Romero Britto and Romero-Britto-ization

Once, I was at a bar on Augusta Street with a friend. We had drunk ourselves silly when a group at the next table started talking about Romero Britto.

They were saying he was a “surface designer,” that his art was extremely commercial, and that anyone could replicate it. That a five-year-old could do what he does. That everything looked the same. One of them said he had read interviews with Romero Britto and found the guy boring, someone who had nothing to say and couldn't hold a conversation.

I listened to all that and thought: I neither like nor dislike Romero Britto.

I think his art is cool. Cheerful. Different. Recognizable.

I've seen a few of his interviews, and sure enough, he always seems to give the same kind of answer: “I just want to make my art.” And honestly, what's the problem with that?

Romero Britto is one of the most commercially successful artists. He sells works for enormous sums, has a team producing pieces in the style he created, and has put his visual language on products, umbrellas, wrapping paper, labels, objects, and even supermarket bags.

And I think that's brilliant.

Maybe precisely because he's managed to do something that looks simple.

He makes drawings that a five-year-old could do.

And that's exactly what's hardest: creating something so simple, so recognizable, and so commercially successful that millions of people can look at it and immediately know who made it.

What catches my attention is that a lot of adults look at this and say:

“A child could do that.”

And I think:

Then why didn't you do it first?

Because maybe the problem isn't the simplicity of the work.

Maybe it's the fact that someone else figured out that simplicity could be worth millions.

There are two things about Romero Britto that I don't like.

The first is the price.

I would never pay the price of a house for one of his works. Given my means and what I personally think a piece of art is worth, I might buy one. But at some point, the price stops being about the artwork and starts being about the market, the signature, rarity, and status.

I could have a Romero Britto on my wall.

I just wouldn't pay what people say it's worth.

The second thing that bothers me is that he doesn't seem to evolve.

He found a formula, and he sticks with it.

It's a kind of instant-noodle-ization of art: you find a formula that works, add hot water, wait three minutes, and it's ready.

But then I think:

What does that have to do with me?

If the guy is happy, sells his work, has a job, employs people, lives well, and keeps doing exactly what he wants to do, that's his business.

“If it ain't broke, don't fix it.”

Who am I to tell him he should change?

What bothers me more are the pseudo-art critics.

The ones who need to turn every painting into a doctoral dissertation.

A work of art can't simply be beautiful, ugly, strange, interesting, or boring.

No.

There has to be an explanation.

“The composition establishes a dialectical relationship with the dematerialization of the thing as an object of representation...”

And everyone looks at the painting and nods:

“Yes, yes. Of course.”

Nobody understands a damn thing, but nobody wants to be the first to admit it.

I remember that case involving David Bowie and the writer who created a fictional artist whose work was presented as real. People began analyzing it, praising it, writing about the artist, developing interpretations, and even creating a biography for someone who didn't exist.

And that was precisely the joke.

The work didn't need to be good.

It needed to be endorsed.

Once the hoax was exposed, it became clear how much some people were more interested in appearing intelligent in front of art than in actually looking at the art itself.

And that makes me think of Van Gogh.

Not his work, which I think is wonderful, but the way some people talk about it.

You hear a curator explaining that Van Gogh used a particular color during a particular period to express a particular emotional condition, within a particular phase of his life.

Everything has meaning.

Everything is a symbol.

Everything is a concept.

Sometimes I imagine Van Gogh painting at three in the morning, trying to finish the canvas, looking at his palette and realizing he's run out of the color he wanted.

He looks at the painting.

Looks at the paint.

And thinks:

“Ah, screw it, this'll do. Fuck it.”

And keeps painting.

Maybe that's exactly what happened.

Maybe not.

But I like the possibility.

Because there's something that bothers me about the way we talk about art: the need to turn every gesture by an artist into a brilliant, conscious decision.

Sometimes the artist simply did it.

Sometimes they experimented.

Sometimes they made a mistake.

Sometimes they liked the mistake.

Sometimes they ran out of paint.

Sometimes they were tired.

Sometimes they just wanted to get it finished.

And sometimes a choice made almost by accident ends up becoming part of what someone, decades later, will call “a fundamental chromatic phase in the artist's body of work.”

I would own a Van Gogh.

I'd own a Romero Britto.

I'd own works by many artists I admire.

But I wouldn't necessarily pay the prices the market has assigned to them.

I'd pay an amount that made sense to me and that would also allow the artist to keep working, painting, and making a living.

Because in the end, maybe that's what really matters.

The artist making art.

And the artist being able to keep making art.

The rest — the market, the millionaires, the critics, the pseudo-critics, and the fancy words — can keep arguing about whether it's “the reification of the thing” while the guy is over there, simply painting.

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