{"id":199,"date":"2005-10-06T14:55:00","date_gmt":"2005-10-06T21:55:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/art-for-a-change.com\/blog\/?p=199"},"modified":"2022-10-13T14:45:18","modified_gmt":"2022-10-13T21:45:18","slug":"reign-of-mediocrity","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/art-for-a-change.com\/blog\/2005\/10\/reign-of-mediocrity.html","title":{"rendered":"The Reign of Mediocrity"},"content":{"rendered":"

Jack Vettriano. You\u2019ve seen prints of his paintings everywhere, and they outsell reproductions of artworks by Van Gogh, Monet and Picasso. I first saw reproductions of Vettriano\u2019s paintings when I visited a popular store here in Los Angeles that sells home decor items, and my immediate response was a disapproving one.<\/p>\n

The artworks are saccharine and “romantic” renditions of handsome couples frolicking on the beach, or otherwise engaged in flirtatious behavior in dreamy wistful settings. Vettriano\u2019s “fine art” images have appeared on umbrellas, posters, cards and t-shirts, bringing in huge annual royalties.<\/p>\n

Jack Nicholson, Madonna and a gaggle of other celebrities own original paintings by him, and last year Sotheby\u2019s in Scotland sold 40 of his paintings for \u00a32.5m ($4,435,693.) Yet museums and major galleries will have nothing to do with him and critics shun him… for good reason.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s been discovered that the millionaire artist copied photographs for his cloying paintings<\/a> from an inexpensive off-the-shelf art reference book, The Illustrator\u2019s Figure Reference Manual<\/em>. The now out of print 1987 reference manual provided hundreds of black and white images of models photographed in a variety of poses. Vettriano clearly copied photos from the guidebook to create the characters for his famous paintings.<\/p>\n

Individual models from various sections of the instruction book were also recombined and brought together in a number of Vettriano\u2019s canvases. The central figures in his most famous painting, Singing Butler<\/em> (which sold for \u00a3750,000 – $1,334,860 at Sotheby\u2019s in 2004) were plainly lifted from the “waltz section” of the manual.<\/p>\n

\"banal,
A page from the reference manual, and Vettriano’s “Singing Butler.”<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Long before knowing about Vettriano\u2019s pathetic use of models from a common reference manual, I was disparaging of his work, but for reasons that had little to do with technical matters.<\/p>\n

What still irks me more than anything else about Vettriano\u2019s paintings is the social stratification depicted in his carefully constructed tableaus. They are hailed by admirers as the ultimate fantasy paintings where glamorous couples in love dance with each other without a care in the world, all against the backdrop of some posh or enchanting setting.<\/p>\n

However, the viewer is always expected to relate to the well-dressed affluent couples in the paintings, and never the ever present servants who wait on them hand and foot.<\/p>\n

Call it “Socialist Realism” in reverse<\/em>, or “Capitalist Realism” if you want. The attendants in Vettriano\u2019s works are mere set dressing, superfluous to the painting\u2019s narrative except to indicate the wealth of the central figures. My father worked hard as a ma\u00eetre d\u2019 in the exclusive restaurants of Los Angeles, toiling at double shifts and coming home exhausted each and every day. So when I look at the subservient and docile servants in Vettriano\u2019s paintings, it’s not an escapist fantasy that I see.<\/p>\n

Defenders of Vettriano note that artists have always worked from a variety of reference materials, including photographs taken by others. What makes this situation different is that a single source of soulless commercially available photos were consistently plagiarized to produce what has now become a rather expensive and world renown set of artworks… banal, mechanical and hackneyed as they might be.<\/p>\n

Practical observation coupled with real life experience forms the necessary basis for realism in art, and nothing else will do. Those who champion realism in painting must dismiss Vettriano\u2019s works if the reign of mediocrity in art is ever to be overthrown.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Jack Vettriano. You\u2019ve seen prints of his paintings everywhere, and they outsell reproductions of artworks by Van Gogh, Monet and Picasso. I first saw reproductions of Vettriano\u2019s paintings when I visited a popular store here in Los Angeles that sells home decor items, and my immediate response was a disapproving one. The artworks are saccharine and “romantic” renditions of handsome…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_kadence_starter_templates_imported_post":false,"_kad_post_transparent":"","_kad_post_title":"","_kad_post_layout":"","_kad_post_sidebar_id":"","_kad_post_content_style":"","_kad_post_vertical_padding":"","_kad_post_feature":"","_kad_post_feature_position":"","_kad_post_header":false,"_kad_post_footer":false,"_kad_post_classname":"","wds_primary_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[22],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-199","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/art-for-a-change.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/199","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/art-for-a-change.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/art-for-a-change.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/art-for-a-change.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/art-for-a-change.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=199"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/art-for-a-change.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/199\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/art-for-a-change.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=199"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/art-for-a-change.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=199"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/art-for-a-change.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=199"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}