Pablo Picasso's version of refactoring: Reducing a drawing to 12 perfect pen strokes | Hacker News Reader

Pablo Picasso's version of refactoring: Reducing a drawing to 12 perfect pen strokes

artyfactory.com

39 pointsedw51926 comments

that it captures the absolute essence of the creature in as concise an image as possible

No, it doesn't. It looks like crap. A bull without the massive bullhead is no longer a bull, but some freaky artist's conceit attached to a declaration, "This is a bull." The fact that he changed the pene so wildly between pictures is a hint that he's playing a joke on us.

Here are some superior, simple bull pictures:

http://www.doublevisionarts.com/images/Boxenbaum/Bull%20seri...

http://www.kshdevelopment.com/DaliPictures/Dali's%20Bullfigh...

You're reading the commentator back into the artist. When I see the series I see it as a commentary on reductionism with an element of humor and absurdity.

A lot of times people get so caught up in the pretension associated with "serious" art that they ignore that it's often supposed to be funny. I remember getting scowled at once at the symphony for laughing at loud at a certain point that was (for the musically inclined) obviously a joke.

Verdi Spoiler Alert

In Verdi's Simon Boccanegra at Covent Garden this past spring, Fiesco says "Simone, I morti ti salutano!" -- "Simon, the [previously-thought] dead salute you!".

To the classically minded, it's a riff on the gladitorial salute to the Roman emperor "Nos te morituri te salutant" -- we who are about to die salute you.

Takeaway lesson: only date people who laugh as much at Latin jokes as you do.

The point here is the process of reduction. To compare this sequence with any single (however pretty) finished picture is missing the point.

He is not "playing a joke on you", he is having fun with exploring the process of perception and the steps from illustration to symbol.

I think that the analogy between Picasso's process and software refactoring is rather weak. We generally consider refactored code to be better and less crufty than the original (one would hope!) But the refactored bull isn't necessarily "better" than the original. It's simply more abstract, and not merely more abstract in a purely functional way. The final result is still highly stylized and instantly recognizable as the work of Picasso.

What might be usefully applied to programming is that in abstracting the bull to its minimalistic essence, Picasso illuminates the bull's underlying structure. Perhaps by removing code we can also get a clearer idea of the fundamental workings of a system. ;)

That's a lithograph, not a sketch as the title would suggest. All of those were actually made by adding material back to the carving.

Here's a better article on the process:

http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m1248/is_n3_v81/ai_136...

Great article! This quote makes me grateful for version control:

Indeed, Picasso seems to have put into practice here an idea he had expressed a few months earlier when speaking of one of his paintings: "If it were possible, I would leave it as it is, while I began over and carried it to a more advanced state on another canvas. Then I would do the same thing with that one. There would never be a |finished' canvas, but just the different |states' of a single painting, which normally disappear in the course of work."(4)

Correction: I mixed up lithography with earlier forms of prints; rather than carving it was oil on stone that was used for the prints and the refinements were made by removing oil (used to repel the ink used in printing).

Very interesting metamorphisis. But what is up with the first "Pablo Picasso Facts" at the bottom of the page... "Picasso was the greatest artist of the 20th century."

It is not an unreasonable claim. Of course it's a bit jarring to see it stated in such a matter of fact way, when we are used to hearing that everything related to art is "subjective".

But if we look at somewhat objective criteria like influence on other artists and his range of different styles and media, he is probably unsurpassed in the 20th century. And then his productive years nicely overlaps with 3/4 of the century (during which he kept reinventing himself), while many other artists are associated with a single period or movement.

Of course that doesn't mean that he has to be your favorite artist.

“Perfection is achieved, not when there is nothing more to add, but when there is nothing left to take away.” - Antoine de St. Exupery

One of my favorite quotes. All programmers should keep this in mind when working.

That should be -- "Perfection is achieved when there is nothing left to take away."

Is the translation wrong (I got it from wikiquotes), or do you disagree with what he said?

Oh, I was just applying the principle of the quote to itself.

Then you should remove all the words from the quote, leaving nothing more to take away.

(Yes, I consider the quote superficially appealing but essentially content-free.)

Anybody know where you can get a print of this?

I found the final frame (http://www.artrev.com/art/detailview.asp?pid=8877781318&...), but I'd like to have the whole series.

The sad truth is that the majority of people would prefer the "verbose" version, no matter how genius is your cut-down version. Same in software engineering: nobody cares how beautiful and concise your code is, you are paid only for the results.

You should probably not draw the analogy to software too far. Clearly users appreciate (and are willing to pay for) beauty and simplicity in user interface. Look at the iPod. But of course customers don't care if your code is minimal or a convoluted mess, as long as the app works.

20th century art is a little different because the process is part of the exposed product - the art piece here is not the last plate (which would be a bit boring on its own), but the whole sequence.

Unfortunately bloatware sells well, too - take Microsoft or Adobe.

Why this analogy: succinctness and beauty is not appreciated in our industry, whereas it should have been a standard, like in mathematics or physics, where it is appreciated and "standardized" so to say. In math and physics you have to express youself in the most concise way. And I have never seen beauty and succinctness of the code being a requirement as a part of making software, unfortunately.

Edit: "bloatware" pertains to both the code and the interface.

I'm no mechanical engineer, but when I pop the hood of my car, I'd rather see something minimal than a "convoluted mess." Likewise, I'd think a user would -- in theory -- like to be able to view source and see clean intelligent-looking code. Today most people seem to know/care more about cars than web sites and it's easier to tell high quality auto parts from high quality code. I suspect that will change in the future though.

Many developers prefer verbosity because they are unwilling to learn anything more complex than simple conditionals and loop structures. This is what happens when you turn software development into software engineering.

"...that it captures the absolute essence of the creature in as concise an image as possible"

I'm not convinced.

(This is not an expert's comment, I know nothing about modern art)

So you think the image could be even simpler and still convey the image of a bull?

I would guess that he made a plate XII where he simplified further by removing the balls or horns, and then realized that it was no longer the image of a bull.

It doesn't capture the essence of the creature in the sense that it lacks certain elements that one can assosciate with it, e.g. power (it looks very timid to me). Probably I misinterpreted the world "image", I did't take it literally as you suggest.

These are pretty cool. It also looks neat starting from the end and working towards the beginning.

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