[jiggliemon]

There’s a lot to unpack here. But Picasso wasn’t a hack. Overrated, sure. But he approached his subject matter and technique with as much focus and detail as any artist that came before him. You aren’t required to appreciate his contribution to the artistic conversation; but calling him a hack is dismissive and purposely neglectful of his substantial impact.

Picasso did what he did, and created what he created because of photography. In a world where capturing likeness, and form was basically free - what do you do with painting? Certainly not attempt to capture likeness and form - perhaps you make an Ernest attempt to capture or project the emotional response of form and subject. Picasso’s facial structure was modeled after African war masks, which were at the time ignored by the art world. And his composition and color and repetition were inspired by the Japanese print makers. A lot of the art from that era was inspired by what was coming out of Japan at that time. The product of Picasso was a mashup of influences, like all impactful art.

The backlash against likeness and form was certain way before Picasso. But the fact that he rode that style to such fame is what made the art world dramatically over correct so drastically.

[ayngg]

At the time of the shift away from traditional fine art, there was a big shift in how art was marketed and style itself probably did not have as much influence as people think.

Academy art was very expensive because it took a long time to make (so artists only made a hand full of work), and there were fewer artists at that level because it took so much training to get to the level of a Bouguereau or Sargent. Up until this point the people buying this kind of art were wealthy or powerful enough to afford it.

At the turn of the century, there was an increased demand of art from the new burgeoning middle class, however there simply was not enough supply, and it was all expensive academy art. Because of this, art dealers were incentivized to promote impressionists because they were already academy rejects so they were outsiders with chips on their shoulders, and the work they did was by design easier and quicker to make, so they were able to produce way more art that dealers could sell to the middle class who were less discerning than the traditional art world.

The new mass market ended up being far more profitable for dealers, the demographic so much larger, that it really just drove what kind of art was created and marketed afterwards. Bouguereau died at 80 and made less than a thousand works over his lifetime, Picasso made tens of thousands. Picasso's true genius is in his ability to produce and market his works.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9G8UfISpb0I