Jack Hoggan, aka Jack Vettriano has died aged 73. I was almost entirely unmoved by this newsbite, however the sunny forecast universally advertised for today did not materialise (fuming!) and I find myself indoors and plodding through the morass of the internet and happened to mention this second rate artist and some thoughts on a facebook (History of Art) group. Some people got offended and I ended up looking up the word kitsch in wikipedia. The thing about kitsch is, it is easy to spot but hard to define. Then I found this quote on Wikipedia, attributed to Walter Benjamin nearly a hundred years ago who suggested kitsch "offers instantaneous emotional gratification without intellectual effort". Nailed it! And Vettriano.
Kitsch can be fun, ironic, self-aware and cheerful. But it can also be cheesy, sickly, trashy and low-brow. Artists in this category I admire: Norman Rockwell who had an amazing ability as an illustrator and painter. Jeff Koons for his bizarro originality in producing china-wear of Michael Jackson and Bubbles - who else has gone down that road or anything like it? Less keen on Dogs Playing Poker by Coolidge and even less so on anything by Thomas Kinkade the American purveyor of saccharine bucolic landscapes.
To be fair Vettriano probably wasn't aspiring to intellectual effort. He was just painting what pleased himself which is absolutely fine. His film noir-ish efforts speak of a time possibly between 1930 and 1950 when women wore stockings and high heels and men had slicked back hair and dressed in suits to walk on beaches. They remind me of badly painted book jackets and posters for pulp films that feature unreconstructed men, liquor and fast women. They struck a chord with the masses, but alas, not the critics.
Are they badly painted? Yes! Just look at the hands and faces. Vettriano often worked from photos but regularly fudged the hands and faces because he didn't study anatomy or give a hoot about it. Look at his famous Singing Butler at the top of the page. All the hands are too small and dreadfully painted and the faces are mostly turned so we can't see them - he is shite at painting the difficult bits. Though better at beaches. These are simplistic works, much like uncaptioned cartoons, hinting at a narrative rich in sentiment and yearning. Although I doubt the story in most cases is much more sophisticated than "me want ficky-ficky". Preferably with a woman wearing the full Ann Summers catalogue.
That said, his sales figure are not to be laughed at. Although his originals do not always sell well or hold their value, the prints and posters sell like hotcakes and he was the best selling living UK artist selling such stuff. The great unwashed really love his art. Probably because it is accessible and revels in a fetishistic nostalgia for a bygone age with more than a whiff of sex and cheap aftershave. He was allegedly turning over half a million annually (says the Guardian) shifting prints. Considering his background - raised in eyewatering poverty in Methil - you have to tip your fedora to the distance he has come. However his last ambition - to be recognised by the establishment - was never accomplished. Although he got an OBE and had fans and buyers among the rich and famous, the art brigade, the cognoscenti, universally gave him the thumbs down.
I am not going to put all of their damning crits of him here - you can google them. Or even find more than a few on his wikipedia entry. (However...) The Telegraph called him the Jeffrey Archer of the art world which I think is fair, if stinging. Both are men who made a lot of hard cash from their work, shifting quantity rather than quality. A Guardian critic shot him down thus: "Vettriano fixes on fetishitic, stylish objects and paints them with a slick, empty panache". Ouch! Just that one word 'empty' turning a compliment into a condemnation.
I quite enjoy seeing his success and failure held up side by side. You have to admire someone who has pushed through with their vision of being the artist they wanted to be. (I ended up a painter and decorator because I didn't have that determination.) It is not an easy field to succeed in, here in the UK. The boy done good. Especially making a fuck-ton of money from such a middling ability. [That said, two others immediately spring to mind - Banksy and Tracey Emin. The latter somehow (inexplicably) the doyenne of the establishment, while Banksy is more like Vettriano, a people's hero, and less likely to be gathered into the inner circle, or remembered for adding nuance to our culture.]
So there are aspects of Vettriano's work that are admirable, although when I see his paintings I can't overlook the bad bits (hands and faces generally) which jump out like sore thumbs. I do like the limited palette he often uses, and if one were being generous you could flag up Edward Hopper as being an artist who (far more successfully in my opinion) strives for the same atmosphere of melancholy and longing that JV was often attempting.
In 2 of the three pictures of JV here he is holding a cigarette. (Although he may possibly have one in the pocketed hand of the other photo!) I find this a telling trope - they appeared regularly in his paintings and considerably more frequently in his real life. Clearly he thinks they are cool. Now cigarettes are fine when you are under 30 but over that age they are just stupid and make a nice house smell foul, not to mention lungs, hair and clothes. And they make you die in your early 70s. Only an ass-hat smokes into their 50s and 60s. (To mention nothing of his cocaine and alcohol addictions.)
John Byrne, a far better artist than Vettriano was still smoking into his 80s and frankly it is surprising he got that far, with a roll up stuck in his jaundiced ghostly face. Another ass-hat (health-wise). Although a pretty fine artist at the height of his powers. I think JV's relationship with cigarettes underlined his shortfall. He somehow imagined they were stylish and alluring, smart and desirable, when really they are just unhealthy, old-fashioned and a bit seedy.
photos used without permission, sorry!
I quite enjoy seeing his success and failure held up side by side. You have to admire someone who has pushed through with their vision of being the artist they wanted to be. (I ended up a painter and decorator because I didn't have that determination.) It is not an easy field to succeed in, here in the UK. The boy done good. Especially making a fuck-ton of money from such a middling ability. [That said, two others immediately spring to mind - Banksy and Tracey Emin. The latter somehow (inexplicably) the doyenne of the establishment, while Banksy is more like Vettriano, a people's hero, and less likely to be gathered into the inner circle, or remembered for adding nuance to our culture.]
So there are aspects of Vettriano's work that are admirable, although when I see his paintings I can't overlook the bad bits (hands and faces generally) which jump out like sore thumbs. I do like the limited palette he often uses, and if one were being generous you could flag up Edward Hopper as being an artist who (far more successfully in my opinion) strives for the same atmosphere of melancholy and longing that JV was often attempting.
In 2 of the three pictures of JV here he is holding a cigarette. (Although he may possibly have one in the pocketed hand of the other photo!) I find this a telling trope - they appeared regularly in his paintings and considerably more frequently in his real life. Clearly he thinks they are cool. Now cigarettes are fine when you are under 30 but over that age they are just stupid and make a nice house smell foul, not to mention lungs, hair and clothes. And they make you die in your early 70s. Only an ass-hat smokes into their 50s and 60s. (To mention nothing of his cocaine and alcohol addictions.)
John Byrne, a far better artist than Vettriano was still smoking into his 80s and frankly it is surprising he got that far, with a roll up stuck in his jaundiced ghostly face. Another ass-hat (health-wise). Although a pretty fine artist at the height of his powers. I think JV's relationship with cigarettes underlined his shortfall. He somehow imagined they were stylish and alluring, smart and desirable, when really they are just unhealthy, old-fashioned and a bit seedy.
photos used without permission, sorry!
No comments:
Post a Comment