Watch this video and see whether you end up as disappointed as I did. I'm not talking about the Cthulhu commentary, which is insightful, but rather the artistry. To me, it looks like a case of The Artist Who Can't Leave Well Enough Alone. The guy is making a picture of Cthulhu as he narrates, and its awesome up to about 70-80% of the way through it, then the guy starts adding white paint as a contrast (I think he started off with dark watercolors and, bizarrely, ended with acrylics or oils).
When my mother was president of her Korean-American Women's Society (yes, KAWS, like the grating sound of a crow), she once invited a Korean artist to come and exhibit many of his works. Mom begged me to help her and the artist set the exhibit up; typical of my selfish-yet-pliant nature, I rolled my eyes in exasperation (Jesus, not this again) and helped her. The artist turned out to be a chatterbox in Korean; I did my best to follow what he has saying, but I'm not sure I understood much. Finally, he offered to do a large painting right then and there. He chose a large sheet of hwaseonji (paper used for calligraphy and brush art), then loaded up the brush with ink and went to town. It wasn't obvious what he was making at first, but it didn't take long for a galloping horse to appear, charging straight at the viewer. It was, frankly, magnificent—dynamic and full of life. My own austere sensibility started shouting Enough! when I thought the horse-image had reached peak awesomeness... but the artist kept going until the horse was almost lost in a jumble of other swooping, smoky lines that symbolized God-only-knows-what. By the time the artist finished the artwork to his satisfaction, the whole thing looked like a scribbled, unprofessional mess to me. Maybe I'm just artistically stupid, but as with the Cthulhu video above, I wish the artist had known when to stop.
Am I too austere? Too ignorant of real art to appreciate it?
All I know is that I like what I like.
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