Critical studies

 Amateur and professionalism talk  

After our talk on amateur and professionalism we were asked to find two examples of art exploring this topic, one piece amateur in style and the other in a more professional style. For an artist exploring a more professional style ill be looking at a painting by Gerard Richter. 

The piece is called Betty, 1988. 

Richter is an artist that deviates between different styles but self proclaims to reject the idea of his work being categorised, he doesn't hold himself to a particular movement or style. Despite this as a viewer when I look through the many images of his paintings I see two quite distinct and contrary styles, abstract paintings and Photorealistic paintings. This painting is a highly photorealistic portrait of his daughter Betty, the painting itself has a professional sense to it, his use of light and colour, attention to detail and texture all come together to create a hugely effective naturalistic painting. This tentativeness to  rendering his subject is reminiscent of the work of pre-modernist painters and the traditional idea of skill. 

However, the posing of the subject is also drawn from the ideas and work of traditional artists. The way Richter has posed his daughter looking away from the viewer is a nod the neo-classical painting The bather of valpincon by Jean Auguste Dominique Ingres. This idea of the classical painting mixed with the idea of photography does create a juxtaposition but one that instead of making the ideas clash instead creates a harmony between the classical and contemporary.  

As a viewer I believe this painting to have a hugely professional sense and feeling to it. This piece is clearly highly skilful, he's created this sense of skill by adopting and tapping into the ideas of traditional painters that still hold the mainstream ideas of skill and artistic success, this means his works is easy to be appreciated by a wider audience, one perhaps with less deeper artistic knowledge . So I guess in conclusion, Ritcher creates a professional sense to his photorealistic paintings by adopting ideas from traditional art.