Real Artists Portfolio is a view into the world of art and music. Before you buy art, a CD, an iTunes download, or even an art poster, learn a little bit more about what’s out there and who’s doing it.
When you buy art as an investment, you take into account past sales for the artist, the medium and the movement, as well as projected sales over time. Another approach to buying art is to view it as a personal purchase, as an investment in you. If appreciative value of the art you are considering purchasing is important, then factor it into the purchase. However, if it isn’t important, the investment in yourself and the way your art buy makes you feel is important enough.
When you buy music as an investment – original LPs or limited release albums – you have to factor in the artist name, the infuence that the artist has had in the music genre as well as the condition of the recordings you’re considering for purchase.
In the 60’s and 70’s, a lot of art purchased was strictly made and sold to complement furniture. Fabric art wall hangings of oversized butterflies, rainbows and “abstract” sketches were commonplace. Those wall hangings are popular today as part of the vintage kitsch culture, where almost everything is valuable if it reminds you of the good old days. It’s difficult to discuss art in the 60’s without bringing up Andy Warhol (August 6, 1928 – February 22, 1987), and his influence on contemporary popular art and culture.
Andy Warhol Artist
Andy Warhol started his career as one of the country’s best business illustrators, but gained fame in the 60’s as an artist and independent filmmaker. Warhol is as well-known for his paintings and drawings as for his personal celebrity. The Factory, his art studio, was a popular hang-out for the other artists, writers, filmmakers and celebrities that were drawn to him by his flamboyant personality.Warhol’s classic portraits of Campbell Soup Cans and vivid renderings of celebrities of the time (including Elizabeth Taylor and Marilyn Monroe)made contemporary art lovers sit up, take notice and start buying.Warhol’s take on contemporary culture included the art of glorifying mundane objects like soup cans and other popular products and images, making them vibrant and dramatic, oversized and colorful. Back in 2003, Sir Elton John, for years previous a serious art and photography collector, built an extension onto his Windsor home in the United Kingdom to display his vast collection of art to the public. The collection includes such 20th century artists as Picasso and Andy Warhol himself.
Emergence of Block Art and Neo-Classic Artists
By the 80’s, buying swanky color block art was the new wave norm, and neo-classic portrait artists like Patrick Nagel didn’t just hang in our living rooms, they graced album covers for Duran Duran. Pink, white and green pseudo-abstract paintings and drawings were the rage, once again churned out by interior decorator firms solely to match living room couches.
In the 90s, frame-it-yourself stores started appearing in strip malls everywhere, and it suddenly became very inexpensive to frame standard size photos and pictures. By the 2000’s, the do-it-yourself home improvement and interior decorating craze exploded, and related TV programs showed us that it was easy to create art… to match the paint on the walls and the new leather couch in the living room.
But something else was happening while interior decorator art was flying off the shelves at furniture clearance stores:
- Art festivals and shows started popping up, not just in big metropolitan areas, but in little towns all over the country;
- Cities began highlighting art by throwing “art in the park” happy hours and “final Friday” gallery peeks that attempted to draw in the 25-40 year-old crowd, who, by rights, should be ready and able to buy art;
- Art galleries, which once seemed very twee and gave us that bull-in-a-china-shop feeling, became suddenly very accessible, opening their doors to the public and insisting that we stop in for a glass of wine and a little look. We looked at various artists portfolios, and many of us fell in love. With unnamed, unknown artists and photographers, whose paintings, drawings and photos made us feel like they walked through our dreams, read our minds and expressed all of it on a canvas or in a photo, couch-match be damned.
Explore the varying art genres and learn what art to buy from Real Artists Portfolio before you visit the art galleries and the art shows:
- The romantic landscape paintings deftly drawn by the Hudson River artists reflect the artists’ love of nature, depicting peaceful and serene renderings of outdoor America;
- Surreal artists like Dali take us on a mind-bending trip, letting us view the world in an altered state and opening our minds to previously unthought-of ideas;
- Gordon Parks is one of many talented photographers who allowed us to take a view of the mid 20th century world through his lens;
- Commercial and contemporary artists’ works have us jumping for joy with their vivid use of color and expression. Graphic design professionals and corporate branding artists are some of the world’s best illustrators, making us marvel at their deft work and skills.
