"TC" <do-not-reply@i-do get-enough-spam-already-2498.com> wrote:
> >a "professional appreciators of art" is just a salesman.  The people who
> >buy are
> > investors.  You and I are true art appreciators.
>
> You are right, but I am speaking of art-museums, too. Here in Europe most
> museums are in possession of the state - the people working and teaching
> there do not win or lose by their opinion of paintings. Still, their
> opinions do shift for invalid reasons. If you praise a picture for muted
> colours, you should not praise the very same picture later for vibrant
> ones - the exact opposite.

yes.

> The same goes for forgeries. In Berlin's national gallery of arts they have
> a painting called "Man with golden Helmet", a painting praised as a
> masterpiece of Rembrandt, a painting "embodying the style of baroque", THE
> piece of pride of the whole gallery.
>
> After highly specialized research involving x-rays and more it was shown
> that the painting was not painted by Rembrandt himself, but by an unknown
> pupil of Rembrandt. And, lo and behold, the famous painting was not so good
> anymore, and they wanted to remove it from the collection.
>
> Well - the painting was old and of the period, done within Rembrandt's
> workshop. Either it always looked good and was and is still a masterpiece or
> it always did not look good and was never a masterpiece at all. It should
> not matter who actually painted the thing - the artistic merit should either
> have been there or not, regardless of the painter. All else has nothing to
> do with art itself.

yes.  It is a genuine representative of the period after all.

> Same goes for forgeries: if a forgery is so good it cannot be distinguished
> by a visual inspection of professionals, the result is as good or bad as the
> original. When a forgery is so good that it has been exhibited in a museum,
> it should not matter if it is "genuine" or not - the picture should speak
> for itself.

Yes, but these guys are into the cult of personality, a weakness of western
culture.  The lone artist as a romantic hero.

Most art nowadays comes from the artistic skillset of teams of hundreds of
people, like Pixar movies or Nintendo games.  Still we insist that only Andrew
Staton or Shigeru Miyamoto receive the praises in place of the whole team.  I'm
sure it was the same for Michaelangelo and company.  A master coordinating and
many pupils assisting and giving their personal input to the whole.

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