The million dollar question

Last week I visited the Art Institute in Chicago, I came across some of the most beautiful paintings I have ever seen. They were a variety of paintings by Claude Monet, Vincent van Gogh, Pablo Picasso and Salvador Dali.



After reading Grazian’s theories about popular culture and what makes objects significantly more popular than others however, my perception of the paintings before taking those theories into consideration was completely different than what it was after I put that theory lens on.

Artists like these are legendary. Their works of art are sold for millions of dollars. A regular person may think that that’s due to the fact that they’re brilliant artists and they produce beautiful paintings. Thinking with a sociological mindset however, I know that that’s not true. A piece of art, any piece of art, is admitted into the pop-culture category based on its perceptions from the consumer. A work of art is considered an object of popular culture once it gets recognition, whether it was positive or negative.

A product is not the work of one person; these paintings are not just works of art from the artist. There's an entire production process that delivers these paintings from the artists canvas to our museums. There's a whole procedure that starts from the person buying that plain white piece, to the artists who paints, to his manager who sells it, to the producer that auctions it off to many different museums, and finally to the museum that displays it for us beautifully under the illuminating lights.

Why are these pieces of art considered magnificent million dollars works, while graffiti is considered vandalism? Graffiti can be beautifully genius sometimes. Who’s to say one is better than the other? Who defined one as professional and the other as amateur? One can put graffiti in a frame and call themselves artists. If only graffiti artists would go that production process.

Why is this considered vandalism?



While this is considered a million dollar piece of art?



What defines an objects status in society isn’t its quality, but its perception by the consumer. All art is a form of expression. They’re all equally culturally significant no matter how ridiculous or obscene one of them is thought to be. But when a certain producer wants to make a sale, they can change the objects image in the consumers’ minds. A splash of paint on a plain white canvas can be sold for ten million dollars, while a message about society or oppression expressed through graffiti is considered "garbage".

Impressionism and Deviance

Impressionism is the name of the first contemporary art movement, Led by The French artist Claude Monet (1840-1926). Since he was starting something new, breaking the folkway and norms of painting, traditional artists and the art community at that time considered him a deviant. 

This is an Image of the artist compared to a portrait of a traditional artist or (academic): 

And this is the second Portrait of the French Master Jacques louis David, the artist I picked in my previous Blog.

We can see the loose and clear brush strokes in Monet’s work, unlike David whose brush strokes are very controlled and hidden. Monet did not even bother covering the entire canvas with colors; on the other hand David does not have any empty spot on his canvas without a color. And there are so many other differences between the two portraits that could be easily noticed just by looking at them.  

Ironically, one of Monet’s teachers was David’s student.

Monet and his friends and followers tended to paint outdoor, which is something unusual for traditional artists. Monet focused on painting landscapes directly through observation; he did not like the traditional subject matters because to him it’s just a blind copying of the old masters.

Regardless the Impressionists’ creativity and innovation they got negatively sanctioned, especially by the French Academy of Fine Arts, the formal Organization of art at that time in Paris. The academy disallowed Monet and his fellows from exhibiting their works in the Salon, which is an art exhibition organized by the Academy.  Therefore, he and his fellows organized their own art exhibition somewhere else. In the beginning, their work received a lot of criticism and they did not have a lot of visitors. This could be considered as an informal sanction, since it is a disapproval without any kind of written rules.

However, it was just a matter of time. Impressionism was the spark that lit the fire, because other new movements followed it quickly; breaking from the traditions and looking for the new to explore.

In a sociological point of view, Monet was a deviant who created a sub culture of deviants who shared the same principles as him. He challenged the norms and the academy, the formal organization of art. As a result, he and his fellows got negatively sanctioned and perhaps Falsely accused. But Impressionism got accepted later and got followed by other new and innovative movements. And Monet became famous and rich until his death.

Here are some paintings by Monet just to get an idea about his method of painting. 

The following link is for a video about Monet Impressionism, it is quit long but if you like painting you are gonna like it.  

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T0gXW0LMGCs  

And for more Information about the artist here is the following link: 

http://www.claudemonetgallery.org/