Look Who it Was Random video

Museum versus commercial art

1,128 views · Published 25 October 2010 · 4:59 · Indexed 17 October 2026

Channel: zarkoff45 · 2010 · Education

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This video takes a rather obtuse angle on the questions Nykytyne2 raised about modern art in his video, "Which Modern Art?" :
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IGPjA-Mo6rc

I just compare two different artists, first a "museum" artist, Roberto Matta, and secondly a "commercial" artist, Richard Powers. I do this because there seems to be an odd dichotomy between commercial and museum art. Why is it an artist can succeed fantastically in one arena (like Richard Powers in commercial art), but show poorly in the other domain? What is it that divides the tastes of these two different art worlds?

Roberto Matta was in with the abstract expressionist and surrealist art movements. Some would say he was a seminal figure in them. He knew artists like René Magritte, Salvador Dalí, Pablo Picasso, Marcel Duchamp and André Breton, and some other leading members of the Paris Surrealist movement. He produced illustrations and articles for Surrealist journals such as Minotaure. His work sold in the same galleries and was later displayed in the same museums.

Richard Powers illustrated paperback science fiction novels. Powers' book covers were influenced by artists like Matta (though probably more by Max Ernst and Paul Klee) and he attempted to show the same subconscious fantasies and dream-states of the surrealist art movement, done with an expressionistic technique similar to Matta's, to the science fiction audience. His illustrations sold books, not the paintings themselves. While he did have gallery shows (at the Rehn Gallery in New York) it was the book covers that paid his bills.

I like both artists. They have a similar effect on me. But in the end I find Power's art more powerful than Matta's. In fact, I find commercial art generally more appealing than museum art most of the time, yet few commercial artists are ever shown in museums or command the huge prices that "movement"/"museum" artists do. So, Matta becomes a major figure in an art movement, and Powers merely an example of a paperback book cover fad.

I think it does, perhaps, point to an inherent unfairness in the valuation of art where gallery art from certain New York and Paris galleries is privileged over commercial art.

More Matta here:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1zLoP3zDrBI

More Powers here:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2Y2AQrlgcR8

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