Mess or Masterpiece? Portrait of Duchess Kate revealed

[JeffX99]

Fair enough. I find it odd to consider critique and analysis of artwork cowardly is all. Plus you kind of went on the attack for some reason, even challenging and calling me on my artistic integrity, which I actually hold extremely high. Just don't see any of that as called for. But whatever - I just think you projected a tremendous amount of baggage into the discussion.

[sone_one]

Those of us who enter the biggest contests in the world to have them critiqued by other artists are cowards?

thats the 180° opposite of what im saying. putting your own effort out there is everything else than cowardly... i wonder how you read that into what i posted.

If my work is seen all over the world in a movie, video game or otherwise I would not find it cowardly if others critiqued it. Probably wouldn't pay attention. His work is being seen all over and that is part of payment for worldwide exposure. Kind of like those celebrities who work their whole life to be celebrities then say they don't want to shared. I am not a coward for critiquing a fellow artists work without his permission.

yeah its part of the deal/gig and payment... if you produce anything thats published. but man thats the passive part. you just have to live with it or avoid any to be published (means not to be paid) work at all... both of us know that.
yet actively putting someones elses work up for discussion is ... an entirely different subject matter. and right there i ask why its not his own work he seeks to get input on, but someone elses which is way less likely to yield a benefit.

[bcarman]

Well I guess we are just worlds apart. I can't imagine never having a discussion where I say, "Man did you see Ishtar. Can't believe a movie with two such great actors sucked so badly." If I do high profile work I just expect someone to talk about it, hate it or love it or even be indifferent. It's a world where we can't put up each other's work for discussion that scares me. There is only so much one can learn by putting up his/her own work. We can learn other things by putting up other peoples work especially those that have been successful. Putting up Damien Hirst's latest work, whether for good or bad, can spark a very interesting discussion.

And as far as your first quote above I was speaking to the word coward. Any of us who does this work at a high level expects our work to be scrutinized and even criticized whether we give it ourselves or have someone else post it.

Opinions can't be shared unless they fit your idea of what can be shared? If it doesn't benefit mankind as a whole I can't share it?
well could help myself not reading it like that .

And this was formed in the form of a question in order to understand what you were saying. You paraphrased me incorrectly by putting quotes around it.

[JeffX99]

yet actively putting someones elses work up for discussion is ... an entirely different subject matter. and right there i ask why its not his own work he seeks to get input on, but someone elses which is way less likely to yield a benefit.

Did you not read my reply on how we can benefit from critique? I highly suggest you take a course or two on art history. Read a few books on art as well, whatever aspect of it you find interesting or challenging. I mean I just can't wrap my head around the idea of not analyzing, discussing and critiquing art? The very nature of art requires consideration, response and analysis.

[Wooly ESS]

Here is a little more perspective on the artist:

http://paulemsley.com/

[sone_one]

Fair enough. I find it odd to consider critique and analysis of artwork cowardly is all. Plus you kind of went on the attack for some reason, even challenging and calling me on my artistic integrity, which I actually hold extremely high. Just don't see any of that as called for.

your integrity as an artist is questioned by me asking, if the ones sparking and adding to that argument, has been in the situation the artist we talk about, has been in? you came up with the term. what i said didnt explicitly apply to you... only very little of it actually (been using the term you instead of anyone too much probably... give me the benefit of doubt not beeing a native speaker). but if we talk about critiquing portrait work, id like to see those that did, doing better. really! would brighten my day.

just ment to be challenging... seeing something happen... good or uncomfortable... doesnt matter. better than 10/10 saying... not my thing, nose is wonky, its dead, its a copy, whatever.

[sone_one]

Did you not read my reply on how we can benefit from critique? I highly suggest you take a course or two on art history. Read a few books on art as well, whatever aspect of it you find interesting or challenging. I mean I just can't wrap my head around the idea of not analyzing, discussing and critiquing art? The very nature of art requires consideration, response and analysis.

by the standards of either masterpiece or mess? ARE YOU SERIOUS?

now you are the one thats questioning my integrity...

[JeffX99]

Sorry Sone - having a hard time following some of that myself. Yes I mentioned integrity because imo that portrait lacks any. You saying "that's a big word" I read as an attack and challenge of my integrity...as if I don't have any and don't have the balls to back it up. That's all. Maybe I misread it, IDK.

Anyway, I think you're missing the real heart of the problem, this stance that art, even extremely high profile, public art shouldn't be critiqued or discussed without permission and without coming from a place of superior ability. I've learned a helluva lot from art critics and art historians. They've opened my eyes to many possibilities and made me more aware as an artist. I certainly don't agree with much of what I read but that doesn't make me think they shouldn't be writing it.

Edit: So he put on a silly, catchy title? And I think it certainly qualifies as a mess to me...especially when compared to what it should have been.

[bcarman]

Here is a little more perspective on the artist:

http://paulemsley.com/

For the record I was never questioning the whole oeuvre of Emsley. He really has done some interesting work. I just feel that this painting is a shortcut. It seems to bypass some of the efforts of his other more successful paintings. This painting feels so attached to photo reference as to be unable to exist on its own as a painting. My real criticism is that even if the likeness were wonderful and the colors better it is lacking as simply a painting. Now again I have not seen the actual painting so I reserve some judgement. But with experience an awful lot can be seen through a reproduction.

And sone one, I wouldn't put too much emphasis on the inflammatory title of this thread.

[sone_one]

Anyway, I think you're missing the real heart of the problem, this stance that art, even extremely high profile, public art shouldn't be critiqued or discussed without permission and without coming from a place of superior ability. I've learned a helluva lot from art critics and art historians. They've opened my eyes to many possibilities and made me more aware as an artist. I certainly don't agree with much of what I read but that doesn't make me think they shouldn't be writing it.

sigh, not saying it couldnt be used beneficially up to some point... but why not exploit the more beneficial options by posting your own? or by posting something really controversial... this portrait is just plainly boring. c'mon.... its compromise through and through. and from my limited experience i can see where this could come from and how id be in total paralysis confronted with that task (not to draw kate middleton... its just a face.... but to draw it for a museum and kate and the royals liking it...).

im not talking about pointing out (potentially beneficial) flaws, but about beeing judgmental. i dont know bout bill carman (love his pictures, not at all know anything about his ability to do pleasing representational portraiture), but im pretty sure everyone else who posted within this thread (ofc and especially myself included) would thoroughly wet himself beeing confronted with that task.

so i ask for humbleness, if it comes to someone elses effort thats all.

[Shorinji_Knight]

The work alone is an artists only defense. Being present or not during the discussion doesn't change the integral truths about the work. I was in a writing group awhile back and the other members would critique your work, but you were not allowed to say anything. That is the way it works in art too, sure alot of people try to defend their work verbally after the fact, but the work's only defense is itself. Art becomes seperate from the artist. It is like birth in that it takes on a life of it's own and in most cases out lives the artist. Dead artists can't defend their work are we not to discuss those? I agree though that such discussions about another's work should come from a point of respect for the effort and humility to put yourself in the artist's position.

I still don't think that the painting is bad, I admit to being a little disappointed to see how heavily he relied on the reference (Kinda like how I felt when I found out that Norman Rockwell used a projector). I tend to feel the the best portraits involve the artist having access to the subject for at least a couple of field sketches.

[bcarman]

But humility is no fun. Just want you to understand that for me it's not about pleasing portraiture it's about a good painting. Pleasing portraiture should be the minimum requirement but a good painting should always be the goal.

Just read the Norman Rockwell projector post. Please don't equate what Norman Rockwell did with what this guy did with this portrait. Galaxies apart. Rockwell's stamp is always on his work reference or not. I guess the main complaint about this portrait is that his usual interesting stamp, which is on a lot of his other work, is not on this portrait.

By the way sone one, I understand your concern with unthoughtful flip somewhat ignorant comments so I feel like I at least learned something about your argument and agree.

[JeffX99]

OK, cool - I'm getting a better idea of your point of view...I just don't necessarily share it, but that's fine...I never mind disagreeing when it comes to certain things, and this is one. I don't necessarily feel humbleness/humility have much place in critique or analysis, in this case. TBH I think many, many people would have handled that portrait better. Sure it would be exciting to be commissioned to do such a piece but not such an overwhelming thing.

Actually I'm pretty underwhelmed by Mr. Emsley's work and think they got exactly what he does...shows that being royal, or advising them does not account for taste. Not to be judgmental but my impression of his stuff is schtick. He's got a schtick he does...and it just isn't terribly interesting to me.

[bcarman]

Gotta love a bot.

[Velocity Kendall]

Call me all 90s but I thought this was how you make a portrait of a royal these days.
and call me naff but i like Testino for a lot of the same reasons i like Sargent.

[Velocity Kendall]

oh and by the way



thats all i have to say about this

[Velocity Kendall]

that millais is in cam town centre; the bit not covered by the frame its about the size of a postcard, ie about half the size on screen.. its fucking intense.

[Pío]

To be honest, I don't like this painting. There's nothing interesting about it. However, I do think it looks her and as shown by his other paintings, the artist has talent. They should have chosen a better picture or he could have had the sense to suggest a better angle. He still could have saturated it a bit more anyway. The nostrils look weird. I don't think the problem is the underlying drawing structure. The tones and colors he chose are just very unflattering and don't create enough contrast. They just seem muddy. I have also seen another pictures of the painting and it seems nicer in those. Maybe, we aren't seeing it as it looks in real life? I bet it looks better. I don't see why she would be dissatisfied with it, though. She got what she asked for.

[velderia]

There's a nicer photo of the painting here in warmer light: http://www.nydailynews.com/entertain...icle-1.1238145

Looks much better imho.

[bill618]

2) its easy to mock someones effort without the need to back it up, or expertise on situational factors or skill... without putting your money where your mouth is, so to say.

but if we talk about critiquing portrait work, id like to see those that did, doing better. really! would brighten my day.

telling yourself "oh i would have done that" is just masturbation and ego stroking without meeting the need to back it up.

I don't think anyone is saying "oh i would have done that"--unless I missed something in the posts.

So, if an artist can’t work at the skill level of another artist the artist has no right to critique the other (more skilled) artist’s work, even though the artist’s critical analysis jives with the consensus opinion of other artists due to the fact that the issues are GLARINGLY OBVIOUS?
I can’t play a guitar like Buckethead, but I surely can tell when he botches a note. Why? BECAUSE IT’S GLARINGLY OBVIOUS!

What makes you so abundantly certain that just because someone doesn’t have a comparable piece of art in their portfolio, that required months to complete, that they couldn’t pull off the same level of work had they spent the time to do so? I don’t have a single airbrushed work in my porfolio. I guess to you I wouldn’t know which end of an airbrush to point at a piece of illustration board (though I have 30 years of airbrushing experience).

I guess maybe in your world those who point out issues in a more skilled artist’s work are just blithering idiot-nut-bags…



On a side note (as someone who criticized the portrait), I’d be more than happy to take your money and put it where my brush is and take you up on the walk-the-walk if you talk-the-talk challenge.

[Elwell]

Call me all 90s but I thought this was how you make a portrait of a royal these days.

Nah, more like this:



(To those going all gooey over Nelson Shanks, as you can see, he doesn't exactly do his best work under these circumstances, either.)

[sone_one]

I don't think anyone is saying "oh i would have done that"--unless I missed something in the posts.

So, if an artist can’t work at the skill level of another artist the artist has no right to critique the other (more skilled) artist’s work, even though the artist’s critical analysis jives with the consensus opinion of other artists due to the fact that the issues are GLARINGLY OBVIOUS?
I can’t play a guitar like Buckethead, but I surely can tell when he botches a note. Why? BECAUSE IT’S GLARINGLY OBVIOUS!

What makes you so abundantly certain that just because someone doesn’t have a comparable piece of art in their portfolio, that required months to complete, that they couldn’t pull off the same level of work had they spent the time to do so? I don’t have a single airbrushed work in my porfolio. I guess to you I wouldn’t know which end of an airbrush to point at a piece of illustration board (though I have 30 years of airbrushing experience).

I guess maybe in your world those who point out issues in a more skilled artist’s work are just blithering idiot-nut-bags…

oh dear... i said what i had to say... and if youre really interested where im coming from, i invite you to re-read my postings.

On a side note (as someone who criticized the portrait), I’d be more than happy to take your money and put it where my brush is and take you up on the walk-the-walk if you talk-the-talk challenge.

yeah why not.

[bill618]

oh dear... i said what i had to say... and if youre really interested where im coming from, i invite you to re-read my postings.

No need to reread. I’ve quoted what you also said.

[bill618]

Nah, more like this:

[minus image]

(To those going all gooey over Nelson Shanks, as you can see, he doesn't exactly do his best work under these circumstances, either.)

[cough] Yeah. [cough]

I’d still like to see Shank’s rendition of Kate, though out of pure curiosity--not gooeyness.

[Syle]

I'm the original poster of this thread, and I haven't contributed much to the discussion because A) I don't really have the knowledge or the experience to back up any of my critiques and B) I felt that there were pros here who could shed some light on the topic at hand....which is the reason I posted it here to begin with.

Also, the inflammatory title is the title that was given in the original article; I didn't work that up on my own. Perhaps I should have put some quotation marks around it or something...sorry for that.

I get where sone_one is coming from with the core part of his/her argument, but I don't know if it really applies in this case. If I had written/posted my own original argument against a non-public piece of art, and then proceeded to trash it then I think you'd be 100% valid in your criticisms.

Oh well, good discussion everyone.

BTW: I really like the eyes in this portrait. It's what my eyes were initially drawn to. I did get a sense of a "lack of life" from the painting as a whole, but it's WAY better than anything I could ever do!

[Arshes Nei]

Sometimes you need to read up on mediocrity

[arenhaus]

Oh for pete's sake, please knock it off. It's gotten ridiculous long ago.

1) i dont like the thought of my artwork beeing posted anywhere for crit without me knowing, without chance to react, explain, whatever. fortunately noone cares enough .

Then don't accept any jobs that involve publishing your work in any form. Problem solved. In fact, to be safe, don't show your work to anyone to avoid people having opinions about it.

You are projecting your own insecurities on whoever painted this portrait. That's silly. They accepted the job, knowing that it will put their work on display in wide circulation, and all that that entails. Including public discussion.

2) its easy to mock someones effort without the need to back it up, or expertise on situational factors or skill... without putting your money where your mouth is, so to say.

There are plenty of competent people on these forums who have the requisite expertise, professionals and some amateurs too. In addition, people here are not judging an abstract "effort", they are evaluating the result. How much effort the artist invested into a picture is absolutely irrelevant to the result. (You could technically see lack of effort, if any, relative to other works by the same artist, but in a single picture you simply cannot detect the amount of effort spent.)

3) i think its cowardly to pull someones else artwork out for discussion, rather than your own.

The work is published. That makes it automatically open to public opinion and public discussion. No amount of you attempting to shut everyone's mouth up is going to change that simple convention. Sorry.

Now, please, let the case rest.

P.S. It comes to my mind that such things could take more public scrutiny, not less. If enough competent people openly criticize the quality of an official celebrity portrait like this one, it might make people (both the commissioners and the public) more aware of what competent work is and what level of quality should be expected from it.

[Benedikt]

@sone_one;
To be honest, I find this quite amusing. To me, you've got it backwards- the right attitude but in the wrong situation.
I think qualities like humility, a friendly and not dismissive tone of voice and a general rule of not being harsh when it does not accomplish anything are very important- but only if the artist is part of the discussion. Because if they are, they have entered into a kind of relationship that merits respect. If you show some of your work and invite people to critize it, you have a damn right to be treated well. Fellow artists know that critiques can easily be discouraging, especially for the younger ones or people who're just starting out. It goes without saying that you don't tell someone who has exposed their work to you point blank that they suck.
Now, with a public piece like this portrait and the artist absent from the discussion, I don't think those rules apply anymore. The artist could care less what we write about their work, there's a pretty slim chance they'll ever be aware of it, so no restrictions of politeness etc. need to be observed because no one can get hurt.

Hope that makes sense.

[sone_one]

@arenhaus...

so basically you come here, at a point, where the argument has already cooled of, rehashing points that have already been brought up, putting words and intentions in my mouth i already explicitly said are not true earlier, just to tell me to let it rest?


@benedikt...

makes perfect sense. thank you.


what i said, been said going by a (as it turned out) wrong impression of intentions, in a mood where i shouldnt have posted anything to begin with, and in a way which may come off as dismissive and offensive. i apologize to those who were hurt by it.

do i regret it? hell no! i actually enjoyed the argument that followed (special thanks to jeff and bcarman for playing), and learned a few things i wouldnt have otherwise. the bruises will heal in no time .


ps: @bill618 if you want to have that challenge, please send me your proposal.

[bcarman]

By the way sone one, I lived in Salzburg for 8 months but missed out on Vienna. Heard that I missed out on the best?