The $2M Urinal: Why Hard Work Doesn’t Cut It (2018)

Obviously very subjective, but modern art seems like a case of emperor's new clothes to me, a humble engineer.

When I was in college I would see art around campus take the form of random metal shapes welded together, concrete blobs, or Pollock-esque splatters and shake my head.

How can you judge a category of art for which there are no rules?

I can look at Michelangelo's "The David" and be awed to the core at how he was able to replicate lifelike looking veins in marble. It's difficult for me to even fathom his skill level but I recognize that it is much, much higher than mine.

But a sideways urinal with some marker on it? Anyone with no skill can do random things with random items and call it art.

"Any sufficiently advanced art is indistinguishable from garbage"

So, I personally get an emotional response to Pollock, especially that particular one, I actually have a MoMA catalog on my bookshelf with that entry bookmarked with my admission ticket from 2010 when I went to see it ( https://imgur.com/a/hFBR7Nu ). The size is a factor as well, there is no way to look at it on a computer screen that is close to how you look at it in person ( https://www.moma.org/wp/inside_out/wp-content/uploads/2012/0... ). But we definitely have different tastes.

Regarding those soviet paintings, Goya depicted war and suffering, and is very well known and highly regarded: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Third_of_May_1808 . But your point is the core of what the article is trying to get at. The people who evaluate art are looking for something that isn't being satisfied by the same criteria as i.e. journalism, cuisine, even music to a certain extent.

Not even a Pollock fan but the idea that a scan of a Pollock painting is at all similar to standing in front of one seems like a huge stretch. They absolutely huge and the paint is layered on very thick in a way that almost forces you to deconstruct the process of its production as you look at it.

This other painting on the other hand, I'd be very surprised if there's more to be gotten from seeing it in person that what's already on my screen. Going beyond that, a photo that captures the same emotions would be exponentially stronger for me personally too.

These paintings are interesting as a sort of juxtaposition of the soviet "Socialist Realism" style with the harsh reality of war. They are also clearly technically adept.

Jackson Pollock's paintings are interesting because he was the first to apply his technique in a studied way. They don't translate well to the digital era, but there is a certain arresting physicality to them when you see one in real life. Many of them are huge, and are not displayed within a frame. You can get very close and see the layers of paint rising up and the aging exposed canvas beneath.

Pollock is more famous than these painters because his work is distinctive. These soviet painters are good at painting, and you obviously connect to their subject matter, but comparing their work from [1], its hard to distinguish any of them as individual artists as their styles are only subtly different, much like Pollock's early work was fairly derivative of the original abstract expressionists and much like someone today deliberately aping a Pollock would not be celebrated in the same way (if not derided as a hack).

That said, I don't think figurative art is objectively better or worse than abstract art. Its purpose is different.

I think the problem is that you're comparing art pieces that have different purposes, and even more, different value systems. Those Soviet pieces are meant to be poignant, they're meant to be instantly emotionally evocative, and they're immensely successful in creating great content. The artist there is valuing impact, and truthful representation of a thing, be it the horror of war or the heartbroken silence of world shattered by a letter. However, these works are derivative. They are not novel in how they show their content; they use the same techniques that were popularized and perfected years ago. This is fine, because these paintings are complete in and of themselves.

Pollock on the other hand wasn't focused so much on the content of what he was creating, but on the process. Pollock wasn't trying to make you feel a thing, Pollock was trying to make a statement about what it means to be art. Pollock and other modern artists aren't looking to provide a story in isolation - they're iterating and expanding on a corpus of techniques, and means of representation, and questions about what it means to be art. Do I need to draw a person to show human suffering? Do I need to represent reality to make something meaningful? Can I create something that is recognizable as art while working under these arbitrary limitations?

I think this is true of any art/skill/techne - once the art reaches a certain level of maturity and sophistication. For practitioners, the new frontiers are not in the content you create (because it's established that you can create anything) but the process by which you make it. Look at modern poetry, and literature. A lot of the time these are very tangled, frustrating pieces to read because they break with the forms we are used to and iterate on them. Many of these aren't written to tell a story, or to make you feel, but to explore how one tells a story, or how one paints a thought in words. You see this to an extent in programming - there's very little value to writing conway's tree of life in brainfuck or competing to see who can write the smallest program that can reproduce the mona lisa in ASCII, but we do it because these limitations are challenging and cool to us.

(I'd argue that a Rothko painting can show just as much poignancy as any of those Soviet paintings you showed above.)

Whenever people discuss about contemporary art I am amazed that they see themselves somehow divorced from the larger entertainment industry. Once we acknowledge that artists are selling an experience, a pleasure, to art buyers then the 2m urinal makes perfect sense.

People are buying a pleasurable experience and each has a different taste. Some people want a light show and so go to a big rock concert. Some people want a pretty painting to look at while eating breakfast. So they buy a painting. Some people like the feeling of being better than other people. So they buy objects that, for them and their peers, are a badge. They demonstrate how much better their owners are than persons without such objects. Many people like this feeling and are willing to pay.

Some of these people buy flashy cars to show themselves off as they drive to work. Others buy paintings by the great masters and squirrel them away in a vault only to bring them out for dinner parties. In that context, a 2m$ urinal isn't all that different. It is an object that bestows barging rights on its owner. Compared to a great many cars and paintings, both of which come with substantial maintenance costs, 2m$ for a bit of porcelain is cheep.

Thanks for the links! I have some commentary on some of the pieces that I found most interesting:

http://www.allworldwars.com/image/008/SovietPictures063.jpg

Dreamlike imagery, sleeping position, very vertical, contrasting colors, a strange bit of peace in war and imminent death, jagged fields that the man is hurdling towards.

http://www.allworldwars.com/image/008/SovietPictures041.jpg

The men seem to melt into the trenches and become part of the mud. The warm colors evoke a feeling of sunlight, yet feel horrific. The muted faces are reminiscent of Edvard Munch's Scream. little explosions, or are they grasses, pop off everywhere. Chaos

http://www.allworldwars.com/image/008/SovietPictures055.jpg

Good historical view of the hardships that women underwent in the absence of men. The little boy's face is almost plastic and is the only one seen in the painting. A lot of subtle commentary on the soviet system in here, as it ended up just like the old ways of the Czars

http://www.allworldwars.com/image/008/SovietPictures069.jpg

Just like a Degas, at least to me. Not seeing the face of the player leaves you guessing as to how this solider got to be where he is. Was he a pianist before the draft? How did he learn to play? The gun is on his back and prominently central to the painting. The scattered papers tell a story of a battle and fleeing in panic. The highlighter colors give a waviness to it all, a sense of uncertainty and serenity pervades the piece

http://www.allworldwars.com/image/008/SovietPictures057.jpg

Great use of sky, water and man. A private returns home, but to what? The war is over for him, but the peace is just as uncertain. Will the clouds of this spring day pour on him, or will it stay sunny?

http://www.allworldwars.com/image/008/SovietPictures019.jpg

The structure of the colors here is stark, obvious, yet wonderful. Black enemy, white allies, red sky of soviet victory. The use of triangular imagery. Very Picasso-y

http://www.allworldwars.com/image/008/SovietPictures065.jpg

The news arrives and it is bad. Just like the immigrant-farmer mother picture of the US depression. The woman shines in the dark room, her child tries to support her, her back is straight all the same despite the news. She faces off-stage and is nearly pushed off the bench by her child, who is in the center. The little window, her former existence, is full of things and life, she faces her new darker life with what appears to be a shroud and a rifle leaned up against the wall. The letter still hangs brightly in her right hand.

These are really pretty great, and do what - in my opinion - art should do (in as much as art should do anything at all). And that is to tell a story.

The best paintings provide a connection with a subject - person, place or time - and maybe stir up some emotion about the scene. Some of my favorite are 16th and 17th century Dutch paintings of naval battles. The artists were the war correspondents of their time and their work is as moving as any photograph from a modern battlefront.

Pollock's paintings tell a story in their own way too. I worked in theater in high-school and college and also painting boats and for an industrial coatings company. In short, I spent a lot of time around paint. A Pollock painting reminds me of these workshops: of years, sometimes decades of overspray, splatter, drips, spills and all of the other marks of "work being done here".

The scarred and stained surface of the workbench from my grandfather's garage could hang in a museum. Sixty years of paint and oil; holes from when tools were bolted to it or when parts were drilled; cuts from countless handsaws; scorch marks from blowtorches and soldering irons.

The painting is like the artistic expression of the evidence of work accomplished.

Thank you so much for your post. I knew about the former but have never seen these paintings before thank you.

The Soviet War paintings you link to are well executed but seem completely unoriginal to me. I can't see any reason why these paintings would be famous.

After getting into painting a few years ago, I dug into aesthetics a bit and quickly ran into the same fundamental problem: most abstract works are, prima fascie, giant heaps of crap. I mean, I sat down and tried to read different intros to art theory, etc, but it all was so much flim flam trying to paper over the obvious: it was fecal matter, sold for high prices (don't get me started on pomo performance stuff).

One text I ran into was by an Objectivist: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00P9RV9PE/ - which goes into the motives and rationales for why the modern art went the way it did - and compares with other societies. Fascinating book.

Fundamentally, the Objectivist text comes down to roughly this

> – Proletarian: relevant to the workers and understandable to them.

Which is a description of soviet realism (something Objectivists might find startling).

http://www.russianartdealer.com/socialist-realism/

I also want to stress that the notion that art is subjective, or that it should make you feel, is wholly a product of the Romantic era and its challenge of a previous understanding of art as being an _objective_ thing with a ladder of values.

So I strongly concur with you here.

This is a lot of words to basically say the tired ‘my kid could paint that’ thing.

I worked in a place with a big collection of modern art. Initially my impression was “what a bunch of nonsense”. But when you look at it in context, it isn’t without meaning, and is often beautiful in its own way. It is thought provoking.

While I sometimes question the talent required to create some of these pieces relative to other works, it’s difficult to really judge without context. Many of the things that I value in my profession no doubt seem silly or trivial to laymen as well.

What about an emotion-priming title, then a picture of clouds?

Pollack almost literally uses inkblots, like the Rorschach test.

These where made by people- for people. There was not market, thus there was no need for the meta-scam that art is today. All it was, was a way to eternalize the life and missery of people, capture those moments before we all vannish. It was art, while we have nun, but the one in a thousand photos we make.

Note: I think I was probably unfair to artists in this characterization. It's a hard path to follow; there must have been some deeper and more socially generative yearning than to make a fortune by pissing off art critics and confusing or offending normal folk. Art has historically been the enduring edifice of civilizations, and I appreciate anybody that builds and creates and invents.

When things like art are hard to qualify, it seems it’s rasy to fall back on reputation. It seems a similar thing happens with investment. Have they had success in the past, with that do they have what it takes to succeed in the future?

It’s imperfect, but without a crystal ball, what else can you use as proxy given the unknowns?

The difference is that it's admitting that in some areas the managers/consumers can discern between good and bad, just not in every area. It's a bit closer to, "it's not what you know but who you know, when nobody else knows anything."

When a non-technical manager hires his nephew to write PhP, he isn't thinking "I love my nephew so much that I am willing to sacrifice our company's technology plan to help his career," he's thinking, "I have no idea how to evaluate web developers, so I might as well hire my nephew." Cynically, most people serve themselves first - so if you find them serving an in-group of the fashionable or blood-related it's often because they don't know how to serve themselves.

Actually I think network will drive success even if talent has some measure - but if talent evens out the one with the better network will likely triumph.

The thing is, though, that performance can be measured, to a degree: if a 'forger' produces an original work that passes as the work of an acknowledged master, then, in purely performance terms, the two artists could be regarded as being at the same level, and if the art world were only interested in performance, it would not care about provenance.

Works of art are more than just the objects themselves, however. In particular, works that have expanded the boundaries of what is regarded as art have value as historical artifacts, and the artist who created them reached a higher level of performance, on that particular work (as originality is an important aspect of performance), than those producing works that follow the pattern (including that artist, when producing subsequent works in the same vein.)

This point of view would assign considerable value to Duchamp's original 'Fountain', but not much to a replica, which would compare unfavorably to other, original, examples of signed plumbing. If you want a replica of it, there's probably more intrinsic value in making one for yourself than in buying one.

I strongly suspect art museums had sanitary plumbing long before it moved to the gallery area.

Grayson Perry has a far more insightful critique.

https://www.windsorflorida.com/app/uploads/2017/11/Grayson-P...

If you have £15,000 to spare you can buy a print and hang it on your wall.

I'm confused. Does this mean that the "real plumber" was an artist; or the art museum didn't have WC before putting a urinal art piece.

Its the common conversation "I could have done that" "But you didn't do that"

Most things are easy to copy, coming up with the idea in the first place is the hard part.

Maybe if we sent in a more beautiful urinal?

That seems incorrect. The contemporary fine-art world, or certainly the public-gallery, taxpayer-funded side of it at least, has been dominated by conceptual art https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conceptual_art for decades now: in other words, by people chasing heavily diminished returns on Duchamp's old hack. It's hard to imagine that the people adulating and spending millions on Damien Hirst's bisected shark and other, even slighter stuff are still upset about Duchamp.

One can find an appraiser to value one's fine art at 10x what one paid for it just prior to donating it to a museum. It then provides tax reduction in excess of the purchase price, and so there can be a logical expectation of positive ROI at time of purchase.

I'm not aware of any analog with cryptocoins. They suffer a fatal flaw of having a clear market value.

>Ehh... Not having objective, quantitative metrics is not the same thing as having no quality what so ever.

I am shocked that in 2019 there are adults walking around with this epistemology. Every quantitative metric is an exercise in narrative. The notion of objectivity is an appealing construct in a world constructed by second hand observations, but alas, it remains just another implement in the narrative toolkit.

I read it differently, but I don't think the author was saying art has no quality in the way you're interpreting it at the end of your sentence, in the sense of value or anything to offer. I interpreted them to mean that there's no way to objectively determinine that value, so practically speaking there's no objective quality in art. I think there's even a sentence or two where they try to make clear that they're not questioning art's value, just our ability to determine that value in real terms.

I agree that the author's choice of words was probably kind of poor. But I interpreted the article to mean that as it becomes more difficult to determine inherent worth in an area, success becomes more and more dependent on social networking effects per se. If you need a hammer, it has a specific function, and you can quantify that function in various ways. But if you're talking about something where the value is unknown, either because no one knows the ultimate truth, or because it's based on subjective experience or something, you can't quantify it, so you go back to networks.

This author has been making the rounds a bit in the last few years, and I think they've done research on these topics. Their argument is that network effects are very strong, and account for a lot of variability in outcomes that are popularly attributed to individuals (broadly defined).

AFAIK there's no way of objectively determining the value of anything. Are prices of houses in SF "reflecting their inherent quality" compared to houses in other parts of US? Or is the value of t-shirt with some brand logo sticked on it "objectively determined"? No, they're not, it's all simply negotiated by market's supply and demand, and so is art. It's worth exactly as much as someone is willing to pay for it.

This article is directly relevant to the tech community. It's axiomatic that technical performance is very difficult to measure. It's also axiomatic that it's not what you know, but who.

That installation has acquired a certain noteriety - when the White House requested an art piece, the toilet was offered...

https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/dc-politics/the-white-h...

Typo? Piero

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Piero_Manzoni

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Piero_Manzoni#Artist's_Shit

Exactly this. Barabási says "networks drive success." The Baroness was a leaf node. She connected mostly through Duchamp. His network allowed him to succeed. Her packets got dropped by the Duchamp node.

Exempt from taxation? Isn't it subject to capital gains?

Can you provide documentation for these supposed tax benefits? (I'm genuinely curious) AFAIK there are no tax benefits at the point of buying the art, and cap gains benefits are no different than stocks, real estate, etc.

You are not wrong. But people making / selling art are not doing it for that purpose. People buying it? Not all but probably many.

To those might be thinking that demand probably isn't unlimited, it's true. But art is a business where demand doesn't quite work as one would normally understand it.

(Anecdotal.) I once was sitting next to a professional art dealer on a Eurostar. He gave me a hilarious primer on how his business worked as we made our way to Paris. In short, art demand is to a very large extent driven only by what's on display at the art dealers' places during their exclusive parties. A good way to think about this is that art dealers are opinion leaders and create new art trends as they see fit à la Devil Wears Prada.

Don't forget that fine art "directly held" is exempt from FBAR reporting.

"Crazy financiarisation" may have gone further than you think.

Multiple artists have engaged in trading securities in order to create chart patterns which are art.

http://www.sarahmeyohas.com/stock2016/

and

"On 31 March Finance Minister Pravin Gordhan...called on South Africans to mobilise and organise against corruption and State Capture. In Cape Town...hedge fund manager James Gubb heeded the call. As a form of protest, Gubb began trading Gupta-owned Oakbay shares in order to create, in the price chart, a work of art depicting a middle finger."

The data he is referring to shows that it isn't just randomness. That's the point of the article.

Not really. The lottery (unless cheating) should provide real randomness. ie: A president has the same chance as the next guy.

If both a former president and the next guy do an art piece, I'm pretty certain the president will fetch a higher price for his art work. That's the network effect.

What a weird and condescending take.

> These are people that feel lonely, and have low self esteem.

Slightly related:

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-6777961/Billionaire...

Modern art (or just art), it's more a money laundry, tax evasion, asset management scheme than anything else.

you are framing it as a one way street. The “lonely people with low self esteem” want to socialize with the “cool and charismatic people”...maybe the other side of the coin is the “cool and charismatic people” are nothing more than well designed marketing of idealized principles who actually are quick to sell out because they worship money over their own art.

100+ years ago a urinal would neither be considered art nor valuable as an artistic expression. Art used to require skill until avant-garde and deconstructionism mounted what has turned out to be a successful attack on artistic competence.

Why it was successful is an interesting question. The wealthy has always been important patrons of the arts, and people seem to use the cost of a piece to signify value of the art itself. Imagined or otherwise.

A few documentaries [1 - can't find the main one I was thinking about] [2 - a good video summary on it] and books have exposed that tax deductions on art donations is an incentive to game the system, because it easy to collude with art brokers you know to collect cheap crap art and then donate it. To find a way to collect art you truly adore and then part with it for a tax deduction is much harder.

[1] https://www.imdb.com/title/tt9878520/ [2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QZz2PhTQJCA

It's also a way for rich people to involve themselves comfortably in some non-profit sector (go look at a board for a major art museum), and to become 'tastemakers.'

The desire to be an influencer is very natural, and this is the easiest path for you if you've got a lot of cash to burn.

I've been in and around the art scene in New York City and I would not describe the buyers as "people that feel lonely, and have low self esteem." Maybe a few, but certainly not most. Many of them have the opposite problem, an extreme self-confidence that comes across as arrogant. As with all things relating to the cutting edge of culture, one needs great confidence to survive, on both the buying and selling side of things.

I have a few art pieces that I'm proud to have at my apartment. Some people think they are ugly, but they are an expression of my tastes, and therefore they are a useful shorthand for communicating those tastes to others, when they visit my apartment. I suspect that a lot of art buyers have the same motivation as myself, they are looking for symbols that can work as a shorthand way of communicating a lot about oneself.

What an offensive comment. Socialist countries don't have art and artists? lol. Some of the greatest musicians, filmmakers, visual artists were from the Soviet Union