Two Dozen Hay Wains, Please
A sort of browny-orangey painting that looks a bit like autumn leaves. That's the kind of thing you get in all those Premier Travel Inn Lodge kind of places. It's art, Jim, but not as we know it. It's a kind of Corporate Art that offends nobody. It pleases nobody either, mind. Nobody can be bothered to complain: yet nobody rushes into reception and says "I must have a painting just like the one on my wall in Room 212! Where can I buy one?"
One step up from that is where companies want real paintings on their walls, to show they're successful and have Good Taste. But they don't want real real paintings. They don't want an artist painting what he or she wants to paint, to express his or her feelings about the world. What they want are paintings done in oils, because they think that's Proper; but they also want them done to match the sofas in reception.
What they want is a safe choice - the kind of painting that a lot of people will like.
So they get an interior designer to provide a unified "look" to it all: and the designer employs a company such as Perfect Circle.
This company employs artists - and they do appear to be proper, trained artists - to paint lookalike works to order. Usually the styles that they're copying are inoffensive Monet or Rembrandts, slightly different from the originals, and aged to look authentic.
It's not illegal of course - they're not trying to pass them off as the real thing and they're selling them for just a couple of hundred quid each.
“It has got three clumps of trees, which is slightly different to the original. We’re re-inventing something but basing it on an established, beautiful work.”
So says Nichol Wheatley, the boss of it all.
He also argues that his studio's rather like the studios of the Renaissance, where you'd get a bunch of apprentices doing, say, a big chunk of blue sky, until you graduated to be Top Artist and then you'd get to paint, say, the angels' hands and feet, which are jolly tricky.
He makes the point that he visited a hotel where there were Nice biscuits glued to a bit of card and this was the artwork on the wall: how could this be intrinsically superior to his lookalike works which are, after all, painted by people with considerable artistic skill?
Good point, Nichol. It's just that there's something about the idea of copying and adapting famous artists' work that I really don't like.
Yes, I agree: much modern art is pretentious rubbish. But I've been to quite a lot of exhibitions of paintings and it always seems to me that the ones painted with the idea behind them of "this will sell well" are never going to be interesting. They may be quite pretty, as an extension of the wallpaper, but you wouldn't want to look at them twice.
I wish that big hotel chains would put their money where their mouth is. They seem to think that people want art on the walls - well, they should support real artists and buy real paintings. Of course, it would cost more - but I think it would be a good use of their profits. I'd be interested to see what paintings Nichol Wheatley has on his own wall at home. Ironically, I bet they're not the ones from his factory-studio and I also bet that if you gave him a budget he could come up with some that are both interesting and that you wouldn't mind sharing your sleeping quarters with.
Because Nichol Wheatley has got one very valid point. Art schools don't teach people how to paint any more. (If you know differently, please tell me - but I do know people who've been to art school recently and say this).
So the nineteen-year-old apprentice says:
“I earn a wage as the studio dogsbody but once a week I’ll have an afternoon with Nichol learning craft with the pencil, charcoal, paint, acrylic and oils. I’ll learn a new trade over the course of three or four years and I am thoroughly enjoying it.”
Because at the bottom of Art is the actual craft of doing it. And if we think that there are short-cuts to great art - that it can happen without hours of graft - then what we'll end up with is King's New Clothes art: people standing around admiring something just because it's by someone who's famous, and not daring to say that it's rubbish because it's just sold for a million quid.
Oh! I think we're there already.
One step up from that is where companies want real paintings on their walls, to show they're successful and have Good Taste. But they don't want real real paintings. They don't want an artist painting what he or she wants to paint, to express his or her feelings about the world. What they want are paintings done in oils, because they think that's Proper; but they also want them done to match the sofas in reception.
What they want is a safe choice - the kind of painting that a lot of people will like.
So they get an interior designer to provide a unified "look" to it all: and the designer employs a company such as Perfect Circle.
This company employs artists - and they do appear to be proper, trained artists - to paint lookalike works to order. Usually the styles that they're copying are inoffensive Monet or Rembrandts, slightly different from the originals, and aged to look authentic.
It's not illegal of course - they're not trying to pass them off as the real thing and they're selling them for just a couple of hundred quid each.
“It has got three clumps of trees, which is slightly different to the original. We’re re-inventing something but basing it on an established, beautiful work.”
So says Nichol Wheatley, the boss of it all.
He also argues that his studio's rather like the studios of the Renaissance, where you'd get a bunch of apprentices doing, say, a big chunk of blue sky, until you graduated to be Top Artist and then you'd get to paint, say, the angels' hands and feet, which are jolly tricky.
He makes the point that he visited a hotel where there were Nice biscuits glued to a bit of card and this was the artwork on the wall: how could this be intrinsically superior to his lookalike works which are, after all, painted by people with considerable artistic skill?
Good point, Nichol. It's just that there's something about the idea of copying and adapting famous artists' work that I really don't like.
Yes, I agree: much modern art is pretentious rubbish. But I've been to quite a lot of exhibitions of paintings and it always seems to me that the ones painted with the idea behind them of "this will sell well" are never going to be interesting. They may be quite pretty, as an extension of the wallpaper, but you wouldn't want to look at them twice.
I wish that big hotel chains would put their money where their mouth is. They seem to think that people want art on the walls - well, they should support real artists and buy real paintings. Of course, it would cost more - but I think it would be a good use of their profits. I'd be interested to see what paintings Nichol Wheatley has on his own wall at home. Ironically, I bet they're not the ones from his factory-studio and I also bet that if you gave him a budget he could come up with some that are both interesting and that you wouldn't mind sharing your sleeping quarters with.
Because Nichol Wheatley has got one very valid point. Art schools don't teach people how to paint any more. (If you know differently, please tell me - but I do know people who've been to art school recently and say this).
So the nineteen-year-old apprentice says:
“I earn a wage as the studio dogsbody but once a week I’ll have an afternoon with Nichol learning craft with the pencil, charcoal, paint, acrylic and oils. I’ll learn a new trade over the course of three or four years and I am thoroughly enjoying it.”
Because at the bottom of Art is the actual craft of doing it. And if we think that there are short-cuts to great art - that it can happen without hours of graft - then what we'll end up with is King's New Clothes art: people standing around admiring something just because it's by someone who's famous, and not daring to say that it's rubbish because it's just sold for a million quid.
Oh! I think we're there already.
posted by Daphne at 5:46 pm
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