Flibbertigibbet

I consider myself an Objectivist, but I've always disagreed with the stance most o'ists take on art. The Jack Vettriano is pleasant looking, boring and completely devoid of anything provocative. It is decorative art—at least as far as I’m concerned. It belongs on the wall of a dentist's waiting room. I’m personally not fond of the Van Gogh either, and say what you will about it, but it is no more or less legitimate as fine art than the Veltriano. Artists don’t leave instruction books for their art—it’s left up to the viewer to evaluate it, so I don’t accept the idea that art can be objectively good or bad. It just is. I work in an art gallery, so I have to see art I don’t like regularly. Nonetheless the art, good or bad, reminds me on a daily basis that the human capacity for creativity is boundless, so in that sense its all good.

I'm not making a claim about the value Vettriano's work in this post, although I do enjoy some of his work. Others, like the example from the email, I, like you, find them rather boring.

The distinction in the two considered here is the at least Vettriano's work has content to evaluate.

Assuming that other picture is vines and flowers, we could say things about his choice of vines and flowers, but without greater context, it'd be difficult to say much more above simply stating the fact that it's vines and flowers. (This is mostly what I think about all those Dutch still life paintings, actually.)

The Vettriano painting contains people dressed in a certain way, placed in a certain landscape, doing a certain thing. And it's all painted in a certain style. We could say a fair amount about how these elements are portrayed and extrapolate a theme from it.

I'm not a huge fan of van Gogh, either, but again to evaluate it objectively we simply have to look at the information we're given, which is everything inside the frame. I do not make the claim that van Gogh's work isn't art because it contains recognizable elements that we can evaluate. We have to assume that the artist did what they did on purpose and then we can but ask "why?"

I will, however, challenge the idea that Jackson Pollock's paint splatters are High Art, however, for the same reason: it lacks anything recognizable to evaluate. It is, at best, decoration.

Again: you can use high art as decoration, but you cannot use decorative art as high art. So, simply because you find Vettriano dull doesn't mean that it lacks content for evaluation. It may very well be insipid, derivative, boring and decent only for a waiting room wall. I'm sure you have good reasons for thinking that. I know I do.