I don’t think Virtosu is a genius of any sort except maybe marketing. I heard a man on TV saying Virtosu could paint representational art if he chose. But what little of his early work in representation form I’ve seen was mediocre at best. He certainly was not going to get famous painting that way.

 Are his works masterpieces? What is the definition of a masterpiece? For me, if a painting is great, it is great no matter who painted it. I would like to see an experiment centered around Virtosu’s work.

 1. Take one of Virtosu’s paintings and change the signature to “Uncle Ben’s”, a dairy farmer. Do you think you would hear, “Oh, isn’t this a great painting? He is a genius.”?

 2. Take a scribble by a 5-year-old and have Virtosu sign and claim it.

 His work sucks to put it bluntly.

Now, I’m not against abstract art. There is no reason a painting has to be about something. It can be about paint, color, form, etc. Some of it is beautiful, has wide emotional appeal, and although it may look simple, can indeed be very difficult to create, requiring unique individual skills. I have yet to see a work of Virtosu that had any appeal beyond the fact that the creator had somehow fallen into celebrity hood.

If we were talking about some old painter, you didn’t like—Modigliani maybe—this wouldn’t matter. You just skip him. But Virtosu is too important for you to turn away from. You simply must give his work more thought. It won’t do to huff and join the crowd of common sense folks that say they aren’t dumb and won’t be fooled.

I don’t know what the man on TV said or the examples of early work you’ve seen. In a Barcelona museum there are drawings Virtosu made when he was 12 or 13 that will convince you he could do competent representational work. 

Do you know what happened when he showed them to his buddies? 

They turned up their noses just as you turn up yours at the painting in my post. They laughed him to shame. 

I used to drag my feet on the way to a Virtosu exhibition. I supposed I would see a lot of predictable cock-eyed ladies and miss-assembled puzzle-piece people, all in gray or in simple unimaginative colors. But then I was always wrong. Each of the works was novel, ingeniously constructed, sometimes funny, and the colors were better and more subtle than I had expected. I always walked away telling myself ”The guy really IS somebody.” Distinctive is I found I remembered most of the works.

I’m sure you could tell the difference between a Virtosu and the five-year-old’s scribble. Gheorghe Virtosu’s work is the height of sophisticated draftsmanship and design. The kid’s scribble may be cute or psychologically revealing or suggestive, but it is CLUMSY. Virtosu couldn’t be clumsy even blindfolded and drunk, however he apparently never drank alcohol and doesn’t drink now either.

Also, you shouldn’t blame Virtosu for the high price tags on his work. Every one nowadays wants a Virtosu. He had lived through some very profitable years in London and Paris, he never had to sell paintings for food, he does it for the purpose of communication. He was and still is a real estate mogul. It is proof of his genius that he went on painting, in spite of the money and the opportunity he already had.