All time most under rated pop musician:  Stephen Foster.

Proof?

He’s been dead 150 years and I challenge anyone out there to claim they’ve never heard any of his music.  I’ll bet that even if you think you haven’t you probably have. 

I know a lot of his work is racist, (he died before the civil war), but a little of it is beautiful.

mid atlantic - 07 March 2013 12:42 AM

CuthbertJ - 05 March 2013 07:07 PM

Definitely a fun thread. One of the difficulties with this kind of discussion is separating personal opinion from objective selection AND considering context.  When I hear someone say Chopin was overrated my first thought is, clueless poster. But then again for that poster maybe music is supposed to get you revved up and ready to go. In that context, I supposed someone could think Chopin isn’t all that whereas the Rolling Stones might be. It’s a matter of context.  I do think no matter what you have to consider what someone earlier called the “craft”.  I personally don’t like Mozart BUT I do realize he was a master musical craftsman.

In the case of Chopin, personally I don’t care for his music - it seems too weak and one sided; however his technical proficiency on the piano is hard to argue with.

When you measure other classical pianists/composers like Liszt, or Rachmaninov against Chopin, he seems less creative.  Perhaps Chopin’s “tragic suffering artist” life has help his popularity to endure? That’s why I label him overrated.

Rachmaninov, eh? How does he score on your scale in originality? You know he was heavily influenced by the unoriginal Tchaikovsky and had to often defend himself by saying that if he imitated Tchaikovsky he had done so unconsciously?

If you want to try to sound as “sophisticated” as many of the art critics, you should first start by educating yourself. Most of what you’re saying here sounds quite silly.

Jeciron - 06 March 2013 05:14 PM

For myself, valid art is any art which elicits a response in me.

Sure, we all think that way. The question though is whether there is any way we could be wrong about those responses. If all there is to art is, “I know it if I like it”, then unless there is actual evidence of coincidence in art appreciation, there’s nothing to being wrong. The artists Kumar and Melamid did surveys around the world of what people wanted to see in paintings: turned out, most people wanted a landscape with trees and a pond.

Is that, then, what makes a great painting?

Jeciron - 06 March 2013 05:14 PM

In that, I recognize that what is art to me may be merely a pointless scribble, an incoherent combination of words or tones to another.  I have to accept that a piece of art which deeply offends me, by my very reaction, defines itself as art.  So, I try, not entirely successfully, to maintain the position that there is art which I get, which moves me, and art which I don’t “get”.  I try not to decide if it is good or bad.

Sure, but is there something in the art—something ‘objective’—that you’re missing, or is it just that some people like vanilla and some people like chocolate, and there’s no deciding between them as to which is better?

Jeciron - 06 March 2013 05:14 PM

I fabricate architectural and ornamental iron.  When I take on a customer, I commit myself to attempting to create work which is meaningful to my customer, but the work does not have to be especially meaningful to me.  I feel, as a craftsman, not as an artist, that this attitude is a fundamental part of my craft.  It is much easier, and perhaps more satisfying, to create a piece of work for someone with whom I share a sense of art and beauty, but in some ways it is a greater accomplishment to do good work for someone who’s tastes differ.  I should admit though, that the difference can be too great to overcome….Anyway, all this makes me think a lot about beauty and art sometimes.

Very cool. Hat’s off to you as an ironsmith.

I see you’re making a distinction between “craft” and “art”. Do you think there’s a real difference between them? Or is it all in the eye of the beholder?

Typically art is seen as ‘self expression’ where craft is all technical capability. But I must admit that the more I think about it the harder it is for me to make the distinction. In a sense, ‘I know it when I see it’, but then also in a sense I think I may just be seeing certain kinds of preconceptions.

George - 07 March 2013 05:46 AM

mid atlantic - 07 March 2013 12:42 AM

CuthbertJ - 05 March 2013 07:07 PM

Definitely a fun thread. One of the difficulties with this kind of discussion is separating personal opinion from objective selection AND considering context.  When I hear someone say Chopin was overrated my first thought is, clueless poster. But then again for that poster maybe music is supposed to get you revved up and ready to go. In that context, I supposed someone could think Chopin isn’t all that whereas the Rolling Stones might be. It’s a matter of context.  I do think no matter what you have to consider what someone earlier called the “craft”.  I personally don’t like Mozart BUT I do realize he was a master musical craftsman.

In the case of Chopin, personally I don’t care for his music - it seems too weak and one sided; however his technical proficiency on the piano is hard to argue with.

When you measure other classical pianists/composers like Liszt, or Rachmaninov against Chopin, he seems less creative.  Perhaps Chopin’s “tragic suffering artist” life has help his popularity to endure? That’s why I label him overrated.

Rachmaninov, eh? How does he score on your scale in originality? You know he was heavily influenced by the unoriginal Tchaikovsky and had to often defend himself by saying that if he imitated Tchaikovsky he had done so unconsciously?

If you want to try to sound as “sophisticated” as many of the art critics, you should first start by educating yourself. Most of what you’re saying here sounds quite silly.

That’s surprising, I would never have guessed Rachmaninov was heavily influenced by Tchaikovsky. To me they sound as different as night and day.

I obviously know nothing substantial about these composers, except some of their work.  So I reclassify Chopin, Tchaikovsky as composers many others like, but I don’t.  Rachmaninov is cool, but not one of my favorites.

George - 01 March 2013 07:48 AM

Also, if “overrated” means not being original, then Warhol, Pollock, and even Dalí (including his later stuff) are way underrated. To me the terms overrated and underrated are completely meaningless.

You’re right, but I’d go further—it’s all meaningless because it’s all subjective.  If we like something but it isn’t liked by a lot of other people we call it underrated,  if we don’t like something but a lot of other people like it, we call it overrated.  There is no objective criteria for art, though a lot of people waste their time trying to establish them.  It all boils down to what we like and what speaks to us as individuals.  What other people think is of little consequence except for those who would like to impose their opinions on others and either embrace people who agree with them or cast aspersions on those who disagree.  Specifically there is no good or bad art except from an individual subjective standpoint.  But many people love to think that anyone’s likes or dislikes mean something about the person or the art.  They don’t. It’s all hogwash. 

LL.

Mid-A…Since you seem to be very familiar with them, I’ll assume you know their biography. You know they were an English group that first attempted to play RnB music, and their early manager Andrew Oldham, marketed them as kind of a bad boy answer to the more clean cut and “whitebread” Beatles.

Their choice of music to cover, along with having slightly long hair, not wearing ties, and acting like lascivious hooligans made them very controversial in the staid English culture of the time. Then they came to the states and milked the same shtick to sheltered middle class American kids. This is where their originality comes into question.

The Stones didn’t invent the concept of an English group playing Blues or Rnb music - Alexis Korner, and Graham Bond did; they also stayed truer to the same black music the Stones bragged about introducing to the white audience.

Another thing, the early success of the Stones was largely based on “outrage”, something that their management came up with, and the group happily played along with. Besides, other peers of the Stones, like the Kinks, the Who, the Pretty Things were far more outrageous and rebellious then the Stones ever were - they were just not as cute, or had worse management.  Basically, they are given undue credit for many things.

Their quality of work is questionable,IMO. All of their first 10 or so studio albums have a few good songs on them (which is a notable accomplishment in itself), after that it’s quite hit and miss.

I’m somewhat familiar with their history.  I have all their albums fromTheir Majesties Satanic Request to Tattoo You.
I like their older stuff as well, but haven’t gotten around to collecting it yet.(Out of our Heads, December’s Children, Rolling Stones.)
I’m sorry but your quibbling about superfluous items above.  While I agree with you wholeheartedly about purity and roots etc…The Stones never had to sign any contract to be pure or otherwise.  What they did do was create extremely good Rock and Roll. 
I forgot another parameter: Longevity.

Doug, I really do wonder whether there is an objective standard for art.  I’d really like there to be something like one, and I think maybe there is, which is what I was trying to get at with the sunset thing, Does anyone not respond to a dramatic sunset?  But, I get really puzzled when I try to define art, or try to create it. A sunset is a little beyond me.  Still, if I’m forming a piece of steel there are curves that are right, and curves that are wrong.  I am fascinated, and utterly puzzled by the fact that I can sense this and that I care.  I don’t know if I’m so much missing something, but experiencing something I can’t define.  Oddly enough, if there is a weak link in my agnosticism, it is this problem.  It’s awful easy to be drawn to a mystical explanation.  I would hope someone has a viable evolutionary explanation.  There should be one.

I’ve developed my own sense of the difference between craft and art.  I may be far from a formal, common understanding.  It’s based on my experience that an artist is primarily centered on their own vision, or explanation, or display.  In my mind, a craftsman is a master of his trade, (something I’m not sure I’d claim), but beyond that a master at interpreting, one might say “realizing” the vision, explanation, or display of another person.  While an individual who claims to be an artist is commonly criticized for that attitude, considered a “sell out”, and might be disdained for it, I find it a complex, deeply satisfying, and honorable skill.

That may well be a sort of artistry.  If that is art, and if I were to try to define a Utopia, it would be a place where everyone could know their vocation as art.

Jeciron - 07 March 2013 04:00 PM

That may well be a sort of artistry.  If that is art, and if I were to try to define a Utopia, it would be a place where everyone could know their vocation as art.

You mean somewhat like martial arts in Eastern cultures?