Dear Brian Holdsworth, happy Thursday!
My name is Ptony, your friendly Catholic vlogger
This is a response to the video you published
called, "Why Modern Art Is so Bad" published
on the 29th of September
I watched your video many times because it
intrigued me
Also I disagreed with parts of it
That's why I'm responding
I'm trying to boil down your video to just
two major points that you made to provide
context for this video
First point is: Art is more than self-expressionism
Here here!
Totally agree with that
Right on and I love how you argued for that
Second point: Good art is judged based on
how much it inspires
That of course prompts the question, What
makes art inspirational?
And that's tricky
Based on the examples of your video, my takeaway
was that
The major factor that makes one piece of art
inspirational and another not is that
The inspirational piece of art is something
that demonstrates a great deal of skill
I draw that conclusion most especially based
on your example of looking at a piece of art
and asking ourselves a question,
"Why is this here?
I mean I could've done this"
I glean from that that a huge part of judging
art in your opinion stems from the artist's
ability
Has he done something that other humans can't?
What is his technical prowess?
And I disagree with that standard
Hence this video
I want to tell the story of this lovely gentleman
named Van Megeeran
Van Megeeren is from the early 1900s
He lived through World War II
And there are Nazis in this story
Growing up he went to art school and he was
very very talented and got a lot of praise
from professors and mentors and the people
that teach in an art school
He just excelled at all of the art stuff and
learned quickly and had a natural knack for
things
So coming out of art school he became a professional
artist
And he had a little success but not much
One exemplary quote: an art critic at the
time in a review wrote about him,
"He has every virtue except originality"
Van Megeeren got angry that the art critics
didn't like his work and said some very nasty
things and lost a lot of friends
And then he decided to go into forging stuff
Specifically he chose this artist named Vermeer
who's back from the 1600's
And decided to make paintings and pretend
that they came from this guy Vermeer
And he pulled it off
Which was super exciting for the art world
in general because they didn't know that these
were fake Vermeers
All the knew was all of a sudden there were
all these Vermeers that were popping out into
the art world that nobody had seen before
And this filled a hole in the heart of a lot
art enthusiasts because Vermeer is a painter
that doesn't have many paintings
He's really good but there just aren't that
many paintings from him
Eventually though Megeeren was found out
See Van Megeeren sold his long lost Vermeers
to a variety of people
One of those people was a Nazi
So Van Megeeren got in a lot of trouble for
that because he was selling historical art
to a Nazi
And that counted as treason and such
So Van Megeeren had to prove that, "No, these
aren't actually Vermeers, they're my own art
"So it was fine for me to sell it to a Nazi"
Very very exciting stuff
Back to the main timeline
Van Megeeren had been found out
His paintings were not actually Vermeers,
they were forgeries
So what happened to the value of all these
paintings he had pretended were Vermeers and
suddenly everyone knew they were forgeries?
Um....
They actually became more valuable
Which is interesting
Van Megeeren became a celebrated figure because
he had conned a Nazi and that always wins
brownie points
And what's more, Van Megeeren was celebrated
for his ability to paint so much like Vermeer
that people couldn't tell the difference
And what's more, Van Megeeren was able to
develop a technique that made his paintings
that were painted last week look like they
were painted from 300 years ago
I love this story because there's so much
nuance and I just love nuance
But my question is, does the theory that we
should judge art based on how much it inspires
- and by inspire, talking about technical
prowess and skill level -
Does that adequately explain Van Megeeren's
story?
Like look at his life
Van Megeeren started off being very highly
praised in art school for his skill level
and for his ability to learn new skills so
quickly
But when he goes professional suddenly his
skills aren't enough and the art critics aren't
happy
And even when we look back we're not impressed
enough by his art in his time period to really
talk about it anymore
But then Van Megeeren starts making things
that look like they were made by another artist
who is already celebrated
And suddenly his work is worth something
And then finally when he's found out all of
the value of all of his works change suddenly
And he's celebrated for his groundbreaking
skills as a forger
As an aside is he actually celebrated as an
artist?
Or is he celebrated as a forger?
Does forgery count as a work of art?
I don't know
Or is it its own discipline?
Questions
I'm not satisfied with the skill theory so
I want to propose an alternate theory
And this will put us on equal footing because
then you have a theory that I can poke holes
in and I'll have a theory that you can poke
holes in
It'll be a great time
It'll be nice
So let's pretend for a second that the history
of art is like a grand conversation that's
been going on since art started
Like thousands of years
And in this grand conversation of art, what
are the works of art that we celebrate?
And that we remember?
And that we study and talk about?
What works of art are those?
What do they have in common?
They all offer insight
Every work of art that's celebrated and that
we remember and is a classic, considered a
classic...
They all offer insight
Just like comments in a regular conversation
that offer insight are the comments that we
remember and the comments that we call especially
good comments
Is insight as vague of a term as inspiration?
Perhaps
But two things that I want to draw out of
the word insight is
There's an element of novelty
And there's an element of depth
Or an element of truth or beauty or something
that resonates with what the conversation
is about
There's an element of resonating
Art theories are hard
Obviously this theory needs some work
I recognize that
But I like my theory of art because it explains
some things that I haven't seen other theories
explain
For example, Van Megeeren was a very skilled
painter
But if it wasn't for his adventures in the
world of forgery we could very well have forgotten
about him
Was that a lucky break?
Maybe?
It's interesting to compare Van Megeeren to
loads of other artists that are very very
skilled but haven't caught that lucky break
and are simply forgotten
If we judge art fundamentally based on skill
level, it's very difficult to explain why
that happens
But as I see it, we remember Van Megeeren
because he offered us insights into the world
of forgery
And because that element of insight is there
his work has value
How does this all apply to modern art?
This video is getting too long, I'm not going
to go there
The main point of this video is not so much
talking about what modern art is good and
what is not
I wanted to talk about fundamental judging
criteria for art
And I did that so this is where I say good-bye
I guess
God bless and ciao!
Well that was fun!
Alright!
So this is the first in a brand new type of
video that I want to try experimenting with:
Response videos
You'll always be able to recognize when I'm
making a response video because the title
will be "Dear So-and-So..."
And then you can click on it
I think there's a lot of potential for this
kind of video because I think that there should
be a space on the internet for constructive
dialogue about differing opinions
Normally when we think about differing opinions
on the internet..
Words that jump into my mind are "trolls"
and "flame wars" and "hate" and "antagonism"
Those are nice
I'm hoping that this response video doesn't
come across like that at all
Especially because I would be honored if any
of my viewers went over and checked out Brian
Holdsworth's channel
Brian makes great videos
I'm subscribed to him, I have notification
turned on for his channel
So of course I'm going to leave a link to
his channel in general and to this particular
video that I responded to down in the description
box down below
You should check him out, he's great
Also since this "Dear So-and-So" series is
just starting off, give me some feedback
Let me know what you think of the idea and
if this particular video worked or not
That'd be great
There's a comment section down below
So there
Alright I'm going to go
Bye!
