The Power of Crowdsourced Evaluations
We might think it safe, then, to assume that a noble and enduring legacy has been sealed for the artist who once said,
“The pain passes, but the beauty remains.”
But...no. Renoir could turn a phrase, but a small, very vocal minority is convinced, and they want us all to know, that Renoir sucked at painting.
And this sentiment isn’t lukewarm; it isn’t mildly griped about over wine and arrays of fine cheeses. Oh no. This has brought people into the streets.
Renoir Sucks At Painting (they’re so angry with the man they’re still slagging him in the present tense) is perhaps the most fervent art-critique movement of our lifetimes. It is the brainchild of citizen-critic Max Geller, who sparked the revolt on Instagram before it morphed into an IRL picket-line phenomenon.
“Aesthetic terrorism,” is how RSAP partisans refer to the various Renoir collections. Actually, that’s one of their more civil epithets. The somewhat less generous “empty calorie-laden steaming piles” has also been voiced.
What we’ll comment upon, instead, is the supremacy of perceived value. And actually, that qualifier is almost redundant: Value is always perceived. Renoir is a Very Important Artist, whose paintings regularly sell in the eight-figure range, because popular perception has made it so. The same is true for Monet, Manet, and Matisse. And the same principle explains why it feels about right to pay two bucks for a tube of toothpaste, and twenty grand for a new car.
Consumer revolt has a place in this paradigm, as a way of counteracting the tendency for costs to outpace value. Toothpaste vendors would love to hike their per-tube profit, but shoppers will stand for only so much of that. Value disintegrates just as soon as consumers decide that the worth of the product is no longer equal to their dollars spent.
Few of us will ever shell out for a Renoir original, at whatever going rate they might be fetching. But it’s important to understand we still, nonetheless, contribute to Renoir’s valuation. Our patronage at museums, purchases of reproductions, even our opinions and discourses in the public spaces will help determine whether Renoir’s body of work maintains a lofty spot in art hierarchy, or is relegated to the level of flea-market Elvis-on-black-velvet.
Max Geller and his boisterous band of Renoir haters may or may not succeed in pulling poor old Pierre-Auguste from his posthumous pedestal, but they’re determined to make their voices heard. And in doing so, they’re reminding us all that value, or lack thereof, remains a decision we make together.
The C4:
1. Renoir Sucks at Painting. Or does he? This is infinitely subjective but you wouldn’t know it by checking out the collections of the world’s major art museums. Curators seem to have made our choice for us: Renoir rocks.
2. But for every dictum, let there be backlash. Max Geller looked at Renoir, and did not like what he saw. Others agreed. They groused online, then moved outdoors. Anti-Renoir demonstrations raged earlier this year on the steps of museums in Boston and New York.
3. Beyond art and aesthetics, this is about value. Renoir paintings have sold for as much as $78 million. This can only be so because a critical mass of consumers believe Renoir is worth that kind of dough. Should Geller’s fellow-travelers reach a comparable mass, then your average Renoir will be worth its weight in garden mulch.
4. So where do we stand? As always, we honor and respect popular opinion. We salute Max Geller and his folk for their commitment, yet we understand and appreciate Renoir’s importance in art history. That said, he sure did make this kid look funny, didn’t he?
