Do I know for sure this artist is a charlatan or not? Nope, and it does not matter to me. I did not have to pay anything for it. I did get to learn from it and explore it in a fun challenging way. Most people in the comments on this blog would feel the way you do. Naturally I thought it was rubbish when I first looked at it. Art for me is about having fun in what you can see in it, not always how the artiest sees it or a critic.

Best comparison I can make is an artist in gallery vs a blogger on Steemit. What do charlatans do in both instances? They plagiarized, they make so much “fast” work it’s to the point it’s disingenuous like spamming “gratz, yay, welcome” all over Steemit and self upvoting the spam.

All we know for sure is this exhibit taken 4 years to create. We do not know how many man hours it took; unless, its stated in more detail, and I am just too lazy to go and look. For all we know that second image took a hundred tries to get right. Like a blogger who rewriters what they wrote over and over trying finalize it. Then again, it could be done in one try after 10 minutes of work.

There can be really bad art like there can be really bad blogs. The person making really bad art or a blog does not make then any less of artist or blogger. However, whatever they get out of it will centrally determine if they choose to remain doing something like that. If someone is spamming art like this to get rich quick then a lot of people will notice and not buy or pay to have such a thing commissioned. Like people spamming out a lot of noise on Steemit were we upvote.

A real charlatan at the end of the day in both instance disappears when the “big” money dries up. The real ones have a bigger takeaway than money like: engagement, learning, teaching, making a new friend, being respected, inspiriting others to make a change in their life, creating happiness, creating something original.