Best Link Ever! Robert Bateman’s Planet Earth

by Art Fag City on June 4, 2010 · 22 comments Best Link Ever!

POST BY DAVID HARPER
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This disastrous BP oil spill got me thinking about artists who create work about environmental concerns. Canadian photographer and environmentalist Edward Burtynsky first came to mind; his exhibition, titled “Oil” at Hasted Hunt Kraeutler in Chelsea last fall, a press magnet. Then there's Andrei Molodkin, a Russian conceptual artist who uses oil as one of his primary mediums (along with blood and ink) but less as a critique of industry and more of humanity.

But none of these matches this week's Best Link Ever, Robert Bateman, in poignancy, cheesiness and earnest YouTubery. A wildlife artist and environmentalist, whose mass produced prints are likely familiar to many, the artist writes on his website, “I can't conceive of anything more varied and rich and handsome than planet earth.” Paddy says he's really famous in Canada.

Of course, Bateman's work is not my bag in spite of his skill. It's beyond pedestrian — somewhere between a Bob Ross, a Thomas Kinkade (now bankrupt), and the t-shirt wolves howling at the moon. However, there is something about this clip that I found strangely moving. Smearing on crude-black paint, the artist destroys his own work and declares it “not a pretty picture.” Now, despite the fact that personally I tend to prefer the resultant work over the original (just not a fan of orcas) the artist's act, while comical, just doesn't seem as funny as it would have a month ago.

David Harper maintains Art Fag City's Best Link Ever! column, and is the blog's Curatorial Fellow. Harper is the Visual Arts Curator for The Brooklyn Academy of Music.

{ 22 comments }

L.M. June 5, 2010 at 5:48 am

We like his owl paintings. Actually, we’ll forgive a lot of awful painters if they throw us an owl now and then.

L.M. June 5, 2010 at 5:48 am

We like his owl paintings. Actually, we’ll forgive a lot of awful painters if they throw us an owl now and then.

L.M. June 5, 2010 at 1:48 am

We like his owl paintings. Actually, we’ll forgive a lot of awful painters if they throw us an owl now and then.

dan June 5, 2010 at 8:48 pm

The tragedy in the gulf is sickening, but that black painting is like an erased de Kooning. God I want that painting.

dan June 5, 2010 at 8:48 pm

The tragedy in the gulf is sickening, but that black painting is like an erased de Kooning. God I want that painting.

dan June 5, 2010 at 8:48 pm

The tragedy in the gulf is sickening, but that black painting is like an erased de Kooning. God I want that painting.

dan June 5, 2010 at 4:48 pm

The tragedy in the gulf is sickening, but that black painting is like an erased de Kooning. God I want that painting.

sally June 6, 2010 at 5:08 pm

A couple of years ago Bateman got slammed by Sarah Milroy in the Globe and Mail, and more interestingly, she slammed the McMichael gallery for programming his work and thus “pandering” to the “ingorance” of the “public.”

sally June 6, 2010 at 5:08 pm

A couple of years ago Bateman got slammed by Sarah Milroy in the Globe and Mail, and more interestingly, she slammed the McMichael gallery for programming his work and thus “pandering” to the “ingorance” of the “public.”

sally June 6, 2010 at 5:08 pm

A couple of years ago Bateman got slammed by Sarah Milroy in the Globe and Mail, and more interestingly, she slammed the McMichael gallery for programming his work and thus “pandering” to the “ingorance” of the “public.”

sally June 6, 2010 at 5:08 pm

A couple of years ago Bateman got slammed by Sarah Milroy in the Globe and Mail, and more interestingly, she slammed the McMichael gallery for programming his work and thus “pandering” to the “ingorance” of the “public.”

sally June 6, 2010 at 5:08 pm

A couple of years ago Bateman got slammed by Sarah Milroy in the Globe and Mail, and more interestingly, she slammed the McMichael gallery for programming his work and thus “pandering” to the “ingorance” of the “public.”

sally June 6, 2010 at 1:08 pm

A couple of years ago Bateman got slammed by Sarah Milroy in the Globe and Mail, and more interestingly, she slammed the McMichael gallery for programming his work and thus “pandering” to the “ingorance” of the “public.”

sally June 6, 2010 at 5:40 pm

A classic Robert Bateman owl.

Milroy dismisses him because his art is like Reader’s Digest illustrations. I happen to think Reader’s Digest illustrations are great. Also science fiction cover art and Blue Oyster Cult album cover art and calendars with really detailed, mimetic paintings of birds and animals are pretty groovy too. But I have a post-secondary art education so I’m allowed to enjoy this kind of thing without being labelled as “ignorant.”

sally June 6, 2010 at 1:40 pm

A classic Robert Bateman owl.

Milroy dismisses him because his art is like Reader’s Digest illustrations. I happen to think Reader’s Digest illustrations are great. Also science fiction cover art and Blue Oyster Cult album cover art and calendars with really detailed, mimetic paintings of birds and animals are pretty groovy too. But I have a post-secondary art education so I’m allowed to enjoy this kind of thing without being labelled as “ignorant.”

sally June 6, 2010 at 6:51 pm

I’m going to shut up about this any second, but I have to admit Bateman does set himself up for some major teasing. According to the Toronto Star after Bateman did this to his work he “rushed into the shower with the print to wash the paint off so as not to compromise the print, which is the reference copy in the studio.”

sally June 6, 2010 at 6:51 pm

I’m going to shut up about this any second, but I have to admit Bateman does set himself up for some major teasing. According to the Toronto Star after Bateman did this to his work he “rushed into the shower with the print to wash the paint off so as not to compromise the print, which is the reference copy in the studio.”

sally June 6, 2010 at 2:51 pm

I’m going to shut up about this any second, but I have to admit Bateman does set himself up for some major teasing. According to the Toronto Star after Bateman did this to his work he “rushed into the shower with the print to wash the paint off so as not to compromise the print, which is the reference copy in the studio.”

Art Fag City June 7, 2010 at 4:01 am

Wow. This is amazing. I love the Milroy piece, and I can believe he washed the paint off the print. Not nearly the same thing, but in 1992 I attended a talk he gave at my high school. He used the Washington Monument as a scale model for the time line of the universe, pointing to a miniscule sliver at the top he’d dedicated to “human existence”. Even at 17 you’re old enough to label bullshit like that as infantalizing nonsense. My mother and I left the auditorium quietly ridiculing him.

Art Fag City June 7, 2010 at 4:01 am

Wow. This is amazing. I love the Milroy piece, and I can believe he washed the paint off the print. Not nearly the same thing, but in 1992 I attended a talk he gave at my high school. He used the Washington Monument as a scale model for the time line of the universe, pointing to a miniscule sliver at the top he’d dedicated to “human existence”. Even at 17 you’re old enough to label bullshit like that as infantalizing nonsense. My mother and I left the auditorium quietly ridiculing him.

Art Fag City June 7, 2010 at 4:01 am

Wow. This is amazing. I love the Milroy piece, and I can believe he washed the paint off the print. Not nearly the same thing, but in 1992 I attended a talk he gave at my high school. He used the Washington Monument as a scale model for the time line of the universe, pointing to a miniscule sliver at the top he’d dedicated to “human existence”. Even at 17 you’re old enough to label bullshit like that as infantalizing nonsense. My mother and I left the auditorium quietly ridiculing him.

Art Fag City June 7, 2010 at 12:01 am

Wow. This is amazing. I love the Milroy piece, and I can believe he washed the paint off the print. Not nearly the same thing, but in 1992 I attended a talk he gave at my high school. He used the Washington Monument as a scale model for the time line of the universe, pointing to a miniscule sliver at the top he’d dedicated to “human existence”. Even at 17 you’re old enough to label bullshit like that as infantalizing nonsense. My mother and I left the auditorium quietly ridiculing him.

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