisaklink on February 10th, 2009
Well that at least proves that you get what you go for... because ...in my humble opinion... Monsieur Picasso has certainly succeeded in over-stepping the boundaries of artistic merit...Else we might as well wallpaper the Louvre with pictures collected from kindergartens and mental asylums. I do appreciate artists like Salvador Dali and Hieronymus Bosch.
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by Marky Mark on February 12th, 2009
That wouldn't be a bad idea. Why not do that?
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by Halskiisaklink on February 12th, 2009
But is it Art?... and it might lose Picasso some of his genius status... because there will be thousands of "geniusses". I might even try my hand myself.☺
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by Marky Mark on February 12th, 2009
It would certainly make art more democratic, which is (in a way) what Andy Warhol managed to achieve.
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by Halskiisaklink on February 12th, 2009
Yes it would be very democratic to give everybody their 15 minutes in the Louvre. Whether they will be able to produce something worth presenting is dubious. (Real) art can be APPRECIATED by the masses but it has always been PRODUCED by an elite.
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by Marky Mark on February 12th, 2009
The problem with having a rigid conception of 'real' art is that you're stuck 100 years in the past, and the social norms that made that art are long gone in Western culture.
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by Halskiisaklink on February 12th, 2009
I just think art should be worth looking at. It does not need to be pretty but it must be beautiful to the observer, make a statement worth stating/ say something worth saying. Not every idea that pops up in someone's head is worth expressing. There should be some kind of respect for the audience that takes the time to come and view an artwork. A lot of modern art is plain nonsense. People ("artists") throw displays together sometimes randomly and it gets called "interesting". Even the way movies and esp. music are made today shows a decline in standards of artistic merit. Music does not even pretend to be original - they use recycled riffs from other songs ad nauseaum. Bubblegum "Flavor of the month" art. It tastes sweet and nice for a short while and then it gets spat out because its not worth keeping.
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by Marky Mark on February 13th, 2009
Beauty is a pretty loaded concept in its own right, though - the image of what is beautiful is fixed by money-making institutions like the fashion and magazine industries. Art has different meanings and purposes depending on who you talk to, but the general consensus by current art critics is that worthwhile art plays around and possibly challenges the viewer's perceptions - or allows the viewer room for a canvas themselves, as the viewer's intrepretation is just as important, if not more so, than the artist's intended meaning.
As for music, I admit I haven't really enjoyed much on the radio recently, but popular music has its ups and downs (like the eighties) and everybody has their own tastes. Sampling is interesting in its own right, although a lot of artists make it sound trite.
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by Halskiisaklink on February 13th, 2009
It's very hard to put into words what you think constitutes a work of art because its more of a "I know it when I see it" thing. For me art is the expression of an idea or a mental perception of the artist. The artist is a kind of philosopher or fiction writer but whereas a philosopher or writer uses words to tell a story, express an insight or a vision, the artist uses images and sounds to tell a story or express a personal insight or create a vision/spectacle.It goes without saying that this idea must have some degree of merit to be worth expressing.
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Art CAN be provocative and challenge society's predjudices but it does not HAVE to challenge. It CAN have a purpose but it can also be done purely for the sake of creating something aesthetically appealing. It must however express an idea in an eloquent,poignant and possibly original way without tying too hard to be original. A good artwork does not require a lot of interpretation. It communicates in a non-verbal subconscious level. If it needs an interpretor then it has failed to communicate with it's audience. It should be able to stand alone even independent of the artist. I would like to see an experiment where someone was shown an obscure Picasso without them knowing that it was a Picasso. Would they still be as awed?
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by Marky Mark on February 13th, 2009
Yeah, but if you set a standard someone's going to try to break it. You show someone something by Ucello or Fragonard and they're not going to be 'awed' either.
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by Halskiisaklink on February 13th, 2009
The artist should not obsess about breaking boundaries and standards - that sounds to me like trying too hard to be original. They should be 'obsessed' with perfecting the ELOQUENT transfer of their vision (telling their story) onto the canvas.

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If the audience does not appreciate the artwork then either the audience has no appreciation of art (like people who do not care for Shakespeare) or the artist has failed to communicate what was intended/ failed to move his audience (like an ham actor that cannot act well/ or a mediocre writer that cannot write well). Just my opinions.
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by Marky Mark on February 14th, 2009
I never said they should be obsessed with breaking boundaries, but a lot of good artists do break boundaries and cultural barriers.
A lot of recent artists have tried to break away from the elitist nature of art 'appreciation'.
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by Halskiisaklink on February 14th, 2009
Nothing wrong with that I suppose. Good luck to them. Appreciation of art should not be elitist..even though artists themselves are an elite group. There should be no hard rules in HOW artists express themselves. The only rule that it is done WELL.
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by Marky Mark on February 14th, 2009
I've probably rambled way of my point which was simply that I have no taste for Picasso's work. I find it ugly and devoid of merit. I am not alone - apparently Dali and others also crticized his work.
http://www.gosurreal.com/dali_vs_picasso.htm
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by Marky Mark on February 14th, 2009
Most artists from different comtemporary movements did to distance themselves, it doesn't make them any less significant.
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by Halskiisaklink on February 14th, 2009

Too bad!
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by Halskiisaklink on May 3rd, 2007
That's what Jonathan Richman said...
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by Nick on January 12th, 2008
But John Cale said it better.
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by Halskiisaklink on January 12th, 2008
Only that the song was written by Jonathan, and Cale interpreted it on his album Helen of Troy. So Cale quoted it from Jonathan, you might say.
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by Nick on January 13th, 2008
He quoted it Samuel L. Jackson in Pulp Fiction-style.
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by Halskiisaklink on January 13th, 2008
I love that you guys are just as much of music geeks as I am.
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by Boohradley on January 15th, 2008

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Why did Pablo Picasso never get called an asshole?

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