I know this will probably prejudice me to my future professors in the Humanities visual arts subjects, but I hate what passes for modern painting nowadays. Picasso and his bastard children have turned painting into a joke medium. (Plus, I will never forgive Picasso for Guernica.) Abstract art, cubism, post-modernism...all laughably bad in the grand scheme of visual art. It's as if being emo was suddenly the pinnacle of artistic achievement.
This particular group of artists is a God-send.
The people actually look like people! Imagine that!
Look, just because photography robbed the painter of his historic livelihood, does not mean our noses started growing out of our foreheads. (Picasso! I'm talking to you!)
These artists prove that photography ought not be an excuse for painters to abandon the foundations laid throughout the centuries by other artists. Take these two girls in a photograph, and it would not have the same effect. (If this were a photograph, I'd tell the photographer to stay away from Cosplayers.) As a painting, these is just something there that only a painter can put in. I also appreciate the fact that this guy (or girl, I'm not sure), and all like him or her, prove that the modern artist need not paint like a tripped out mongoose.
Another interesting facet of this group is that a significant portion of the artists behind this resurgence of classical Western painting are Asian. As is the case in Western classical music, Asian artists are beginning to learn about, appreciate and create classical Western art better than the modern Westerners do. This fact ought to embarrass the hell out of those so-called cultural savants out West, whose idea of high art is Christo throwing orange ribbons around Central Park and some douchebag painting Christ in a urine jar.
Shame on the West, and may the Art Renewal Center's tribe increase!
[Credit: The painting is Tetsuya Mishima's "Sword and Desire", a finalist in the Figurative Category of ARC Salon.]
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