Hacker News Reader

Comment by erwan | Hacker News Reader

I have sympathy for the author's frustration but they open-sourced their work under a very permissive license.

It sounds comical that suddenly something becomes valuable because you hang it in a gold frame, make minor modifications to it and ascribe it some symbolism. But that is exactly how contemporary artworks are done.

If you go to exhibits and auctions, it is not uncommon to see highly valued work that requires little sophistication to produce. The days you would woo the art world by technical mastery alone are (mostly) over. This story fits in the greater trend and there might be a bit of a culture clash.

I'm inclined to think that the general public underestimate contemporary art and the art world overestimate its superiority over the more conventional works. Whether it is for better or worse, I will leave you judge of that.

View on HN

> I'm inclined to think that the general public underestimate contemporary art and the art world overestimate its superiority over the more conventional works.

I really like your framing of this and agree wholeheartedly. I think it really comes from contemporary art’s focus on abstraction and meaning within context. The combination of focus on abstraction and meaning while requiring the viewer to understand the context in which a work was made makes it very inaccessible to all but those who have the time and knowledge to develop that understanding from. This makes it very inaccessible to general audiences. Alternatively, so often the depth of the meaning/context and the effectiveness of the abstraction are quite underwhelming in reality but overly celebrated by the art world.

In that case accessibility would be enhanced by the artist writing down the meaning and context. But I take it that artists are loathe to do that because they fear that explaining it would make it lose it's mystique, kind of like how explaining a joke ruins it, so you basically end up with what amounts to elaborate inside jokes. OTOH, it probably helps drive up the price when the rich buyers feel like they're part of the secret in-group.

Artists almost always write an extensive explanation of what their work means.

It's got to the point of satire:

https://artybollocks.com/generator.html

http://www.wisdomofchopra.com/

Err... the great majority of artists do no such thing. Do you have any idea of how many people do some sort of creative work as a hobby?

I disagree.

If you spent two minutes rolling some white paint on a white canvas because your "abstract message" was about the void of space, it's not profound, you're being an ass.

Conversely if you spent at least five hours stippling black spots on a white canvas in the image of some obscure shape, because you had a concept in your head, and it took a considerable amount of effort, THAT is a profound piece of work.

The art world isn't full of bohemians with time and knowledge who've developed understanding of abstractness. It's full of pretentious, bored, rich people. Huge difference.

> if you spent at least five hours ... and it took a considerable amount of effort, THAT is a profound piece of work.

Got it. work >= 5hrs == TRUE REAL PROFOUND ART, work < 5hrs == UTTER GARBAGE PRETENTIOUS BULLSHIT.

Art is purely expression. It doesn't matter how long it takes you to express what you're expressing. Pollock may have just splattered painting on a canvas. But it was still a true expression. John Cage made a composition where the orchestra doesn't play any notes. But it's still an expression.

And an expression can be boring and trite, and we can judge it for being such.

The fact that rich people are willing to pay for some bland expression does not confer anything but monetary value to it. It doesn't become less garbage.

"Art is what you can get away with" – Andy Warhol

And an expression can be boring and trite, and we can judge it for being such.

Sure, but that in itself doesn't make it any less art. Saying "I find this art boring and trite and consider it garbage" is fine. Saying "I find this boring and trite and thus it's garbage and not art" is in my opinion not a valid argument.

Pollack made beautifully balanced chaotic patterns, not merely spilled paint.

Cage made a recording of an audience waiting for music. The audience was the work, not the orchestra.

What part do you disagree with? It sounds like you're agreeing fervently with the parent & GP comments...

That said, effort isn't generally what makes or breaks art, either in the gallery / collector world, nor among artists. Very, very few stippled paintings that took more than 5 hours of work are considered profound in any way. It's been done already.

Maybe you meant to imply skill, but skill isn't that important to art history either. Somewhat important, perhaps, but not generally in the top 3. Concept and narrative and novelty and luck all outweigh effort and skill, even among unpretentious skilled poor artists.

> The art world isn't full of bohemians... it's full of pretentious, bored, rich people.

I'd be careful to qualify that statement. There are lots more poor artists than rich people. When you say "the art world", if you're talking about Christie's and Sotheby's, then yes there are rich people. My personal "art world" is full of artists, and I don't pay attention to the stuff the auction houses are auctioning.

> The art world isn't full of bohemians with time and knowledge who've developed understanding of abstractness. It's full of pretentious, bored, rich people. Huge difference.

That's something one might conclude about the "art world" if their only impression of it is from hearing about high profile auctions of weird paintings sold for hundreds of thousands of dollars, which fits nicely in the general "rich people do the darnedest things" category of trivial news. Sure, someone with the right name can probably spit in a napkin and buy a car for the money, but in my experience this is a minority overwhelmed by people that can't even support themselves with their art, much less justify the cost of enjoying expensive works of art anywhere but in a gallery.

I know many artists with vastly different approaches to expression, none of which are rich, most of which also have to work day jobs to make ends meet. I don't think any of them would regard a white-painted canvas as particularly interesting.

made makes it very inaccessible to all but those who have the time and knowledge to develop that understanding

Most halfway decent art galleries and museums are pretty good at providing very readable summaries of the exhibits they're putting on. Spending just 10-15 minutes reading the introductory text the museum provides is often all the background knowledge you need to gain a much greater, if not appreciation, then at least understanding, of what you are looking at.

Robbie had first mover advantage to enter the art world but apparently chose not to, or was less successful. The general story of most tech is that the original creators are too focused on their work to identify how to wrap it up for profit.

IIRC, isn't art used as a tax dodge these days? That and a giant influx of money from countries that don't historically buy a lot of art (e.g. China)

How exactly would buying art work as a tax dodge?

https://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=114622...

An interesting video on free ports https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vsA_L1t4vXY

I know in France, there was a "solidarity tax on wealth" which was a yearly tax on assets over 1.3million euros. Artwork was exempt from this. This changed in the end of last year and I think it's just based on real estate now.

YC actually funded a company that does art investments! Arthena, YC W17. Not sure about tax stuff but it's definitely becoming popular as way to make safe investments, given that paintings by well-established (dead) artists don't tend to lose value.

https://arthena.com/

You know, arts and bitcoins are alike in this way.

What highly valued work that requires little sophistication to produce have you seen at exhibits and auctions?

Fountain (The Urinal) by Marcel Duchamp. He didn't make the urinal. He found it, decided it was good enough, and got it into an exhibit. There you go.

I think there is an important difference between art that people will go to see in a gallery, museum, or in public, and art that is bought at auction. I have no interest in seeing AI generated paintings either at home or in a gallery, but I would go to an art museum specifically to see Fountain by Duchamp. Fountain encourages people to appreciate the world around them by taking an everyday readymade and probably overlooked object and placing it in a gallery where they can see it more fully.

What's fun about Fountain is the the original has been lost, so you can only see a, "recreation" of it. Since it was initially just a found object of a mass-produced item, this wasn't a problem - but still, Duchamp could sanction "official" replicas.

Ah, love it.

Also fountains usually have some sort of water works going on. Could be that Duchamp was asking people to piss on the Readymade! I'm sure a few have.

Erased de Kooning is a much more obvious example. The artist erased a drawing from another artist, resulting in a mostly blank piece of white paper.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Erased_de_Kooning_Drawing

Reply on news.ycombinator.com