"I can do that too" when looking at art in museums

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I’m highly educated and even studied the humanities more than the average person I come across.

There’s a lot of art and a lot of art commentary that is absolutely vapid. The people who fawn over this subculture and create an air of importance and prestige around this art should be ridiculed more than they are.

I like art, I like modern art, and I appreciate a wide array of art that may not be everyone’s cup of tea. But there has to be a line drawn somewhere and the breathless descriptions of the genius of a paint splatter or a black line across a canvas deserve nothing. It is a grift.

Where have you seen/heard this? (other than parodies of the art world)

See, I think this is where it’s revealing who is actually informed and who is not. That you’ve never encountered this just means you haven’t interacted with the “right” people.

The entire contemporary art world is so severely jargonized, their lexicon of critique so esoteric, and access so limited - that in fact, the value in some of these absurdly simple pieces is that it exists and has been accepted as valuable by this “secret” world. They place a high value on the normies and plebes not getting it. That is the point.

Which makes them unintentionally satirical and an art form in and of themselves. It’s meta.

But, art should be accessible to a broad set of people, it doesn’t meant it must be accepted or appreciated by “everyone” but when you draw a line on a canvas and then build an esoteric insular technical world around it to make it “special” and valuable it’s all just a farce and a grift.

And no one is forcing you to read those things or participate in the contemporary art world that is like that. Stop reading and looking at things that you hate. Go to galleries and museums showing art you do like. Start your own online blog or journal about art. Buy contemporary art you like. That's what everyone should do.

I’m not the PP but I think this idea that artists should never face negative commentary is so absurd. Why should the PP stop looking at art she hates? So the feelings of artists are never hurt? So that an artist never has to accept that his or her art might not be universally praised?

This toxic positivity is so pervasive nowadays and I think we are as a society so much weaker for it.

Because it's bothering her and making her cranky. I dunno. Maybe the artist she hates intend for that reaction, so by all means, go on and look and complain!

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I’m highly educated and even studied the humanities more than the average person I come across.

There’s a lot of art and a lot of art commentary that is absolutely vapid. The people who fawn over this subculture and create an air of importance and prestige around this art should be ridiculed more than they are.

I like art, I like modern art, and I appreciate a wide array of art that may not be everyone’s cup of tea. But there has to be a line drawn somewhere and the breathless descriptions of the genius of a paint splatter or a black line across a canvas deserve nothing. It is a grift.

Where have you seen/heard this? (other than parodies of the art world)

Glenstone has several rooms right now filled with nothing but colored panels. A canvas painted red, another black, another green, etc. They're just titled that too, "red panel." Very little detail on what it's supposed to mean and no there isn't texture or anything besides just the application of paint on canvas. It's worth checking out. I'm not generally skeptical and like modern art but this felt like a joke.

I had a friend who spent several years working at Glenstone. She reported a backstabbing, ultra-condescending culture among her colleagues. It shows in the way they display the artwork and the restrictions placed on the public.

Dp I can assure you the halls of Exxon or any other corportation are filled with backstabbing, ultra-condescending culture. It's what humans do best.

Ha ha - so true!

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I’m highly educated and even studied the humanities more than the average person I come across.

There’s a lot of art and a lot of art commentary that is absolutely vapid. The people who fawn over this subculture and create an air of importance and prestige around this art should be ridiculed more than they are.

I like art, I like modern art, and I appreciate a wide array of art that may not be everyone’s cup of tea. But there has to be a line drawn somewhere and the breathless descriptions of the genius of a paint splatter or a black line across a canvas deserve nothing. It is a grift.

Where have you seen/heard this? (other than parodies of the art world)

See, I think this is where it’s revealing who is actually informed and who is not. That you’ve never encountered this just means you haven’t interacted with the “right” people.

The entire contemporary art world is so severely jargonized, their lexicon of critique so esoteric, and access so limited - that in fact, the value in some of these absurdly simple pieces is that it exists and has been accepted as valuable by this “secret” world. They place a high value on the normies and plebes not getting it. That is the point.

Which makes them unintentionally satirical and an art form in and of themselves. It’s meta.

But, art should be accessible to a broad set of people, it doesn’t meant it must be accepted or appreciated by “everyone” but when you draw a line on a canvas and then build an esoteric insular technical world around it to make it “special” and valuable it’s all just a farce and a grift.

And no one is forcing you to read those things or participate in the contemporary art world that is like that. Stop reading and looking at things that you hate. Go to galleries and museums showing art you do like. Start your own online blog or journal about art. Buy contemporary art you like. That's what everyone should do.

I’m not the PP but I think this idea that artists should never face negative commentary is so absurd. Why should the PP stop looking at art she hates? So the feelings of artists are never hurt? So that an artist never has to accept that his or her art might not be universally praised?

This toxic positivity is so pervasive nowadays and I think we are as a society so much weaker for it.

Artists are rejected all the time. If your paintings do not sell...that's a real rejection. If no one wants to display them...rejection. Why should an artist care if you personally don't like it? You can't please everyone. Just like writers. Not everyone is going to like J.K. Rowling or Ron Chernow but, there is space for both!

I agree that an artist should not care if someone personally doesn’t like his or her art. But then why demand people not look at art they don’t like? Why are you insisting that people should never spend time thinking about or writing about art they dislike?

I see this line of thinking pretty frequently these days. You aren’t alone in this. And it puzzles me. Some of the greatest art, novels, etc in the world have come out of a responsive situation, where someone saw art they didn’t like and responded to it. The world’s great parodies, for instance, often started with someone seeing to the heart of a situation and disliking it. But there are so many artists that talk like you do: “if you don’t like something, ignore it. Don’t go see it if you don’t like it.” And I find that a genuinely puzzling attitude. We will lose so much great art in the world if artists take the line that no negative commentary or reaction should happen.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Those are the words of a complete philistine and a narcissist. I have a friend I've known for decades I can no longer go to galleries with, because she ALWAYS says this about something on the walls.

You sound like an obnoxious snob.

If you think the art workd judges pieces objectively, and cannot be tricked , you are naive.

[Anonymous]

Sometimes art just isn’t good, or isn’t even particularly creative. And yes, it mostly applies to contemporary art in my experience. Maybe I just don’t like that genre. I’ve certainly thought it although I wouldn’t say it out loud at a gallery.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I’m highly educated and even studied the humanities more than the average person I come across.

There’s a lot of art and a lot of art commentary that is absolutely vapid. The people who fawn over this subculture and create an air of importance and prestige around this art should be ridiculed more than they are.

I like art, I like modern art, and I appreciate a wide array of art that may not be everyone’s cup of tea. But there has to be a line drawn somewhere and the breathless descriptions of the genius of a paint splatter or a black line across a canvas deserve nothing. It is a grift.

Where have you seen/heard this? (other than parodies of the art world)

See, I think this is where it’s revealing who is actually informed and who is not. That you’ve never encountered this just means you haven’t interacted with the “right” people.

The entire contemporary art world is so severely jargonized, their lexicon of critique so esoteric, and access so limited - that in fact, the value in some of these absurdly simple pieces is that it exists and has been accepted as valuable by this “secret” world. They place a high value on the normies and plebes not getting it. That is the point.

Which makes them unintentionally satirical and an art form in and of themselves. It’s meta.

But, art should be accessible to a broad set of people, it doesn’t meant it must be accepted or appreciated by “everyone” but when you draw a line on a canvas and then build an esoteric insular technical world around it to make it “special” and valuable it’s all just a farce and a grift.

And no one is forcing you to read those things or participate in the contemporary art world that is like that. Stop reading and looking at things that you hate. Go to galleries and museums showing art you do like. Start your own online blog or journal about art. Buy contemporary art you like. That's what everyone should do.

I’m not the PP but I think this idea that artists should never face negative commentary is so absurd. Why should the PP stop looking at art she hates? So the feelings of artists are never hurt? So that an artist never has to accept that his or her art might not be universally praised?

This toxic positivity is so pervasive nowadays and I think we are as a society so much weaker for it.

Because it's bothering her and making her cranky. I dunno. Maybe the artist she hates intend for that reaction, so by all means, go on and look and complain!

Why do you think it’s bothering her? She seems to be enjoying the observations and the process of thinking about it. I don’t see any crankiness, either, but even if she was cranky, why can’t she be cranky?

I actually think the modern art world’s groupthink insistence on toxic positivity is doing more to harm the art world overall than any negative commentary from individuals who see something they don’t like.

[Anonymous]

A few things.

First -- people are using the term "modern art" really loosely in this thread and it's not a loose term. It refers to a specific period of art that we are actually no longer in. The modern period is generally considered to have lasted from 1860 to 1975. It includes a whole variety of different movements from impressionism to abstract expressionism to cubism to surrealism. People in this thread are talking about certain mid-20th century artists and drawing broad conclusions about modern art and you're really talking about a teeny tiny part of the modern movement. Also when you talk about more contemporary artists like Koons who may be inspired by certain modern movements but are not really considered part of the "modern art" era.

Yes it was short cited for people to label the era "modernism"! But they did and now we sometimes have to struggle with the vocabulary.

But one thing to consider is that the vast majority of successful modern artists were technically extremely skilled and their work could not easily be recreated by an amateur. And even if at this point someone could recreate it they would be doing so by employing techniques that did not exist before those artists invented and perfected them.

And I want to reiterate the comments from a few other PPs that sometimes these works are deceptive in their simplicity. I think Rothko is one of the best examples of this. People will look at one of Rothko's color field paintings and just be like "whatever that's just blocks of colors on canvas -- I could do that." But I suggest going to the Rothko room in the Phillips Gallery or spending time at one of the permanent Rothko exhibits at the National Gallery. They are not just blocks of color. There is a painstaking process of layering very thin applications of paint to create the impression of depth and variation that he sometimes spent months or years constructing through a long process of trial and error. And many of his paintings are designed as part of a series so he had to create these fields on multiple canvases in a way that complemented each other and created the desired effect.

Sometimes looking deeply at a Rothko can make me feel lost or light headed and I'm not the only one who experiences this. It is hard to explain but seeing those work in person up close especially when you are in a room with just one set of paintings designed to be shown together can be a strange experience. I am a great lover of classical art as well as many of the less abstract modernists like Picasso or Kandinsky or late-impressionists like Caillebotte and don't always love truly abstract art. Yet I find Rothko to be a powerful and technically virtuosic painter.

So I guess what I'm saying is that if you say something like "I could do that" or "my kid could do that" without really spending much time really looking at these works and allowing them to impact you. Approaching them with openness and seeing if you can understand why people like them or find them worthy of space in major museums. I'm not saying you'll love it all but I think you might *appreciate* it enough to understand that the creation of these works was not easy or accidental or cynical in the vast majority of cases.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I’m highly educated and even studied the humanities more than the average person I come across.

There’s a lot of art and a lot of art commentary that is absolutely vapid. The people who fawn over this subculture and create an air of importance and prestige around this art should be ridiculed more than they are.

I like art, I like modern art, and I appreciate a wide array of art that may not be everyone’s cup of tea. But there has to be a line drawn somewhere and the breathless descriptions of the genius of a paint splatter or a black line across a canvas deserve nothing. It is a grift.

Where have you seen/heard this? (other than parodies of the art world)

See, I think this is where it’s revealing who is actually informed and who is not. That you’ve never encountered this just means you haven’t interacted with the “right” people.

The entire contemporary art world is so severely jargonized, their lexicon of critique so esoteric, and access so limited - that in fact, the value in some of these absurdly simple pieces is that it exists and has been accepted as valuable by this “secret” world. They place a high value on the normies and plebes not getting it. That is the point.

Which makes them unintentionally satirical and an art form in and of themselves. It’s meta.

But, art should be accessible to a broad set of people, it doesn’t meant it must be accepted or appreciated by “everyone” but when you draw a line on a canvas and then build an esoteric insular technical world around it to make it “special” and valuable it’s all just a farce and a grift.

And no one is forcing you to read those things or participate in the contemporary art world that is like that. Stop reading and looking at things that you hate. Go to galleries and museums showing art you do like. Start your own online blog or journal about art. Buy contemporary art you like. That's what everyone should do.

I’m not the PP but I think this idea that artists should never face negative commentary is so absurd. Why should the PP stop looking at art she hates? So the feelings of artists are never hurt? So that an artist never has to accept that his or her art might not be universally praised?

This toxic positivity is so pervasive nowadays and I think we are as a society so much weaker for it.

Artists are rejected all the time. If your paintings do not sell...that's a real rejection. If no one wants to display them...rejection. Why should an artist care if you personally don't like it? You can't please everyone. Just like writers. Not everyone is going to like J.K. Rowling or Ron Chernow but, there is space for both!

I agree that an artist should not care if someone personally doesn’t like his or her art. But then why demand people not look at art they don’t like? Why are you insisting that people should never spend time thinking about or writing about art they dislike?

I see this line of thinking pretty frequently these days. You aren’t alone in this. And it puzzles me. Some of the greatest art, novels, etc in the world have come out of a responsive situation, where someone saw art they didn’t like and responded to it. The world’s great parodies, for instance, often started with someone seeing to the heart of a situation and disliking it. But there are so many artists that talk like you do: “if you don’t like something, ignore it. Don’t go see it if you don’t like it.” And I find that a genuinely puzzling attitude. We will lose so much great art in the world if artists take the line that no negative commentary or reaction should happen.

When people are complaining about something, it is very common to offer solutions so that what the person is complaining about doesn't bother them so much. How is that hard to understand?

Me personally, I think life is too short to spend time reading a book you hate. Or even looking at art that makes you that upset. But that's my personal choice.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Inspired by that thread about menu items in restaurants, I've heard this about art on museum and gallery walls.
Is it low class, or unaware or uneducated? Or maybe it's a perfectly normal response to contemporary abstract art.

In poll after poll, the overwhelming majority of people believe they are above-average.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I’m highly educated and even studied the humanities more than the average person I come across.

There’s a lot of art and a lot of art commentary that is absolutely vapid. The people who fawn over this subculture and create an air of importance and prestige around this art should be ridiculed more than they are.

I like art, I like modern art, and I appreciate a wide array of art that may not be everyone’s cup of tea. But there has to be a line drawn somewhere and the breathless descriptions of the genius of a paint splatter or a black line across a canvas deserve nothing. It is a grift.

Where have you seen/heard this? (other than parodies of the art world)

See, I think this is where it’s revealing who is actually informed and who is not. That you’ve never encountered this just means you haven’t interacted with the “right” people.

The entire contemporary art world is so severely jargonized, their lexicon of critique so esoteric, and access so limited - that in fact, the value in some of these absurdly simple pieces is that it exists and has been accepted as valuable by this “secret” world. They place a high value on the normies and plebes not getting it. That is the point.

Which makes them unintentionally satirical and an art form in and of themselves. It’s meta.

But, art should be accessible to a broad set of people, it doesn’t meant it must be accepted or appreciated by “everyone” but when you draw a line on a canvas and then build an esoteric insular technical world around it to make it “special” and valuable it’s all just a farce and a grift.

And no one is forcing you to read those things or participate in the contemporary art world that is like that. Stop reading and looking at things that you hate. Go to galleries and museums showing art you do like. Start your own online blog or journal about art. Buy contemporary art you like. That's what everyone should do.

I’m not the PP but I think this idea that artists should never face negative commentary is so absurd. Why should the PP stop looking at art she hates? So the feelings of artists are never hurt? So that an artist never has to accept that his or her art might not be universally praised?

This toxic positivity is so pervasive nowadays and I think we are as a society so much weaker for it.

Because it's bothering her and making her cranky. I dunno. Maybe the artist she hates intend for that reaction, so by all means, go on and look and complain!

Why do you think it’s bothering her? She seems to be enjoying the observations and the process of thinking about it. I don’t see any crankiness, either, but even if she was cranky, why can’t she be cranky?

I actually think the modern art world’s groupthink insistence on toxic positivity is doing more to harm the art world overall than any negative commentary from individuals who see something they don’t like.

Why do I think it's bothering her? Because of what she wrote! That's how I interpret it! Why do you think she should only receive positive, supportive reactions to what she wrote? But again, maybe the artists she thinks are grifting and producing art she thinks is absurd are looking just for that reaction. So she is participating in their artwork! Fabulous!

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Re: some modern art, it's understandable and likely true.

False. Modern art for the most part is quite complex. So your premise is incorrect. Now you also need to be able to get your art into a museum which is a pretty difficult task.

But yes carry on believing you can do it

Is that the reason the orange man won? We want to believe any idiot can be President?

I appreciate your staunch defense of modern art. But I wasn't saying it would be easy to get into a gallery, I was saying it would be easy to hang a baggie on the wall that contains literal trash. Landing in a gallery takes acceptance of the gatekeepers and kingmakers. That's about politics, not mechanics.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I’m highly educated and even studied the humanities more than the average person I come across.

There’s a lot of art and a lot of art commentary that is absolutely vapid. The people who fawn over this subculture and create an air of importance and prestige around this art should be ridiculed more than they are.

I like art, I like modern art, and I appreciate a wide array of art that may not be everyone’s cup of tea. But there has to be a line drawn somewhere and the breathless descriptions of the genius of a paint splatter or a black line across a canvas deserve nothing. It is a grift.

Where have you seen/heard this? (other than parodies of the art world)

See, I think this is where it’s revealing who is actually informed and who is not. That you’ve never encountered this just means you haven’t interacted with the “right” people.

The entire contemporary art world is so severely jargonized, their lexicon of critique so esoteric, and access so limited - that in fact, the value in some of these absurdly simple pieces is that it exists and has been accepted as valuable by this “secret” world. They place a high value on the normies and plebes not getting it. That is the point.

Which makes them unintentionally satirical and an art form in and of themselves. It’s meta.

But, art should be accessible to a broad set of people, it doesn’t meant it must be accepted or appreciated by “everyone” but when you draw a line on a canvas and then build an esoteric insular technical world around it to make it “special” and valuable it’s all just a farce and a grift.

PP here and my DH has spent his career working in art museums. I have a close family member who owns a contemporary art gallery. I’ve never heard breathless descriptions of paint splatters or black lines. No doubt there are bloviating grifters out there, but the art world can be very accessible to anyone who really wants to try to understand.

Ask your friend. Your DH works in museums and that’s already a different scene. Just because you’ve never heard it doesn’t mean it doesn’t exist. We are talking about a small subset of art that is unimpressive from a method, materials, medium perspective and technically straightforward with fabricated mythology about the piece or the artist that adds “context”. The fact that you are supposedly so immersed in the art world and can’t recall an example is…. Interesting.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I’m highly educated and even studied the humanities more than the average person I come across.

There’s a lot of art and a lot of art commentary that is absolutely vapid. The people who fawn over this subculture and create an air of importance and prestige around this art should be ridiculed more than they are.

I like art, I like modern art, and I appreciate a wide array of art that may not be everyone’s cup of tea. But there has to be a line drawn somewhere and the breathless descriptions of the genius of a paint splatter or a black line across a canvas deserve nothing. It is a grift.

Where have you seen/heard this? (other than parodies of the art world)

See, I think this is where it’s revealing who is actually informed and who is not. That you’ve never encountered this just means you haven’t interacted with the “right” people.

The entire contemporary art world is so severely jargonized, their lexicon of critique so esoteric, and access so limited - that in fact, the value in some of these absurdly simple pieces is that it exists and has been accepted as valuable by this “secret” world. They place a high value on the normies and plebes not getting it. That is the point.

Which makes them unintentionally satirical and an art form in and of themselves. It’s meta.

But, art should be accessible to a broad set of people, it doesn’t meant it must be accepted or appreciated by “everyone” but when you draw a line on a canvas and then build an esoteric insular technical world around it to make it “special” and valuable it’s all just a farce and a grift.

And no one is forcing you to read those things or participate in the contemporary art world that is like that. Stop reading and looking at things that you hate. Go to galleries and museums showing art you do like. Start your own online blog or journal about art. Buy contemporary art you like. That's what everyone should do.

I’m not the PP but I think this idea that artists should never face negative commentary is so absurd. Why should the PP stop looking at art she hates? So the feelings of artists are never hurt? So that an artist never has to accept that his or her art might not be universally praised?

This toxic positivity is so pervasive nowadays and I think we are as a society so much weaker for it.

Because it's bothering her and making her cranky. I dunno. Maybe the artist she hates intend for that reaction, so by all means, go on and look and complain!

Why do you think it’s bothering her? She seems to be enjoying the observations and the process of thinking about it. I don’t see any crankiness, either, but even if she was cranky, why can’t she be cranky?

I actually think the modern art world’s groupthink insistence on toxic positivity is doing more to harm the art world overall than any negative commentary from individuals who see something they don’t like.

Why do I think it's bothering her? Because of what she wrote! That's how I interpret it! Why do you think she should only receive positive, supportive reactions to what she wrote? But again, maybe the artists she thinks are grifting and producing art she thinks is absurd are looking just for that reaction. So she is participating in their artwork! Fabulous!

I am so happy and reinforced that you’re experiencing powerful emotions after enduring my art. I should monetize this.

It was searing commentary on the searing commentary on the searing commentary related to the current paradigm in the “so-called” contemporary art world. I approached it with a critical framework informed by my formative years spent living with previously undiscovered tribes in the Amazon rainforest. And the best part is if you look at it from different angles, it has texture!!

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:A few things.

First -- people are using the term "modern art" really loosely in this thread and it's not a loose term. It refers to a specific period of art that we are actually no longer in. The modern period is generally considered to have lasted from 1860 to 1975. It includes a whole variety of different movements from impressionism to abstract expressionism to cubism to surrealism. People in this thread are talking about certain mid-20th century artists and drawing broad conclusions about modern art and you're really talking about a teeny tiny part of the modern movement. Also when you talk about more contemporary artists like Koons who may be inspired by certain modern movements but are not really considered part of the "modern art" era.

Yes it was short cited for people to label the era "modernism"! But they did and now we sometimes have to struggle with the vocabulary.

But one thing to consider is that the vast majority of successful modern artists were technically extremely skilled and their work could not easily be recreated by an amateur. And even if at this point someone could recreate it they would be doing so by employing techniques that did not exist before those artists invented and perfected them.

And I want to reiterate the comments from a few other PPs that sometimes these works are deceptive in their simplicity. I think Rothko is one of the best examples of this. People will look at one of Rothko's color field paintings and just be like "whatever that's just blocks of colors on canvas -- I could do that." But I suggest going to the Rothko room in the Phillips Gallery or spending time at one of the permanent Rothko exhibits at the National Gallery. They are not just blocks of color. There is a painstaking process of layering very thin applications of paint to create the impression of depth and variation that he sometimes spent months or years constructing through a long process of trial and error. And many of his paintings are designed as part of a series so he had to create these fields on multiple canvases in a way that complemented each other and created the desired effect.

Sometimes looking deeply at a Rothko can make me feel lost or light headed and I'm not the only one who experiences this. It is hard to explain but seeing those work in person up close especially when you are in a room with just one set of paintings designed to be shown together can be a strange experience. I am a great lover of classical art as well as many of the less abstract modernists like Picasso or Kandinsky or late-impressionists like Caillebotte and don't always love truly abstract art. Yet I find Rothko to be a powerful and technically virtuosic painter.

So I guess what I'm saying is that if you say something like "I could do that" or "my kid could do that" without really spending much time really looking at these works and allowing them to impact you. Approaching them with openness and seeing if you can understand why people like them or find them worthy of space in major museums. I'm not saying you'll love it all but I think you might *appreciate* it enough to understand that the creation of these works was not easy or accidental or cynical in the vast majority of cases.

They are not just blocks of color. There is a painstaking process of layering very thin applications of paint to create the impression of depth and variation that he sometimes spent months or years constructing through a long process of trial and error.

Every single wall of my house is like that. Very thin layers of paint painstakingly applied over years to give the impression that my wall is actually flat and not the horrific joint compound mess that it is.

[Anonymous]

"But you didn't do it"