re: #93 Feline Fearless Leader

Oh, a little background on the John Singer Sargent painting I posted a photo of:
jssgallery.org

There were other paintings by him there that I noticed. An oil of a spanish dancer that was a study for one of his larger paintings. And also a portrait of George Dewey.

Sargent was a force of nature. There’s always been a natural gap between what the public perceives as artistic merit, vs. what artists value, and I will say as an artist that Sargent was a beast.

I think there’s some merit to the argument that Modernism and Post-Modernism has de-valued rendering skill - or rather, allowed people with deficient rendering skill to make a buck from the public (But is that really a crime? that argument could go on forever). It is also a weird world we live in where some of the absolute best artists these days are all working their asses off for movie and game studios, cranking out concept art and comics. If you follow the thread of looking for real, solid, marks-on-paper skill - seeing a scene, drawing it accurately, rendering it in a beautiful way, and catching and communicating some kind of emotion with it - Sargent is up there with the best IMO. His feeling for light and facial expression is just amazing.

This is not to say that I don’t love modern things and only worship the academic, but I do believe the modern attitude that all art is equally valid expression is puffery. Some artists ARE better than others. ;)