Picasso's paintings are, to me, very emotionally expressive. That (again, to me) is more important than how "realistic" a painting is.
I've seen a bazillion highly realistic paintings that are so emotionally flat. The technique in them can be impressive, but otherwise they tend to be both unimaginative and emotionally hollow.
Even more extreme than Picasso in the "it takes no skill to make this" (apprently) but conveying real feeling is Jackson Pollock.
Lots of people will look at Picasso and Pollock and say "my 5 year old kid could do this" -- and there's something to that, as children's art tends to be more fresh and expressive than art made by trained adults -- but kids don't do either (unless they've seen and try to emulate Picasso or Pollock). Neither do adults.
It took Picasso and Pollock to come up with art like that. Same with Malevich's Black Square and Duchamp's Fountain, which are also about as simple as art gets, but things like that weren't considered art before, and it took these artists to make us look at the world in a different way and stretch the boundary of what art could be.
John Cage's work with randomness in music is yet another good example. His compositions could sound awful or boring, and I personally don't like them -- but why must music be something that we like? Can't we appreciate and value music that isn't pleasing?
The paintings of Francis Bacon and Goya are similar -- pretty "ugly" stuff.. but to me they speak the truth about the ugly/horrible side of life that is valuable to look at.
At their best, such artists open our eyes and ears to the world around us and let us see it in a fresh way that we might not have appreciated before.
Only if you think appreciation and value is synonymous with what is pleasant. I don't.
Malevich's Black Square is not pleasing to me, but I value and appreciate it for expanding the boundaries of art. Same with John Cage's music. What's so oxymoronic about that?
I've seen a bazillion highly realistic paintings that are so emotionally flat. The technique in them can be impressive, but otherwise they tend to be both unimaginative and emotionally hollow.
Even more extreme than Picasso in the "it takes no skill to make this" (apprently) but conveying real feeling is Jackson Pollock.
Lots of people will look at Picasso and Pollock and say "my 5 year old kid could do this" -- and there's something to that, as children's art tends to be more fresh and expressive than art made by trained adults -- but kids don't do either (unless they've seen and try to emulate Picasso or Pollock). Neither do adults.
It took Picasso and Pollock to come up with art like that. Same with Malevich's Black Square and Duchamp's Fountain, which are also about as simple as art gets, but things like that weren't considered art before, and it took these artists to make us look at the world in a different way and stretch the boundary of what art could be.
John Cage's work with randomness in music is yet another good example. His compositions could sound awful or boring, and I personally don't like them -- but why must music be something that we like? Can't we appreciate and value music that isn't pleasing?
The paintings of Francis Bacon and Goya are similar -- pretty "ugly" stuff.. but to me they speak the truth about the ugly/horrible side of life that is valuable to look at.
At their best, such artists open our eyes and ears to the world around us and let us see it in a fresh way that we might not have appreciated before.