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Comment by nyc111 | Hacker News Reader

Compare him to Picasso. Picasso never said "I had to pay the rent." He never considered earning money with anything other than painting. When he had no money he lived in friends' apartments. He faced and accepted poverty and hunger. Picasso did not compromise. Same with Van Gogh. Paintings on their own have no value. Buyers pay for the life story of the painters. The more heroic is your life the more expensive your paintings. Painter's job is to market himself in order to create a life mythology. This guy just painted. He did not create a myth around his life.

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The idea that there is some One True Path to becoming an Artist (as if either path or role were a consequence of universal natural law) is myth-making at its most obtuse.

Even a cursory glance at art history will show the heroic myth is anything but universal. There are tortured artists yet others who are at the peak of mental health. There are poor artists, rich ones, uncompromising artists, artists who'll sell their soul for a drink or a fuck, artists who beat their partners, those who die young, or live to a ripe old age; organised artists, yet others who can barely find their studio.

A shorthand: there's no such thing as 'an artist' (let alone a 'real artist').

There is a huge difference between "all great artists did X" and "there is nothing particularly in common between all great artists". My intuition is telling me that the truth is definitely in the middle, and if there was some way to perform a "clustering" algorithm on artist's lives/work/legacy/commercial success we would see some clear patterns emerge around certain "archetypes" or "personas" of artists, and this guy doesn't seem to fit into one.

It is natural for one’s intuition to be in the middle of one’s perception of two extremes. :)

Fair enough, you're right that there would surely be patterns. But there's no advance reason to think these would line up with popular stereotypes. PCA & factor analysis often come up with highly unintuitive components! And unless the fit was spectacular, there'd be many 'great artists' falling outside of its net, so we'd just be falling back to judging the work, not the person's life.

As a corollary, is there no such thing as 'art'? Are you someone who would you say "anything can be art"?

I think that's a far harder question! And as it has (in the West alone) at least a 2500 year intellectual history behind it that I'm only very shallowly familiar with I don't give my own thoughts much credence.

But FWIW I'd try a distinction between Art (particular local social institutions, in our case hosting oil paintings, galleries, openings, etc) and art (a superset -- all human activities spawned by the apparently perennial drive that gave rise to Art, Burrup peninsula & Lascaux rock paintings, etc).

The former is obviously culturally-historically defined; it's not so much that Art is anything that any bozo calls 'Art', but rather it's whatever the culture comes to institutionally admit as Art. Along with this comes related culturally-specific legitimating myths (heroic artists, obedient servants of the proletariat, God-drunk poets, shamanic intermediaries, etc).

The latter however seems to be an H. sapiens species characteristic. In this much wider sense, 'art' would be anything created in response to the basic drive. Sometimes Art stagnates, or gets too academic, or complex, or appeals only to a shrinking elite, or otherwise loses relevance and needs re-invigorating from the vernacular (ie. the wider category of small-a art).

Yes and no, in other words ;)

This mythology surrounding the suffering artist is pretty much a fairly modern invention. That's not to say that earlier artists didn't struggle - but it was not fetishished in the same way.

Mozart, Handel both had wealthy patrons, and made music for their use. Mozart also made quite a lot of fairly commercial music. Bach and Teleman both worked for the church.

Was Rembrandt a worse painter than Van Gogh, since he had wealthy patrons?

"He never considered earning money with anything other than painting. When he had no money he lived in friends' apartments. He faced and accepted poverty and hunger. Picasso did not compromise. Same with Van Gogh."

I'm not sure that Van Gogh is a great example of someone who never compromised or gave up.

He wanted to be a preacher, but nobody liked him. He also painted, and continued that after giving up on preaching. But nobody liked his paintings either, so he killed himself.

He's not an example I'd advise following. But your summary is an apt example of creating a story.

Even his method of death is still discussed: http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/art/news/did...

Not always, look at Jeff Koons and other more recent top artists.

Can I look at any other recent artist but Koons?

Actually Van Gogh didn’t create a myth either— that cake much later. But I still agree with your points..

"cake," you say? https://www.google.com/search?q=Van+Gogh+cake&rlz=1C1CHMO_en...

Your comment reminded me of story of Marco Pierre White before he became famous.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U-xCIstDBaI

Uncompromising, relentless, with a lot of luck too (which he completely acknowledges in the video played a big part). But luck will only find you if you put yourself out there to be found, which White did.

Thanks for this link. I didn’t know who he was. I found his story inspirational. He says some chefs are artists. This may be true but there is a fundamental difference between a chef and a fine artist such as a painter. Chef’s product is useful. He has customers. There are well-defined standards for excellence such as the Michelin stars. But what an artist produces by definition is useless. Must be useless. Otherwise it will be denigrated as “not art but illustration,” or “decoration” or “commercial.” So the problem is to find a value system for something which is useless.

What’s the mythology of Thomas Kinkades life?

I love this example.

Kinkade is considered an 'outsider artist', which is a category an artist falls in when they are successful but not cool or young, like a celebrity.

The "artist's story" being discussed in most of these comments is more like a brand. If an artist is a brand, parent's comment is supported. If an artist is a commodity of skill and intellect, parent's comment is a farce. The same goes for if an artist is a celebrity. More and more every day, successful artists must be feasible celebrities.

The overlap of artist and celebrity marks something of an end to commercial Art's intellectual integrity, which is maintained only through symbolic links such as the insistence that artists have an MFA. This requirement came about following conceptualism. For example, Rothko, who the article's subject was shown beside in the 1950s, was a middle-aged philosopher with no art school experience and a miserable origin story, which did not matter then. Note a commitment to intellect did, which was not assumed when one partook in the dealings of Madison Ave.

Contemporary art critics would like you to confuse conceptualism with abstract expressionism. Don't do it. The artist in the article exemplifies the difference.

Conceptualism is popularly defined by an incomprehensible history and a host of needless exaggerations around what an art object is. A more likely history is that conceptualism is an opportunist side effect of abstract expressionism, which was a highly intellectual and honest project. Conceptualism asks what can be art?, which simultaneously allowed artists to become their art. This uncoincidentally occurred alongside an explosion of popular obsession with celebrity. To have a good artist story is to have a story worthy of celebrity fame, which is another topic entirely. The point here is that conceptualism is not, despite popular manipulation, a legitimate or interesting art movement. It is a flash-pan quasi-philosophical excuse for quasi-intellectualism in art. Conceptualism makes the celebrity nonsense quasi-reasonable, so it was adopted as the origin story for the current contemporary Art world as a whole, which depends on notions of celebrity to compete in such a commercial society.

Note Warhol stands out for having actively subsumed Madison Ave. with his intellect, not in place of it.

That describes one very narrow and ahistorical approach to art marketing, and conceives of 'value' in purely monetary terms.

To be honest, this guys approach to creating a myth around himself seems much more compelling and unique to me. As is the (post mortem) Vivian Maier story.

Great comment.

Despite knowing several artists - I made artistic studies and used to follow the art scene - I'm yet to know a real artist. It takes a lot of courage to be one.

Could you please define what a real artist is to you? Not trying to be snide but rather really curious. This is a question coming from an engineer that sometimes has to try to be a bit artistic (and failing catastrophically) on some of his works.

If I could duplicate the work in a weekend, it isn't real art :-)

I'm not sure about that. Coming up with something new that millions of people like is the hard part. It matters not if you can duplicate it easily. Just look at Minecraft, compared to AAA games it is simple, yet its simplicity is genius.

I'm not suggesting the converse is true - just because something took a lot of effort/skill to create doesn't necessarily make it art.

Simplicity is often genius, I agree with that, but I also don't see Minecraft as a work of art.

i think your talking about “craft” not art. i dont think skill required to create is the big factor, i think its more about your choices. but i conceed that the line is blurred and there are counterexampled

Try to dissect the parent comment, is really spot on. I can't explain better. Some extra hints:

You are using the word artistic when you should use the word creative instead. An artist, sometimes, is not even the best painter, musician or sculptor. An artist is somebody that has the courage to live life trully according his way - being innovative by definition - and not to please somebody else.

Examples of artists (IMHO): Jim Morrison, Salvador Dali, Picasso, Basquiat, Paul Gauguin became one when abbandoned his life in Paris and went painting natives in Pacific islands in 19 century, probably Madonna and Michael Jackson while younger, probably Trump.. Jesus Christ..

Thanks for the comment. Replacing "artistic" with "creative" really helps. Gives the whole thing a different perspective.

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