apartment therapy changing the world, one room at a time

sure, but they better be genuine

ha.

To me they're just yuck. I really don't get it actually. Maybe it's the clown because I do like other paint by numbers? They're like dogs playing poker to me.

This art contest has sure opened the door to a myriad of opinions about what people consider to be art – and not. While there is always room for a sense of humor and low brow anything, if that’s your choice, these clowns are so clearly low brow that they defy any denfintion of art. At most, they are entirely kitsch and to some, just junk. Please let’s call them what they are – they are paint by numbers. They may provide laugher, positive sentiments for some, netagive ones for others. But that doesn't make them art. I thorougly disaggree that this “whimsical “low-brow” art can help one’s more “serious” art not look too pretentious or "stuffy". Instead, I think the opposite is true in this case. It degrades any attempt at a serious collection.

p.s. sorry about the typos. I did that way too fast and forget to do spell check.

More clowns!! *shudder*

Art? Come on. Now this has gone too far. This isn't whimsy. This is paint by numbers, pure and simple. Why make it into anything else. I'm sorry, but this art contest has revealed a generally low quality overall. It seems that the AT audience is far more versed in design and design movements than it is in any bonifide art movement. I find it discouraging overall. And now these clowns....it's the final straw. Perhaps we should all spend more time visiting galleries than we do DWR, etc.

Wow, I thought this kind of snobbery was confined to New York. Read about Marcel Duchamp and then ask yourself if you're so sure about the demarcation between kitsch and art:

http://www.understandingduchamp.com/

It's too much. Paint-by-numbers alone, sure. Clowns alone, maybe. Both together? I'd rather get my whimsy from a velvet painting of Elvis swiveling his hips for a halo-wearing Martin Luther King, Jr., while an Aztec warrior carrying a half-naked maiden looks on.

LOL wende, where does the peacock go?

Oooooh... black velvet Aztec warrior/half-naked maiden. +10 street cred points, wende. I'm surprised that I've never run into you at the "Oaktown" swap meets.

The clown on the left has played a major role in my life. We have a lovely collection of PBN paintings in our LR, and a friend whose girlfriend couldn't bear the sad clown gave it to us. We couldn't bear it either, as an everyday item. But at social gatherings, we began to give the sad clown a special chair, so that people could try to cheer him up. It didn't work, but he has become a special guest in our home (he stays behind the couch at other times). He came to our wedding, and the guests posed for photos with him. He even wrote in our polaroid guest book. Of course, the wedding did not cheer him up at all.

perhaps i was kidnapped by the circus at an early age, drugged, abused, and then dropped back home to my parents...but i've always had a morbid fear of clowns. they completely freak me out. if i had these clowns on the wall of my home, i'd be sitting in the corner rocking swiftly, arms clutched tightly across my chest, humming "send in the clowns". seriously, this stuff would kill me completely. don't know how you guys take it, clowns are like chuckie doll posters to me. :)

but if you love clowns, that's your call. it's my personal opinion, which means very little! i have a friend who fears rainbows. she has to pull over her car and hide her eyes when she sees one in the sky. she can't bear to look at them, she melts down. we all have our fears. clowns are mine.

holly ;)

I voted "I get it..."

Because - PBN, yes. Clowns, no.

Enrique, is this where I launch into how velvet painting is a legitimate art form, a medium that allows for paint effects not possible on canvas...?

Can you do SF on 2/26-ish? I need to get myself in gear over this meet-and-greet thing, unless someone has leaped into the breach while I was off in a haze.

Wende. Go ahead and set the date. I'll try to schedule my travel around it! :D

I think that it's a very fun, subversive thing to like Paint by Numbers, and quite frankly I really do. But at that, there were all different kinds and qualities and levels of "prettiness" to them when they were at their height of popularity.

I really don't like clowns, though and that's why I had to vote for that I get it, but not for me.

If you wanna see some pretty Paint By Numbers writ large, as in mural-size, click on my name. But seriously folks, no -- they're not terribly, terribly high art, but they DID tend to be painted with oil paint, and they have tended to last pretty well, and in a way, they're KIND of like hand-colored engravings, if you think about OR they're kind of like different singers singing songs that somebody else wrote.

So ... maybe they're kind of like an early version of karaoke, but SOME of them are pretty, and they're kind of an interesting historical social document.

A previous post talked about conceptual art.