No, you pretty much don't get it. I was pretty much clear that the way the discussion has been lead, I wasn't able to have a proper conclusion about that.
I'll reiterate: I don't know quite as much about the guy as I'd neet to. I've seen a sample of his work that is relevant for this issue. But I don't know if that's a representative sample of his work or not. For all I know, that could be the worst ten pieces of art he ever created and the rest might be genial.
Second thing is, I'm not competent to be art critic. I can repeat encyclopedia knowledge well, and I know why great artists are great, but I don't have a kind of eye needed to reckognize an artist that will be considered great in twenty years or so. This is why I was bothered about not hearing anything that high art community says, I'd do a lot better job evaluating their arguements about those paintings than I would evaluating paintings myself.
To me,because this is discussion about painting art, drawback for evaluating is also that we don't get to see what these works look like in live, in gallery.
(note the difference. I'm not making swift judgement of webcomic community. I know webcomic community. I've been a part of it for six years. I have enough knowledge about it to judge it. With Todd person, no such knowledge)
In my opinion whether he's an insignificant artist and whether he's a plagiatrist are two different issues, not unrelated, but not equivalent either. Second one concerns whether he's selling Kelly's (and others) concept or he's using Kelly's art to create a different concept. Whether the subject of his work is what's in picture or the picture itself. First one concerns whether this work has any relevance in art history.
If I was hard-pressed to make some kind of judgement (though I wouldn't hold tightly to it), I'd say that I'm not so sure that he's a plagiator, and no, he's not relevant (not sure which one you mean by "hack" though). I said in earlier posts why, you might've caught those comments if you have read:
me, in first post about this wrote: If Todd guy is unoriginal, that's because he's doing the thing that was new fifty years ago, and art has progressed to new directions since then.
Which is so far my major point of displeasure. Tempo of exchange of art movements in this century has been very rapid since 60ies Pop art has explored it's ideas, been and gone, replaced with more fashionable art movements like op art, performance art and others. It seems like he's actually plagiatrizing ideas of Pop artists, but since they themselves played with different views of intelectial property, that'd be a moot issue.
The other thing that bothered me is:
me, in next post wrote:I can say against him, though, that his works lack some consistency that great pop artists had. Their idea of fitting pop images into their vision worked only if that vision was consistent, but this guy changes style and concept, even the level of copying (for instance, while Kelly's is a by-numbers copy, beer one copies the slogan but changes the rest) from work to work.
Then I state agreement with bunch of things Buster and ataraxia said, and with Komi's assesment that working on the sketch without checking it's sources was a case of sloppiness. And now, you ask me:
So would you now agree in calling the guy a hack?
So, you're asking me to sum up the whole lot of that into a yes or no? How about you try to sum up "Crime and punishment" in one sentence? You suggest that I am supporting Todd even though I ecplicitely said that I didn't?
You, my friend, haven't read what I wrote. Addmit it, you skimmed over it, found an opinion that seems opposite to yours and decided that it's not worth reading. But yet you want to argue with me and that's why your posts don't relate to mine. Evaluating paintings you haven't seen, replying to posts you haven't read, describing alien spaceships, whatever. Figures that save for one post that was basically reiterating what others said, all others of yours were nothing but direct flames and personal insults, so if I called people to think, that call certainly didn't reach you.
That's perfectly fine by me, it's not my job to reeducate anybody, I'm just happy that when I suggest something reasonable, most of people (who replied) accept the suggestion and put it through the thought process.
as if we aren't looked down upon enough.
