Eddy Frankel’s article on Jack Vettriano (‘His paintings are like a double cheeseburger in a greasy wrapper’, 3 March) is full of the sort of backhanded compliments, grudging recognition and snobbish disdain that followed the Scottish painter throughout his career. For many art critics, Vettriano committed the ultimate sin of being popular with the sort of people who don’t usually “get” art. Or, as Frankel puts it, the sort of people who enjoy the occasional McDonald’s cheeseburger.
I’ve always been wary of the notion that art is better if you have to perform mental acrobatics in order to “get” it. I have been shown “good” modern art many times, and have been told why it is good – but I would not necessarily want it hanging in my home.
Vettriano’s best paintings, on the other hand, elicit feelings in people that many apparently “good” modern artworks are simply unable to provoke. Regardless of the “conceptual edge” that Frankel finds lacking in The Singing Butler, few people would deny that it is a beautiful painting. And would you rather hang a beautiful painting on your wall, or a painting whose “conceptual edge” means absolutely nothing to anybody except the artist and a handful of critics?
I imagine people will still appreciate Vettriano’s paintings in 50 years’ time – long after all memory of the “conceptually edgy” modern art that the critics would prefer we liked has faded. With the poised beauty of his paintings, Vettriano democratised art, taking it out away from the critics and placing it into the hands of everyday people. It is a sin for which many in the art world still cannot forgive him. But then maybe I just don’t “get it” like the critics do.
Ross McQueen
Brussels, Belgium
• It is 2025, yet the Guardian’s main comment on the death of Jack Vettriano appears to be that his work is “sexy”. Are we really still only appraising art through the male heterosexual gaze? Eddy Frankel concedes that Vettriano’s work is “pretty sexist”, a dismissive understatement if ever there was one. Vettriano’s work is retrograde and objectified women (women of a very narrow age bracket) in a way that is no longer acceptable.
It is no defence to claim that something is “popular”; Donald Trump can be said to be “popular”. The distasteful aesthetic of Vettriano’s work, its ability to give you a sense of unease, which Frankel does manage to allude to by describing it as “a double cheeseburger wrapped in greasy paper”, is embedded in the obvious untruths his images peddle; the scenarios in the paintings masquerade as sexy and romantic while serving up a polished turd of thinly veiled misogyny.
Tamar Payne
MA painting student, Royal College of Art
• I am perhaps one of the great unwashed. I always liked Jack Vettriano’s paintings and I have a room of his prints. I also have prints of Van Gogh’s and of Munch’s pictures, and a few originals I could afford by “undiscovered” artists. What the art world seems to forget is that it is possible to like all these at the same time. In the same way, I like Schubert and I like Boney M, albeit one is better for dancing to.
Neil Heydon-Dumbleton
Pathhead, Midlothian
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