Van Gogh painted poor people you know…

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Painter, Poet, Positive Soul
Darren Daz Cox, now in Pekin Illinois!

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"I feel that there is nothing more truly artistic than to love people." Vincent Van Gogh

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I am the blueberry that you saw
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you might have read...

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how precious are dreams
that logical themes
quote facts in attempt to deny you
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I believed!
and that's why they ARE true!

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I like art, I do art,
I do art all the time,
I do alot of art
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"Love is the answer"
John Lennon

June 20th, 2010 Darren Daz Cox Posted in Art History, Darren Cox, Liquify Filter, My Art, Photoshop, Vincent Van Gogh, digital paint, drawing, fine art, pencil sketch, the art world, wordle, writing on art | 2 Comments »

What spirit is so empty and blind, that it cannot recognize the fact that the foot is more noble than the shoe, and skin more beautiful than the garment with which it is clothed?
Michelangelo

Jen was kind enough to include one of my paintings in a blog post of hers on Shine (Yahoo’s new blog service) . she enjoys the world of art and posed the question in another post – What Is Art Worth?

One of my pet peeves is this constant association of everything to a monetary value and then status being associated with that monetary value as it makes struggling artists worth more dead than alive. Society is enriched by artists in ways beyond mere money, we add color to your community, we show you an alternative to being ‘normal’…

Vincent Van Gogh was what you’d call a ‘leech on society’ while he was alive, he was a starry eyed dreamer who mooched off of his family, a slacker, a bum living a childish fantasy of being a famous painter, he wallowed in the luxury of dedicating his life to the arts while real men worked at real jobs, yeah, most people wouldn’t like Vincent Van Gogh if he was alive today.

Amazingly people revere him as something close to holy now that his paintings are so famous, everyone knows the story of how he only sold one or two paintings in his lifetime and many assume that had a direct affect on why he killed himself, after all, if people are rich they live happily ever after, except Kurt Cobain, there’s always that exception to the rule right?.

I think if people stopped talking about how much they think art is worth in terms of cash then maybe the conversation would be about why art is important in other ways. I think this whole ‘price’ thing is the lowest common denominator designed to distance the masses from the wealthy elite.

Van Gogh mostly painted the poorest of the working people, he considered their toil to be a tribute to God not some kind of punishment or failure that made them unable to purchase his art.

"Inspire, be inspired and appreciate" – Dannion Brinkley on the meaning of life.

It’s actually kind of insulting to make Van Gogh into a money machine when his whole life revolved around making art based on the most humble of surroundings.

Why is art a ‘commodity’ anyway? You realize that Van Gogh could easily have made art that was similar to what he saw was selling in his day but chose to follow his own muse instead of making a ‘commodity’.

In so many ways Van Gogh stood against making art into a mere ‘commodity’ and I feel he would be saddened that his legacy is reduced to tabloid journalism talking about how much his "commodities" are worth, his personal psychological problems and who got famous by simply being rich enough to buy his work.

(Jen asked) "How can one become an image consultant for dead people?" I assume you mean how does someone get to decide how much a dead persons art is worth in terms of money Jen?

Art is only worth what someone will pay for it, there are no rules, just be convincing, memorize all the prices of what art has sold for, find some rich people who don’t want to spend those extra millions to help the very same type of people that Van Gogh painted and tell them how much more important they will be if they buy the art for a lot of money, the more they pay the more famous they become. Make sure you get a fat commission and some of that fame for yourself.

I think that if you are rich enough to buy a Van Gogh painting you are rich enough to buy some art books for your local schools, buy the kids a trip to a museum, fund their art department, do something other than gloat over the prize because if you are only collecting art or selling it as a commodity then you can’t see the real beauty of it in my opinion.