Edited by author 03-18-2003 09:40 PM
Ok, I really wasn't going to post anything beyond my first comment, but the breathless tones of the obvious shills here have compelled me to act. :-)
I think these pieces could join works of similar stature at the MOBA:
http://www.glyphs.com/moba/moba3-95.htmlhttp://www.glyphs.com/moba/moba6-95.htmlhttp://www.glyphs.com/moba/mob12-95.htmlhttp://www.glyphs.com/moba/deardorf.htmlhttp://www.glyphs.com/moba/backroom.html...well, Ok. The Barnaby Whitfield works aren't *really* as bad as the pieces exhibited at the MOBA, in part because they demonstrate a significant level of skill, but neither do they justify the over-the-top endorsements garnered here.
These works are obviously meant to be disturbing, and succeed at that, but don't even seem to be attempting to communicate anything else.
There's a certain interesting 'photoshop aesthetic' going on in these pieces, but that compositional technique also seems to be used solely for it's shock value, and it's overused to the point that the surreal mood it could have conveyed is lost, and we're left being hit over the head with revulsion.
Why would anyone want to buy these? Ah, but that is revealed in the postings of the breathless shills: It's a 'wise investment', collected by those in 'knowledgable circles', and his art 'isn't for the beginner'.
Bah. That sort of elitist attitude wrapping otherwise unmarketable crap in a cloak of exclusivity is designed to do one thing: pump up the price among status concious art collectors with a) more money than taste, or b) a cynical 'pump-and-dump' investment strategy.
A word of advice: Don't buy art unless you actually like it, even if it seems like a 'wise investment'. The 'wise investment' only holds if the artist in question continues to produce marketable work over a long career. If the career is cut short prematurely, because the artists decides there's more money to be made as a car salesman, or because they got hit by a bus, your investment's value drops. By orders of magnitude. The opposite effect takes place at the end of an artists career, when their demise pushes the value of their work up, because it is now a limited supply.
Statistically speaking, J.Newbie Artiste whose painting you just bought is unlikely to achieve that level of notoriety, and unless you happen to enjoy looking at the work in question, you'll have wasted your money.