Thanks for sharing your story — especially the moment with your daughter and the “treasure hunt.” It captures that quiet turning point when art stops being something distant and starts belonging to us again.
👏👏👏 Loved this piece, similar to my latest review of Frieze (“Between Spectacle and Substance”) 🎨 if you want to give it a read: https://substack.com/home/post/p-177494152
Hi Zoe, I've read everything, thanks for sharing. Between us, I don't understand contemporary art at all... I feel like it's a joke. I just don't get it.
Maybe a new Substack on O'Keefe and Richter's stories coming soon 👀🔜 (would be great to stay connected + please feel free to follow and/or subscribe for more)
Two of my favourite artists are Georgia O'Keefe and Gerhard Richter. O'Keefe began painting during the advent of the Armory show, when people criticised Modern Art for "Not being art" (paraphrasing Theodore Roosevelt 😂), yet she combined the modern skyscrapers that she'd observe going up around Manhattan and equate to the natural landscapes of the Southwest [although they're feminist connotations to her work, her art is much broader and those attachments are just a way to pigeonhole her].
Similarly, Gerhard Richter pioneered an entire movement where he used an ordinary house painter's tool (the "mundane") to create vast abstract works [hence his "Squeegee method"]. Modern and contemporary art proved that people no longer had to attend art school to gain an artistic education, they could find inspiration to create anywhere 🎨
As someone who once told her mother "Art is not art if it's not in a frame!" (And then my mom gave me an inflatable gold frame for my birthday) 😂 I completely understand 💯 - then at university, I took a course on Modern and Contemporary Art - once you understand the theory, the stories behind each of the works and movements & the formative, rigid concepts that the "Beaux-Arts" [1 little art history term] was trying to maintain artists conform to, you'll learn to love it/understand 🖼️💫
My mother used to make a game out of antique shopping.She would say “you find three things you really like and I will do the same and then we will compare”.This was heightened by every so often she would buy one of the things I liked to “start my collection”,it wasn’t every time but you never knew when.Many years later I sit in a house with beautiful antiques aware of the real gift she gave me.
Thanks for sharing your story — especially the moment with your daughter and the “treasure hunt.” It captures that quiet turning point when art stops being something distant and starts belonging to us again.
That “eleven seconds” insight also stayed with me. I once came across Professor James Cutting’s Masterpiece Effect study — his findings were so close to what you describe. In this study conducted in 2001, he revealed interesting patterns about how long people gaze at art in museums. I ended up writing about it here: https://open.substack.com/pub/elenamostovova/p/art-in-numbers-15-seconds-to-see?r=389ywd&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web&showWelcomeOnShare=false
Thank you so much for your kind feedback.
I love this a lot.
Thank you Kimber
👏👏👏 Loved this piece, similar to my latest review of Frieze (“Between Spectacle and Substance”) 🎨 if you want to give it a read: https://substack.com/home/post/p-177494152
Hi Zoe, I've read everything, thanks for sharing. Between us, I don't understand contemporary art at all... I feel like it's a joke. I just don't get it.
Maybe a new Substack on O'Keefe and Richter's stories coming soon 👀🔜 (would be great to stay connected + please feel free to follow and/or subscribe for more)
Two of my favourite artists are Georgia O'Keefe and Gerhard Richter. O'Keefe began painting during the advent of the Armory show, when people criticised Modern Art for "Not being art" (paraphrasing Theodore Roosevelt 😂), yet she combined the modern skyscrapers that she'd observe going up around Manhattan and equate to the natural landscapes of the Southwest [although they're feminist connotations to her work, her art is much broader and those attachments are just a way to pigeonhole her].
Similarly, Gerhard Richter pioneered an entire movement where he used an ordinary house painter's tool (the "mundane") to create vast abstract works [hence his "Squeegee method"]. Modern and contemporary art proved that people no longer had to attend art school to gain an artistic education, they could find inspiration to create anywhere 🎨
As someone who once told her mother "Art is not art if it's not in a frame!" (And then my mom gave me an inflatable gold frame for my birthday) 😂 I completely understand 💯 - then at university, I took a course on Modern and Contemporary Art - once you understand the theory, the stories behind each of the works and movements & the formative, rigid concepts that the "Beaux-Arts" [1 little art history term] was trying to maintain artists conform to, you'll learn to love it/understand 🖼️💫
Cool guidelines to dive deep into art gallery. Awesome! 😬✨
thank you Fanny !
My mother used to make a game out of antique shopping.She would say “you find three things you really like and I will do the same and then we will compare”.This was heightened by every so often she would buy one of the things I liked to “start my collection”,it wasn’t every time but you never knew when.Many years later I sit in a house with beautiful antiques aware of the real gift she gave me.
I love it, it's great. Each object is linked to the memory of the person we love. Thank you for this anecdote.