>To reiterate, there are two points that I am trying to make here -
>but a judgment about a specific artist is not one of them.
Not quite. You said there's no, or little, craftsmanship in contemporary art, and that Warhol, specifically, depended on gimmicks to razzle dazzle the public. (To that I'd say look at the disaster paintings. Those never did appeal to a mass audience.)
I don't like Billy Joel, but I wouldn't argue he can't write or doesn't know how to play piano.
>I have nothing against "market art" as long as it does not crowd out
>other forms.
That's what I used to think about the Beatles. But now I think that in the long run you can't kill good art, no matter how hard you try. Maybe a bigger problem is what Nick Lowe said recently about music. There's so much pretty good stuff out there that "Pretty good is the new terrible."
http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/music_blog/2011/09/nick-lowe-taking-the-low-key-approach.html
Nick Lowe, lauded in many quarters as one of pop music's master craftsmen of the last three decades, says he hears a lot of pretty good music these days. And that's not good.
"Sad to say, it seems everyone can make a pretty good record in their bedroom today," the 62-year-old English singer and songwriter said recently. "You go buy the kit and you can make a pretty good record. 'Pretty good' is the new 'terrible.' In a tsunami of 'pretty good' stuff, you can't find the really good stuff. So I've kind of given up looking."
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