He may have style, but he can't paint. As for your idea of what an artist should look like, for God's sake! He looks like the Cat in Red Dwarf. Stick with the jeans and T-shirt, like I do.

I had to wear a suit and tie for a private viewing of an art show recently, because a Royal Person would be there. Strewth! Was I hot and uncomfortable in that getup. And all the artists were wearing pin striped suits or cocktail dresses, according to gender.

Incidentally, the Royal Person is a better artist than Cy Twombly, and HRH is an unsung amateur.
 

This is why we get married, Dionysus. So our better half can dress us. Afterall, they are the ones looking at us, I cant tell what i look like, I dont look in the mirror all day like some metrosexual(my youngest son).

So when I go out, I could easily make this list. When at work or at home, uh, no way. Which is fine with her too, a man has to be a man, she doesnt want a peacock all the time, just when showing me off. As she is incredibly delicious eye candy, its the least I could do. Gotta look good as a couple. And the key rule, dress appropriate to the situation. Classic lines and rich, not gaudy, color on an athletic body always works best.

She bought me an absolutely beautiful sports coat for my 50th a few months ago, I almost fell down from simply opening the package, the material is incredible, and far more interesting than any of Cy's works, gotta agree with Coxy there. I get no energy or structured relationships from his stuff, just paint sitting there, with fancy titles. No life. Sorry. Will be wearing it at the opening next Friday, but not the other three nights the show goes on, dress appropriate. No wine, no women, no song, no threads.

I could show you the best clothier in the world when here in the LBC, over by the university. Umbertos is very inexpensive, he tells you to go check out his competition, and he is right. With a great selection of the highest quality suits in his rather small shop. Funny lil guy too, opened the shop the year i was born, so you know its gotta be good. I will hook you up if you like, got my wedding suit there too, we did things our own way, not the tradtional tux and rigamaroll, it was beautiful. simple, and she looked HOT!

For the magazine she is about to publish, Soluv, for older teenager girls and young women, she is getting a list of independent womens shops that sell inexpensive yet fashionable clothing and accesories, yet not whorish Beyonce type crap. Red is great too, both shops on Bellflower Blvd.

Our top goal to get rid of the non-feminine influences on womens fashion, and art. We need masculinity and femininity, not stick figure girls looking like boys and art that lacks virility and agressiveness, as well as nurturing passions. Both fields have been twisted by marketers for their own perversions of beauty and desires. Dont see either in the art world anymore, most artistes either dress like rumpled old ladies, or wear the uniforms of the day.

In the 80s, you went to NYC and they all wore black, here it was store bought faded jeans, real men never do that, they wear them in. You can tell when they have split open knees and the cut is at the knee, real jeans have them below it, from men working and kneeling and wearing the cloth, not cutting with a razor blade to look "tough". Like they have real jobs. With belt and rolled up button down white shirt. And sandals. REAL masculine. Ugh. It can look good, but not when all wear it, we all have different builds and personalities, or well, should. Artistes more lemmings than individuals, they try to hard to be "different". which makes them all the same. Dull. Purpose is everything.

Authenticity and appropriateness are the keys to both art and fashion, though the two should never mix. They are yin and yang. If your art is fashionable and trendy its entertainment, not creative art. Purpose is lacking, and so never creative art. Professionalsim and career are NOT Purpose, they are of the individual, art is of the whole, layered relationships, creating a life force, an energy from within, that reflects the world. Clothes cant do that, but can make one part of the tapestry of life, and when in balance and revealing the personality, beautiful. Frontin dont work.

And Twombly fronts, as all contempt types do. Cute titles do not a painting make. Though hobnobbing and brownosing sure seem to make a career.

ACDE!
 

I agree Cy Twombly has style, I also like his paintings. I saw an exhibition of his when I was 16 and the scale of his paintings blew me away!
 

I like the second guy, who says artistes arent the jesters and fools of the rich? Now THATS a bozo. Even has his hair down, almost as good as Carrot Tops, or Side Show Bob's.

ACDE!

ps.What does size have to do with it? Alot, apparently.;)
 

By what criteria does one use to say that Cy Twombly can't paint? Please share.
 

He paints, anyone can do that. But is it art? What is art? Is it anything, or nothing? The same thing actually, with no definition anything is art and so everything is art and so the word has no meaning, or the things themselves. Thats an academic trick to get milions of untalented, wannabe but lacking in work ethic kids to come and spend their parents money. Its an industry ruse for profit, not knowledge and ability. It wont even say what it is so it must live up to it, its the lazy way out, and we have paid for it for decades now. Twombly one of the first products of its machinery, along with Warhol and exhbitionists like Mathieu. Twombly is all pretense and arrogant latin phrases on a monumental scale to cover up its lack of life. Academicism in its firt wave after being reborn from the beat down the post impressionists gave it. The Salon, regurgitated.

If art is whatever it means to you, then there can be no coming together and viewing of a common humanity, it is seperated, apart, cliquish, apart for life and about the individuals desires, wants, fetishes, perversions, whatever.

There are many forms of visual art in truth, just like musics. Not all music is art, most is entertainment, and so is the visual arts. There are arts and crafts, decorative arts, applied arts, fine arts to amuse and gratify the rich, and creative arts. Which the last would be that which lasts, and is not about the individual, but defining humanity, exploring anture and searching for god. Examine all art that has lasted, which gets beyond that initial fashionable populatrity which has always been around, and you will see this is so.

There is no "new: art, just like no new economics, as our latest disater in depression ahs proven once again. New and evolved in appearance as we learn more about our world, each other, and our conciousness of god, yes. But it is evolution, built upon what came before, and that is not predictable. Based on profound changes in how we view the world, and our place in it. Our Pupose for being. This is Creative Arts role. Always has been, always will be.

How it is made and where, "context", is irrelevent, What it is for, by and about is purpose, and without that, there is no Art. And Purpose defines what it is, Passion its root and goal, technique its strictly visual incarnation, and ability to incite feelings of being extremely alive its effect.

A work of creative art is a triggering mechanism to being at one with the universe, humanity and god. It is spirtual, of mind, body and soul. It is philosophy, science, and thelogy combined as the one they truly are, where supposed contradictions are resolved, not solved, but revealed as being but aspects of reality, not opposed, but complementary aspects of the whole. Poetic and musical, not mundane and prosaic.

We are but feeble biological units, our flabby fat filled brains of both great use as tools, and yet self deceiving in intent. Self deception is mans greatest trait. We can talk ourselves into anything we want to believe. That which is to our benefit almost always. Couched in religious and polticial, and yes, artistic academic terms, dogmas, to cover for ones own limiting desires.

And Twombly ash some grandiose desires, museums created huge rooms, far to big for msot works, and needed wallpaer to fill them, art has it appropriate scale and proprotions to activate. Making bigger has nothing to do with making better. His are small doodles gone gargantuan. Wasted space and cavas, with small globs of matter smeared in unrelated parts, that do not activate or relate to the whole.

If that turns you on, so be it. To each his own. But again, how precisesly does that relate to creative art?

art collegia delenda est
 

What a lot of twoddle. So your criteria is that contemporary art(?) is a conspiracy maintained by the 'art industry'? That's a *yawn* new opinion. Anyway, I switched off at 'he paints, anyone can do that' yikes!
 

ok, seriously. What is it about the internet and crappy uninformed opinions. I find it astounding how many talentless artists get on blogs or social networking sites and blurt out their paranoid theories with the intent to attack eduacted, hardworking, well respected practising artists as only being successful because they have the backing of powerful people. Could it be that they may actually have talent, they may actually have something quite special, unique even amazing to share with the world? It's not enough to simply bang on about art and purpose or subjectivity/objectivilty in art - as if that's a valid argument. Needless to say, all of this sludge is passed off as interesting discussion when really, of course, it's just a cover for deep insecurity. Pathetic!
 

I still find his earlier works hard to like as there's nothing to grab on to. They look like he gave a chicken a pencil and let it scratch about all over the place. I'll never appreciate his chicken scratching stuff.

I have fallen in love with his more recent paintings though. Theyre solid and complete and ooze paint. I think his newer paintings have strength and show a genuine love of paint. I don't like all his new stuff, but the ones that I do like, I love.
 

How refreshing! A balanced analysis of a painter. I'm not necessarily a huge fan of Twombly's work but I can respond to it as an informed and inquiring artist, in my own right. It's a duty. no? To look at a Twombly painting is to experience an one human's journey/struggle to communicate through making marks. So it's repetitive, it's awkward, it's restless; sometimes heavy, sometimes breathy -yet always fresh and always with conviction! If I were a musician I could imagine his paint becoming notes.
 

Then I will have to look at his newer stuff Dionysus, but seen on the web anyway his silly rose ones in England, at least he is filling all that empty canvas better, but still they are just things sitting there, with the dripping paint an attempt to integrate it into the canvas. But he ahd to get somehwat better over time, couldnt become anymore absurd.

And there have always been artistes who are celebrated in their day, to be discarded by history as fashionable twaddle. Salieri in music, to Bouguereau, Gerome and Meisonnier in stratified, stagnant, academic art. The Academy has returned, as it is the gathering of mediocrities, looking to unload their trash upon the world. They are mercantilists, not artists.

And nothing new, a part of human nature. It has happened before, and will happen again. And has happened to us. And the trash will be made into tents and such in the future, enough acreage under the garbage. Fashion comes and goes, time will sort out what is what, as those of its generation are blinded by their own prejudices and desires for grandeur. Later generations can look back and laugh.

But there are always some individual artists; groups only come when huge shifts in attitude and knowledge of life occur. Now is the beginning of such a time, or civilization is on its downward slope. Excess is no longer possible, thinking man is above all, his thoughts being of greatness, and reign supreme in the universe. We are but masses of meat, and should be being humbled by our arrogance right now. If not, then you will never get it, and are but excess baggage. As those melodramatic brownnosers were, and Twombly is.


Anselm Kiefer is the only major figure to come out of the last few decades, the rest social footnotes. Or second rate painters that are good, but not great, like Dions boys Freud and Bacon. Though I do like later Hockney. Very limited, but truthful in their own internalized ways. With lots of crap thrown in, as all artists have much. All the rest that painted into the later 20th century were already painting by 1950, some simply matured later like Tamayo, Diebenkorn, and Dubuffets art brut works, his later are turned into academic trash also, happens to the best of em.
 

Why? What happened to produce this incredible amount of mediocrity? Academies returned in the middle 50s. One learns for great artists, not hacks, no matter how well intentioned. Miles learned from Bird, not Julliard. All great artists learn from those who came before, not those given the blessings of the institutions, the forces of the status quo, which contempt art is. How this happened you can read on my blog, which Dion published long ago. Times are changing, and must be seized, as art reflects who WE are, not the desires of the rich patrons of art, who always twist it to their own desires, always have always will. Once you deal directly with them, you are done. As Picasso became washed up in painting after WWII, though his sculptures, ceramics and sculptures blossomed, as they did not have the same pressures to suck up to those in charge of the institutions. His paintings became lazy, not layered in complex relationships anymore. Some were interesting and good, but eh never got back to works like Three Musicians or Three Dancers. of the 20s, let alone his earlier cubist works and Demoiselles.

Mediocrity became codified, so product could fill the huge halls of self-worship built by the rich, temples to themselves, which the first Mausoleum was, and these are today.

My explanation for Twomblies failure are quite clear, but it always comes down to passion, Not the twaddle of over educated monkies talking endlessly about the sensitivity of dripping paint, and complex feelings of grandiose titles. Absurdities, amusements for the rich. Things Cézanne, Gauguin, and Klee never bothered with, let alone Braque Picasso and Matisse. They sold cheaply and only wished to work. Art had not become the entertainment field of the aloof then, that was a product of this version of the academy. The Damien Hirsts and Warhols and the silliness of op art, and especially "conceptual" like Naumans absurdities. If you can find stuff in his crap, you really are effete and no longer a part of life. "Above" all us mere mortals. Imperial Clothing. Read it.

Art collegia delenda est
Art colleges must be destroyed
 

fossor ut sermo shite must tribuo nos a effrego , iam.
 

One cannot conversate with a boor who doesnt have a name,anonymous, or give one to back up his statements with deed, that person is a non entity, and without backbone, or character.
Or apparently reading skills. let alone art ones.

Whos ego are we talkin about here? Tombly's? at least he give his name and so gets respect for putting it out there, though it is brownnosing to please his patrons whose strings he dances to. And you? Of unreined ego without substance? Not worth the time, those who can do, those who can't teach, and follow one another as the blind leading the blind. Imperial Clothing strikes again, will the thunder storm ever abate? Temporarily, but only by those who truly question, not ask miniscule irrelevant ones to make sure no one ever actually asks, Why?

Bozo you be. For foolish games you play. You are out of your league, which is sandlot compared to the true majors.

art collegia delenda est
 

Actually I thought the interesting thing about this post was not the artists picked but the emphasis on their clothes. It's funny how we all continue to do that from time to time, even when (as showed in the comments) there is more than enough to talk about a particular individual. Maybe the way we dress does say something about ourselves - but I'm not sure it says much about our art.
 

Cy Twombly is the best last half 20th century painter, with Rothko. How can all you half ass wankers say he can't paint when your vapid personalities and chit chat criticism amount to a wasted minute of our time.
His message is eternal.