Art or heist? A Danish artist took $84k and sent a museum 2 blank canvases | Hacker News Reader

Art or heist? A Danish artist took $84k and sent a museum 2 blank canvases

npr.org

134 pointscube00191 comments

I went to an exhibit on modern art at SAM. It was full of ironic pieces, like a gauge that measured its own distance to the floor and ceiling (and had some sort of ironic name about literalism or something). The centerpieces was a big blank canvas with the words "I could have done that" scrawled across it in marker.

I stick to historic exhibits for the most part now.

The Tate Modern has a huge room filled with what seems to be detritus left over from mounting art - ladders, glue, tape, and so on. Your first reaction is that they are switching out an exhibition.

It’s only when you read the placard that you find out that each item had been painstakingly carved out of something like resin and painted over a span of years.

Nearby is an empty room, where they actually are switching out an exhibition.

So you visited the Tate Modern and, out of all the pieces, the one you recall an anecdote about was the obnoxious detritus? Seems like it did the job.

I actually quite liked that piece :)

For me modern art is about my reaction to the piece, and the insight and illumination into myself that that gives. So looking at a piece is in a way looking at myself.

Modern art can also be a way of communicating feelings and ideas that language cannot express very well.

You may enjoy the recent episode of the Good Ol Boyz podcast with Dr Hans Georg Moeller on Profilicity. It’s an in-depth analysis of the phenomenon you’re describing.

If an object can induce a feeling - any feeling, even of disgust then I would class it as art.

doesn't mean it's good art though, that's extremely subjective

Garbage in the middle of the street can induce a feeling of disgust, but I don't think that makes it art. Even if somebody were to put a fence around it and stick a sign that says "this is art" on that.

Post Modern art is terrible. At least with early modern art (think Vienna Secession or other movements ~100 years ago), most of the artists had classical training and moved into modern art. Now they are just all terrible. The devaluation of aesthetics in favor of meaning make it unapproachable to those with no context on the subject, and unappealing to even those with context.

Contemporary artists with any skill now work in classical styles, illustrations, or graphic design.

EDIT: I should clarify by Post Modern I mean a specific genre of art focused on deconstruction. Not all contemporary art is Post Modern, and there are many genres alive today that are not Post Modern.

> The devaluation of aesthetics in favor of meaning make it unapproachable to those with no context on the subject, and unappealing to even those with context.

This is an incredibly concise and effective summary of the situation. I agree completely. I think aesthetics have really been devalued in the modern world. Even comparing distant lands like Ancient Rome or Ancient China, there are still commonalities in their approach to aesthetics compared to modern culture.

Oh to appreciate the aesthetics of pornography.

It exists, e.g. DOMAI.

While I don't know anything about art to disagree with you, I'd imagine people say the same thing no matter if it's 100, 500, or 2000 years ago.

I suspect the situation is the same with old appliances- only the Good Stuff survives the test of time.

They definitely said that about Monet and the impressionists in general. Lazy brush strokes and blobs of paint. People find it very pretty though and reproductions hang everywhere.

Still, I could not have painted like Monet or Sisley. I can, however, pick a marker and a canvas and write "I just did that" to reply to the "I could have done that" asshole. Then I'm sure someone will come up and retroactively insert some meaning into that piece of shit "Ah, yes... That is the purpose of that piece. It is to be discussed in a world where meaning itself is to be discussed. You understood it perfectly".

How about someone take a massive literal dump just under that metaphorical crap that says "I could have done that". Technically, someone looking at the two together could say the same thing about both, or mistake the piece of canvas as a label for that actual steaming piece of art.

I think you may have fallen prey to a common misconception about art: Art - not only the modern kind - has and always very much had a "first mover advantage".

It's not about the fact that you couldn't paint coloured squares on canvas Rothko-style. Quite possibly you could. It's that he did it first. There are tons of artists in certain Chinese villages who have perfected the art of pointilism possibly almost as good as Seurat (certainly indistinguishable for an amateur's eye), yet their paintings sell for a couple dollars, not a couple million.

You could also easily extrapolate your argument about scribbling on the canvas to the realm of software development and argue that creating e.g. Facebook or Amazon or Wikipedia is really nothing special. A few lines of code will get you a usable MVP. I'm sure you could have done it (I'm saying this completely unironically). However you didn't. Someone else did it first. There may be dozens or hundreds of copycats but the original idea and/or the successful marketing of said idea is all that counts. The rest is noise (sometimes rightfully, sometimes not).

>I think you may have fallen prey to a common misconception about art: Art - not only the modern kind - has and always very much had a "first mover advantage".

There is no first mover advantage in a piece that says "I could have done this". Michael Scott from The Office probably did it first.

>You could also easily extrapolate your argument about scribbling on the canvas to the realm of software development and argue that creating e.g. Facebook or Amazon or Wikipedia is really nothing special.

That would be quite an extrapolation, though.

>A few lines of code will get you a usable MVP.

There was a documentary about Google on a french tv channel (M6) called Capital. The moment the narrator said "Discover how they built a fortune with a few lines of code", I left.

>I'm sure you could have done it (I'm saying this completely unironically). However you didn't. Someone else did it first.

I'll argue to your side: I'm not sure I could have done, but I understand what you're saying and I often say this to people who say "I thought of that idea" when they see something successful. I always retort: "Yes, I thought of Uber as well. Have I built it? No. We all have ideas we don't materialize".

Here's what I just did. Magritte style piping hot finger:

   __________________________________________
  |                                          |
  |    _________________________________     |
  |   |                                 |    |
  |   |                                 |    |
  |   |    I could have done that.      |    |
  |   |                                 |    |
  |   |_________________________________|    |
  |                                          |
  |                                          |
  |        Ceci n'est pas de l'art.          |
  |                                          |
  |__________________________________________|

Nobody would give two shits about me or my painting if I drew colored squares first.

Actually let me propose an experiment: Take two people: One a famous artist, and one an unknown complete amateur. Someone who hasn't held a brush since primary school. Have them both paint 6 pieces each in a unique but low technical skill style. Then randomize which artist signs which piece.

The success of the artworks will be strongly correlated with who is claimed to have drawn it, and uncorrelated with who actually did.

Yes. There was that anecdote of someone bringing a painting and being told it was clearly a fake after examination because the real one was exposed in a museum. TL;DR: the one exposed in the museum was the fake, the real one was stolen, and that's the one the person brought.

Double-blind wine experiments where people talk about earthy-mushroomy-fruity tones, then have the label revealed are fun.

Wine's are a little bit different imo, because there is a definitely legit basis there just the border with bullshit and marketing is fuzzy.

My take away from those double-blind experiments isn't that it's all made up, but rather that people need to practice more rigor.

Well yeah, appreciating art and owning art are different things. Owning art is an investment, you want the possibility of selling it to someone else with interest later. Can't do that if it's not famous

How do you measure the success of art? I'd go with eyeballs per year, you've picked sales figures, someone else would probably say a third thing

Sorry for the ninja edit there, I kinda went back and forth, settled on a more neutral success.

> It's that he did it first.

By that logic Kim Kardashian is also a great artist. Because she is the first to popularize idea of being famous for being famous. As long as people, who claim Pollock is a great artist, also admit that Kim Kardashian is a great artist, I am good with the argument.

I'm pretty sure that was Paris Hilton?

In fact, from Kim Kardashian's wiki page:

> Kardashian first gained media attention as a friend and stylist of Paris Hilton...

And from Paris' page:

> Credited with influencing the revival of the famous for being famous phenomenon throughout the 2000s,[6] Hilton was, for a number of years, one of the world's most ubiquitous public figures.

The defining character of impressionists, was their ability to paint in the moment. Prior to this period, mixing paints was difficult, and most art was produced in a studio. Industrialization gave readily mixed paints that lasted. This gave people the ability to paint outside, but since they would only have a few hours to capture a scene due to lighting, it encouraged essentially "Speed Paints." From there, its all about being able to capture as much of the subject in the least amount of effort.

Art and technology and extremely linked. We take things like photo realistic paintings for granted, but these are only possible because artists can paint from a color photograph. Vermeers are celebrated because he was able to paint in a photo realistic manner before photos. But he was only able to do that with a complex setup of mirrors to essentially project an image on the canvas (or the eye using a split view setup).

Art has a long history, and aesthetics have changed over time. Techniques like Chiaroscuro and Contrapposto come and go. Highly developed cultures usually have highly developed art and vice versa. Art is usually a balance of ideas and aesthetics. No matter the contemporary techniques, the subject matter has usually been immediately recognizable by a lay viewer, and symbology can be decoded by the specialist. For example: is there a dove flying through a window and Mary is in the picture? That means God is impregnating Mary. But even without knowing that you can still understand the picture is of Mary and is religious in nature.

Post modern art is probably the most extreme example of destruction of aesthetics in the name of pure ideas. Sometimes people say modern art can express feelings that are inexpressible by language. But I argue that either 1) there was no meaning to begin with and its all self-derives and 2) it requires being a specialist to understand the art. Its the ultimate appeal to ego since no interpretation is wrong, since there was nothing really intended.

> The devaluation of aesthetics in favor of meaning make it unapproachable to those with no context on the subject, and unappealing to even those with context.

Your description of this phenomenon is perfect to me. I find it interesting that nearly the opposite has happened in some areas of music, but you still hear that the lack of “meaning” is what makes modern music terrible.

It's an interesting comparison actually. I think it's more common for people to say they don't like classical music than that they don't like modern music. There is such a huge variety of music being made that there is something for everyone. Whether that's hiphop, death metal or electronic.

But here's the thing, the same thing actually goes for drawing. There are a huge number of people drawing various stuff, such that anyone could find something drawn recently that they would like. Whether that's murals, concept art, manga, street caricatures or memes.

But here's the kicker: Music isn't defined to be the music played by the annointed elite. But art is defined as drawings (/sculptures, etc) made by the annointed elite.

> I think it's more common for people to say they don't like classical music than that they don't like modern music.

By "modern music", do you mean pop, jazz, or classical? Each of these (and many more genres, e.g. country) all have "modern" versions. But the idea of "classical" music is music that was itself popular when it was contemporary but has stood the test of time, so people continue to listen to it and enjoy it 500 years later. The same with visual arts, architecture, etc.

It is the same thing with literature. Some works flash into popularity, but 50 years later very few have heard of them or read them.

And so this is fundamentally a question of whether you are chasing fashion or permanence. There are good and bad aspects of both -- when you chase fashion you will find something unique to your time, but which just a couple of decades later people often laugh at or don't bother with. If you chase permanence, you have to make some concessions to the taste of previous generations but will benefit from hearing only the best of the very best.

It is the exact same situation with art, or anything that can be preserved across time. You have to choose between something disposable but more closely suited to your needs or something permanent but less suited to your specific needs because it is also enjoyed by others who are very different from you.

Classical music was popular with the elites when it was contemporary. But those elites were a tiny minority of the overall population.

No, Classical music was popular period. But the elites consumed most of the professionally performed music as it was expensive, whereas other people had to rely on friends and families who could play an instrument themselves, or go to a place where there was a free or cheap performance, for example Church. But just because the elites consumed most output of professional musicians did not mean that ordinary people did not consume the output of amateur musicians, especially in their own families, where it was not uncommon to perform music after a meal or during family gatherings.

Many families would have at least one member who could play the piano or the violin - more often the violin. Here is a noted British musicologist reporting on his travels through Europe:

"I crossed the whole Kingdom of Bohemia from south to north, and being very assiduous in my enquiries, how the common people learned music. I found out at length that not only in every large town, but in all villages, where there is a reading and writing school, children of both sexes are taught music”[1].

Yes, many of these violins made by local luthiers were cheap but by modern standards they were serviceable. In terms of people who did not own their own instruments, they heard organs and choral pieces in Church -- the Church was the primary provider of public music at the time, and sacred music was until recently the most commonly performed type of music, and indeed the development of Western music began with sacred music (the Byzantine empire was responsible for elaborating on the music of classical greece and giving us much of western music theory).

When public operas began to open they were wildly popular. Mozart wrote for one of these. This is much like the situation with restaurants. Originally the elites had private chefs that cooked for them. Over time, these chefs began to open their own business and cook for the public. Then over time, the food got cheaper with casual dining.

But this is not to say that people didn't eat traditional meals, they just cooked for themselves, as amateur cooks. So with music, they performed for themselves as amateur musicians. It is interesting to note that the first uses of copyright were not recorded music but sheet music, that people would pass around, copy, and perform for themselves.

But "free" public music -- e.g. apart from a wealthy benefactor paying for a public concert or something outside of a Church -- did not become widespread until the advent of the radio.

[1] The Present State of Music in Germany, the Netherlands and United Provinces. London 1775: newly edited by Percy A. Scholes as An 18th Century Musical Tour in Central Europe and Netherlands. London Oxford University Press, 1959) Cf. Chapter X, p. 131,32

This completely ignores folk music, though. Are you seriously claiming that classical music was more popular than folk music among lower classes?

I think they are arguing that if you played Mozart to a peasant, then they would like it despite not being able to afford listening to Mozart every day.

Just like how good food and Porsches are “popular” even with people who can only afford TV dinners and bus tickets.

The difference in usage isn’t a matter of taste or judgment, it’s a consequence of affordability.

  But art is defined as drawings (/sculptures, etc) made by the annointed elite.

This is false. It's worth distinguishing art vs popular art. I know plenty of poor artists that won't be in history books/museums that make very meaningful art, often eventually stolen by privileged artists.

I upvoted both you and the OP, for making good, honest observations.

And for relating stories about thoughtful, controversial engagements with art. Because that's kind of the point of art.

The Mona Lisa isn't "art" anymore; it was once, and now it's a pretty artifact with a lot of historical significance. But that's not art.

Art is the kind of thing that makes educated people say, in public, "that's not art". And, thus, by its existence and the reception to its existence, true art makes our conversations about art richer, more emotional, and (over time) more precise. And once all of the nuances of this conversation are exhausted, we need new art.

Which is why the Mona Lisa isn't art. At least not anymore.

And if you disagree with that, then we need to have a deep conversation about art, and history, over the course of which both of us will have hopefully learned new things about both art and history.

Art is a recursive question, not an engineering problem.

Edit: I should point out that this comment is intentionally recursive.

Honestly this is one of the most ridiculous things I've read on HN, and yes I mean that perfectly literally. Its almost as if this comment is itself a piece of performance art, because the Mona Lisa is (sometimes literally) the standard for all art (at least paintings).

Agreed, it was a ridiculous comment. I did, however, try to design that ridiculousness to make a point.

For those of us who aren't subtle enough, could you state your actual point?

Ok, you know how people thought Cantor was crazy because he proposed that there were both countable and uncountable infinities? In retrospect, those of us who are mathematically inclined can understand the value of Cantor's work, since it gave rise to set theory and many more things that are clearly useful and important.

But they weren't always clearly useful and important. The value of Cantor's work was once so not clear that many serious and influential people dismissed and attacked it.

Would you like to not be one of those people? Then you should probably practice talking about why certain art is bullshit, and certain other art isn't bullshit, because it will strengthen your "is this bullshit" muscles, so you can more expertly apply those muscles to really important questions, like "are self-driving cars feasible within the next few years", or "do covid booster shots make sense".

I like to think that when you dismiss something as being ridiculous, you lose the possibility of integrating it into your body of knowledge. Cheers.

Art doesn't suddenly stop being art. I think what you are saying is if people stop discussing a thing then it stops becoming art. Art doesn't require making conversations about art richer. If that were true, the Mona Lisa would still be at because we still discuss it as art. But art is still art, even if people stop talking about it. And if a learned person days it isn't art, it probably isn't art.

> The Mona Lisa isn't "art" anymore; it was once, and now it's a pretty artifact with a lot of historical significance. But that's not art.

followed closely by

> Art is the kind of thing that makes educated people say, in public, "that's not art".

My point lies very much between the lines.

No one gives a shit about classically trained painters beyond upvoting their work on reddit, and even commercial illustrators struggle to make ends meet. The most stable avenue for working in graphic design is advertising.

It seems everyone has an opinion on what makes good art, but no one wants to fucking pay for it. The top 1% of artists are basically con artists trying to trick the rich into impulse buys.

>impulse buys

Or financial instruments for all kinds of shenanigans, to include tax evasion using freeports to park nearly arbitrarily-priced assets (the best kind!).

> unapproachable to those with no context on the subject,

OTOH, if you do have context on the subject, it can be profound. It's a bit like certain gamer groups who have subreddits and generate tons of content that outsiders don't get (Warhammer, Genshin Impact, Hololive, ApexLegends... these are few groups I do not understand but they seem to generate a ton of their own internal content.)

Aesthetic art is a product of a particular need, and it will always have admirers. IKEA sells tons of pretty art. People will flock to Versailles to see the Mona Lisa. An occasional brave soul will do a long-viewing of Rothko. That kind of art is for the masses, and historically commissioned pieces in public have been just that. And it hasn't gone away: murals, sculptures in parks, installations at large government buildings.

What people are focusing on here is completely different.

It's a bit ignorant to criticize art that is outside your context. I have the right to say "Warhammer memes are childish bullshit," but it is ignorant.

Much like vegan-bashing, people love to rip on "post modern" art without really knowing much about it. Perhaps there is a legitimate claim that some hot new artist is "classically untrained" so they "actually" suck. Is that true if their art resonates with the current culture? I say, "no."

EDIT: I have attempted to study "postmodernism" many times over the last 30+ years (for fun) since I graduated college. I've failed every time. I don't like to use the term anymore because I can't really explain it to any real depth other then banal platitudes like "nothing has meaning."

EDIT2: I find "take the money and run" to be a brilliant piece of contemporary art. It is so on the nose for today's culture: conniving, ironic, duplicitive, a rip off, ... I think it spurs conversation about the monetary value of art that has been brewing for decades. Heck, even the monetary value of what museums should EXPECT from an artist. That's a big one I'd like to talk about. What if EVERY artist did this from now on? How do you prevent it? Should you? How do artists that put in massive physical effort feel about this? Screwed?

Agreed. Post-modern art by itself means nothing to me, but when I learn about the artist and their journey to create a piece of work, I really enjoy it. It's like they say - its not about the destination, it's about the journey.

The classic Duchamp urinal I think is brilliant because it was so goddamn scandalous and just flipped so many assumptions upside-down. Being first matters IMHO. But over many decades it has been so set-upon by bigger thinkers (and GRIFTERS) and creators that it is exactly what the other poster said about "inaccessible". (Although I do love me some Zizek.)

I usually classify Post Modern art as deconstructional art post WWII. It was initially fueled by the ennui of two world wars, and then drifted into cries about consumerism. Either way you get a pretty bleak outlook.

Now I hear it used in the context of skepticism of authority, "nothing can be known as true or false" in the current political climate and it scares the bejeebers outta me. I don't understand how that aspect of PM differs from classical fallacies of appeal to authority -- and I probably never will. :( -- but I agree, it feels bleak.

>It was initially fueled by the ennui of two world wars, and then drifted into cries about consumerism.

And also bankrolled by the CIA as a psy-op tool during the Cold war.

https://news.artnet.com/art-world/artcurious-cia-art-excerpt...

That figures... nothing that stupid happens without the govt being involved

If your art requires context to be understood, then it is broken.

No. Art Criticism and Theory is literally about the interplay of art with its context, and viewing art in different contexts (periods, and cultures). One such example is the 'period eye', where you juxtapose art from one period to another, such as 15th century Italian art in today's realm, and observe how the context has changed w.r.t. dimensions like racism, classism, or sexism. Have you ever taken a class on it? It doesn't sound like it. The term sounds intimidating but I think most 101-level classes try to be accessible from the interactions with educators I've had. Perhaps you are confusing art with the meme about UI design and jokes.

> I think it spurs conversation about the monetary value of art that has been brewing for decades

You say it was "brewing", I say this exact same conversation has been "spurred" by one "art" piece after another for all those decades. The only claim to fame of this umpteenth "I could have done that"-elicitor is that it attains novelty over the last "newsworthy" iteration by risking a fraud charge and career-death.

Nobody outside of Warhammer circles pay attention to Warhammer memes. The only reason the general public pays so much (negative) attention to High Art Memes is the money involved. And that's exactly what they want, isn't it? "Provoking discourse" (aka pissing off the plebs by flaunting vain exchanges of wealth, and then scoffing at how uncultured they are for not getting it).

Warhammer memes do not need the plebian masses to be the butt of their circular joke, though. By that measure, Warhammer memes are far more valuable to society than the article's brand of High Art, because Warhammer memes produce net happiness, but High Art deals in misery and negativity and trolling.

https://astralcodexten.substack.com/p/whither-tartaria

It's true that some art -- and most big-P Postmodern cultural products -- require a lot of prior knowledge of their context in order to get much out of them, and I agree this is hostile to a general audience.

But first, some of it does manage to be engaging and even fun ; and second, I blame the universities and not the Art World per se. There's a lot of very idea-centric work in the museums and in private collections, but the stuff that (probably) makes your eyes roll is not a big part of it. And the business of speaking in a priestly tongue unintelligible to the laity is absolutely a product of our (mostly US) universities in the last 20 years or so. Art critics within that caste do their best to promote artists of the same caste -- and have done for ages -- but it only goes so far.

That said, this:

> Contemporary artists with any skill now work in classical styles, illustrations, or graphic design.

...is obviously and demonstrably false for, I dunno, say >= 90% of all professional artists making a living at it today. Which leaves you with a pretty circular definition of "skill" I guess.

Modern art is a great example of how semantics don't change reality. You can call modern art art, but the average person will never put something like the pieces you described in the same category as something like a Michelangelo painting.

Isn't that survivorship bias? Most artists from any period can't compete with Michelangelo. And why bother trying to compete with it today when we can get a Michelangelo print for one millionth of the price?

The average person is (perhaps unfortunately) not the judge of art. Duchamp signed a urinal and stuck it in a museum over a hundred years ago, and the average person certainly didn't consider that art, and today the stupid thing is absolutely in art history textbooks with Michelangelo.

The praise is different, to be sure. Michelangelo's work is a achievement, technically, historically, and artistically. Scrawling "my kid could do this" in marker and hanging it in a museum isn't trying for any of that, but it does provoke thought and emotion and discussion, and that's what it's trying successfully to do. The artist does not expect anyone to say "wow, such amazing technical talent, they must have studied calligraphy for years, they are surely Michelangelo reborn." Is it great art? Well, I'm not an art critic, I dunno, but if I saw it in a museum it'd probably make me think and feel more than some random landscape.

> signed a urinal and stuck it in a museum

...sort-of, but not really, but sure it's in museums now. More than one!

However, this would have been the smallest of art-historical footnotes had Duchamp not then gone on to do the rest of the things he did, and we put it in the art history textbooks because of its (minor) place in one of the most ground-breaking modern artists' development and career.

It's worth remembering that Michelangelo was also breaking a lot of rules, and was something of a rebel within the context of his time. His talent also developed within a context -- the same amazing guy, born 400 years earlier or later, would have been making a very different kind of art.

But at some stage the artist does random ordinary thing and call it an art.

butter with knives in it slowly melting away - art

bucket full of trash - art

white canvas - art

Sure, you get to analyse it, ponder its setting. But to me that is no different than pondering meaning of my own bucket of trash.

I don't get modern art. But the older I get the more I read ridiculous stories about it and the amount of financial scams going on behind the scenes, and the more it feels like 'the king is naked'.

Just bunch of pretentious people with some clout doing low effort word plays or performances for people who pretend to get it to fit in, propped up by speculation and tax avoidance money .

> The average person is (perhaps unfortunately) not the judge of art.

I disagree. This, to me, is equivalent to being a linguistic prescriptivist. If art is subjective, then art academics and modern artists hold no exclusive claim to judging art. If 99% of people look at modern art and consider it a joke, then that means within their subjective interpretation of what art is, they're correct. It's not like math where you can say 1 doesn't equal 2. And if you go out of your way to define art so that you can justify modern art and exclude normal people, then you're just playing semantics and defining something that the average person never cared about in the first place.

Last time I went to MOMA, there was a huge composition that looked like an all-black canvas. Didn't look out of place. But when you get closer, find that it's covered in a thick layer of dead flies. It was a hoot. Take or leave the composition itself; the biggest fun was in watching other patrons' reaction to the piece.

When I buy art, it's usually from folks who live on the street, not from galleries.

edit: found it https://www.damienhirst.com/texts1/series/fly

What a ride from "I could do that!" to "Why would anyone do that!?"

It's unfair not to mention how much some historic art sucks. I went to the Tate Britain and a large section of the historic works were 'aristocrat pays someone to paint his family very flatteringly but with obvious lighting and perspective flaws'. If you take a step back and imagine a celebrity today commissioning the same kind of artwork, it becomes painfully obvious how egotistical and unworthy of praise these works are.

See also: displaying unfinished sketches. Nice for a collector but let's not pretend there's any artistic value in it.

IMHO unfinished sketches by great artists can be amazing little stories unto themselves. They can give you insight into the creation process of the artist, which fascinates me. And sometimes they are even more fresh and dynamic than the finished work.

I once rode in an original Model T. Ride was horrible: super slow, very uncomfortable, and the handling was ghastly. But clearly we don't judge "ancient" developments exclusively by modern standards...

Artwork of old was commissioned and preserved by the wealthy. All of the old works are rare (relatively), fairly impressive for the time, and some are true masterpieces.

It depends on your view point. A lot of art is critized for the artist's abilities and techniques to create the art and much less for the subject matter. The David could have been any random dude, but it is the ability of accurately recreating that randome dude in stone that makes it impressive. Some of the painted pieces that are extremely large and take up an entire museum wall are impressive just for the shear accomplisment. Yes, it helps that it looks so real as well.

>See also: displaying unfinished sketches. Nice for a collector but let's not pretend there's any artistic value in it.

If you imagine those sketches being underneath the painting and realizing that those sketches were how the artist worked on creating the actual piece is interesting in the same way watching behind-the-scenes videos on how a movie was made are interesting--to those that are interested in the first place. Similar to Show HN articles on some use of fad language to redo something else already in existence. If you have no interest in that language or the thing being made, they aren't interesting.

> See also: displaying unfinished sketches.

Depending on the artist and the sketch, I'm quite happy to see it also. Sketches can provide a lot of super interesting context about other works. And sometimes they're quite good by themselves.

There's also no "value" in watching, say, Novak Djokovic practice his serves. Unless you care about tennis, in which case you'd probably watch with rapt attention.

Same thing, basically, for sketches by good and/or important artists.

The most memorable art exhibitions for me are modern. There's a lot of trash, but one particularly memorable piece is (or was, it's been a while) hanging right on top of the exit door of the Berlinische Galerie. It's just a unpretentious ticker that scrolls a single sentence in red dots: "Do you feel better now?". True, anyone could have done that. But the placement, the simplicity, the style resonated with me in that moment so that I remember that ticker better than Mona Lisa in Paris.

Yup, same for me. It was a TV in a room with a video on a loop displaying a woman in a mirror who was ripping our her hair and repeating "art must be beautiful".

First thought it was dumb, but then i caught myself thinking about it. This is 4 years ago now and I still remember it, while the Rembrandts and Monets have never provoked any feeling or thought in me.

You are confused of being memorable with being artistic or valuable. I could scare you with a big TV screen showing dead bodies, and that would be the most memorable thing you see that entire month.

I think you’re misreading what I’m saying. I’m not saying that this is art because it’s memorable. I’m saying that this is memorable to me because it’s a piece of art that resonated with me in a special way, like only few other pieces of art did. Whether it’s truly art or just a clever trick is certainly up for debate and bigger minds than mine failed at finding objective criteria, but at least the curators of the museum considered it art or they wouldn’t exhibit it.

My worst date ever was a trip to MOMA, I had to go to a museum as an assignment for an art history class. The girl must have thought I was a weirdo for taking her there and we pretty much stopped talking after that night.

I mean, yeah. Context my friend. If you go on a date, it should be for the shared experience of whatever you're doing. Taking someone with you while you do homework is not that. It's no different than bringing a date to work to watch you work. Few dates will actually appreciate that experience.

So this either says something about the entire field of modern art and the huge number of artists creating it.

Or it says something about you.

Is it not just a case of survivorship bias? I'd expect that the historical stuff in museums is carefully (not randomly) selected. There were probably all kinds of crap art from the same era that simply got trashed.

But modern art is funny! There's a difference between art and craft. If you prefer craft, that's fine. At least in my book, modern art isn't about craft. It's about making you think. Sometimes it's stupid, overdone, plays into tropes too much, etc., but usually it invokes an emotion.

For example, consider Banksy's painting that shredded itself. That's hilarious! The people who accidentally left a pineapple in a museum, only to return later and find that it had been covered with a glass case? That's equally funny. And in this instance, props to the artist for deciding to take the money and run. It fits the title of their work.

I actually like this kind of art, I find it funny and entertaining. It's like real-life 9gag or reddit shitposting.

What I don't like though, is that those shitposters get paid hundreds of thousand dollars, or even million, often in public money (or “charity” money which is a way to avoid taxes and is eventually public money), because they have a network (it's not even their “name” that matters because practically no-one know them in the public, they just happen to know the right persons).

"Haaning took the money as part of an agreement with the Kunsten, which says it loaned Haaning more than half a million kroner so he could frame the cash in a reprise of an earlier artwork."

They didn't just commission him to make art. The museum contracted him to reproduce a particular piece of art, which Haaning did not do.

But if they had paid him to create completely new art, it wouldn't have been an authentic performance of "Take the money and run", but a mere simulacrum. The breach of contract is the artwork.

Clearly it is art and heist. But the law doesn't care too much if your crime is a work of art.

We can call it "art crime".

No, no, it's "crime art".

Hmm maybe fraud? Breach of contract at most? Not a crime. Arguably he delivered something. It could also been just an invisible artwork.

Was the money supposed to be in the artwork as a medium? Maybe there’s a Bitcoin address on the frame or something.

I don't know where you're from but in Denmark fraud is a crime!

Yes maybe it is fraud it would depend on the contract. But he delivered something and did they accept it as in take possession?

Nice. And now the museum can create a piece of art in response called "Repercussions". (Or, maybe it was all one piece of art all along.)

I like it. They could request the judge that he serves his time inside the museum itself, in a cell prepared just for him where visitors can observe his daily routine. He will not only participate in one of the greatest modern art performances of all time, but he will indeed become the artwork.

And at the end they could burn the artist and issue an NFT.

An NFT? More like one NFT for every of his screams while he's burning to death, and they wouldn't record any so the screams can't be duplicated.

1 year later... the artist is alive and well, enjoying a mojito on a Cuban beach with a satisfied smile.

It's almost like you're saying that an NFT doesn't actually capture the thing it's correlated with. But if that was true it would completely undermine the concept of an NFT of an art work. The NFT wouldn't have any more unique value than an item # in a catalog.

That would actually be pretty interesting as art, I think.

It's been done...

https://www.antepavilion.org/hackney-fight

I beg you, if you have gotten this far, watch this 10 minute video about the above link - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_8xhdL8BPvU

It's one of the most entertaining things I've seen this year.

From what I understand from the article, the museum gave him physical cash in which to use as the medium, along with money to pay for his labor (more that two times the quoted value, as well). In all, he received ~28 times the amount of money quoted. Pretty scummy thing to do, even if "provocative."

He has until January to return it. Although he broke the terms of the contract, the museum seems happy enough with the results so far - so long as he actually returns the money, it sounds like everything will be fine and non-scummy.

> The artist now faces a deadline to give the museum its money back on Jan. 16, when the work exhibition closes. The museum says it's talking with him about that deadline

Well he has said that he won't return them at the deadline. But I guess he has to say that for now.

I have a hard time believing this happened as the museum describes, because everyone will know this man has a large sum of cash sitting in his home/shop for three months. There had to be preparations to keep the money safe during the exhibition.

> The museum contracted him to reproduce a particular piece of art, which Haaning did not do.

He did make art fulfilling the concept that was discussed. The museum director said as much and it sounds like the art will still be exhibited.

The problem is that the museum loaned out materials to make the art and the artist did not return those materials. It’d be like if you let a handyman borrow some of your tools, and they completed the job and took your tools.

> Haaning signed a contract with the Kunsten, promising to deliver the artwork and to return the $84,000. The artist now faces a deadline to give the museum its money back on Jan. 16, when the work exhibition closes. The museum says it's talking with him about that deadline; it also acknowledges that Haaning did produce a provocative piece of work.

There is no problem. He will return the money (materials) when the deadline comes. If he doesn't by then, then they'll have a problem.

They said there's a contract in place and he'll return the money either way. In this case the artist produced something else than contracted to; they took it in good fun and apparently got pretty good publicity out of that, and they'll still get the money back.

Unless someone decides to turn on the lawsuit machine, everyone's a winner here.

“Good artists borrow, great artists steal.”

- Steve Jobs/Picasso/Stravinsky/Eliot

To be clear, they're talking about ideas and the adaptation of those ideas, not literally stealing cash or property.

“Good artists borrow [by modifying ideas], great artists steal [by copying ideas].”

The stealing part doesn't refer to directly copying ideas (I mean what great artist would do that?), more how good artists instead are able to use other works as inspiration, "make it their own" and put their spin on it.

Right. In Jobs world, that meant stuff like taking existing Chinese tech and making it into something with worldwide wow/cool factor.

You got me curious. Which Chinese tech did he steal to make the iProducts with?

> Jobs world, that meant stuff like taking existing Chinese tech

It was a reference to Apple apocryphally stealing "the mouse, windows, icons, and other technologies that had been developed at [Xerox] PARC" [1].

They didn't copy an existing product. They deprived Xerox of the market into which to launch their own product.

[1] https://web.stanford.edu/dept/SUL/sites/mac/parc.html

The way I always understood it is that good artists put their spin on it.

Great artists realize perfection when they see it and just copy it, without trying to “improve” it, usually from lesser known, less successful artists so they get away with it.

All great artists directly copy ideas. That is exactly what the statement implies. The point is that your own style will manifest as a mishmash of other people's ideas and this itself will constitute a new style. New ideas are just combinations of old ideas

</That's The Joke>

This quote doesn't have anything to do with literal theft, though:

https://quoteinvestigator.com/2013/03/06/artists-steal/

Depends on your outlook towards intellectual property

If the "theft" from this quote counts as IP violation then all new inventions and creations become illegal and all progress would cease. I don't think that kind of outlook makes sense.

And in my opinion this is some fuckery between consenting adults.

- jareklupinski

Gotta love artists doing the unexpected and then presenting it as art. It is sometimes a fine line, because if you go too far, people may not buy it. But then maybe you make a media discussion about it, and you get more famous!

Especially with an idea as original as this.

I suspect this was sarcasm? This is certainly not novel.

> This is certainly not novel.

Which other artist has done it?

https://www.moma.org/collection/works/114939

Every con artist ever. Pun intended.

Probably no artists have. Bada-bing!

When anything anyone does is "art" just because someone reacts to it in some way, it's just "person" not "artist".

My farts are art. I'm a fartist.

There have been such artists before.

Le Pétomane

Joseph Pujol (June 1, 1857 – August 8, 1945), best known by his stage name Le Pétomane (/ləˈpɛtəmeɪn/,[citation needed] French pronunciation: [ləpetɔman]), was a French flatulist (professional farter) and entertainer. He was famous for his remarkable control of the abdominal muscles, which enabled him to seemingly fart at will. His stage name combines the French verb péter, "to fart" with the -mane, "-maniac" suffix, which translates to "fartomaniac". The profession is referred to as "flatulist", "farteur", or "fartiste".[1]

It was a common misconception that Joseph Pujol passed intestinal gas as part of his stage performance. Rather, Pujol was allegedly able to "inhale" or move air into his rectum and then control the release of that air with his anal sphincter muscles. Evidence of his ability to control those muscles was seen in the early accounts of demonstrations of his abilities to fellow soldiers.[2]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Le_P%C3%A9tomane

He transitioned from artist to con artist.

can't wait to see more work coming from this brave new branch of 'con art' :^)

I hear he is working on the architecture of an oceanfront property in Switzerland next. If you move fast, you may be able to buy it.

Can I interest you in a NFT?

Casey Neistat did something similar in 2012, although he returned something resembling a commercial video and not a blank canvas.

> After arriving at an agreed-upon treatment with Nike for its latest commercial, director Casey Neistat literally took the money and ran–filming a trip around the world on Nike’s dime, and presenting the footage as the ad.

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WxfZkMm3wcg

[2] https://www.fastcompany.com/1680524/how-director-casey-neist...

He created at actual ad, not just a resemblance. Ads are usually arbitrary fluff plus a logo.

>> Ads are usually arbitrary fluff plus a logo.

Just like superhero movies.

They paid him to direct an ad and he directed an ad. You are falling for the marketing my friend.

it's a very different situation. The money the artist stole never belonged to him, it wasn't his salary or a budget he was allowed to spend on the fabrication of the art. He had a specific contract and he was paid to take that 84k$ and lay it on a canvas to replicate a previous art piece he had done. The cash was supposed to be returned to the museum after.

So more along the lines of embezzlement?

It's a 4 1/2 minute video promoting the product that has been viewed 32 million times. Considering it likely cost Nike <$50K and average YouTube ad CPM is ~$3.50, it may be one of the most successful social media ads Nike has ever produced.

Upon some reflection, I have decided that this is indeed art. It's clearly in the succession of Dadaism; a critique of art critique. It opens up for a very peculiar legal challenge. Every blank canvas sold after today can be seen as a derivative or blatant copy of this work. I'd love to see this artist sue a producer of blank canvases for royalties. Alternatively, if he didn't make the frame and stretch the canvas himself, the manufacturer can likewise sue the artist. Please let this make it as far as the courts. I'll make popcorn.

"It is a breach of contract, and breach of contract is part of the work,"

Being sued or prosecuted will also be part of the artwork.

Legal proceedings in the court room can at times be performance.

Case in point.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AzODx3WLarQ

The act of violating the contract (w/ the museum) itself is the art-work here.

On another side, I think this is quite a good deal for the museum. This story is pretty popular on the internet in many countries, and $84k sounds pretty cheap for an international ad campaign. Plus, the artist is still delivering a kind of modern art.

(Google Translated)

Liljevalch's benches were designed by the art gallery's architect Carl Bergsten, but it is the artist Dan Wolgers who has made them famous.

Before a group exhibition at Liljevalch's in the autumn of 1992, in which Dan Wolgers would participate, he - as his only contribution - removed two of the art gallery's benches and sold them at Stockholm's Auktionsverk. The whole thing was a protest against the low exhibition fees that artists were offered by the country's art institutions. According to Dan Wolger's calculations, the rather modest sum from the sale of the benches would correspond to a reasonable compensation for his participation in Liljevalchs. He was reported to the police by private individuals, received a suspended sentence and a 60-day fine. When the letter with the court decision and payment card arrived, he sold it unopened to a collector and thus earned the fine together. Liljevalchs bought back the benches and showed them at the exhibition to a very interested audience.

https://liljevalchs.se/butiken/tandstickor-banken/

Edit: Apparently, a matchbox with an illustration of the benches can now be purchased in the museum's gift shop.

Dan Wolgers was also contracted to design the cover of the Stockholm phonebook (yellow pages). His contribution? His name and phone number on the front page.

https://bukowskis.com/sv/lots/874985-dan-wolgers-telefonkata...

This reminds me of a man who ate the exhibit at a Miami museum consisting of a banana taped to a wall and then proclaimed that it was an art performance [1]. The exhibit was supposedly going for $120K-150K.

[1] https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/performance-artist-eats...

After reading about this, I’m convinced that it’s mostly marketing.

He’s supposed to return the money in 2022. If he doesn’t, I’ll be convinced that this wasn’t just a marketing stunt after he thought up an alternative.

He thought up a fun way to play with this concept of being handed so much in cash… the museum then went along with this idea.

The resulting publicity, and that fact that the money is supposed to be returned… really seems like brilliant marketing.

Unless his newly found fame attracts another group of more physical extraction "artists".

I’ll remember this when my AI for reproducing art is operational.

I’ll do the same thing as this artist, but at scale.

Art at scale is no longer art, it’s kitsch.

Great idea. When I'm finished with my AI that produces AIs to make money I will do the same

The canvases would have been ten times better (IMHO) if the artist had sloppily and quickly written "Take the Money and Run" on them, and maybe even left the brush and paint on the floor below the canvas

But then, maybe I'm wrong, and that's why I'm not an artist :)

This is hilarious on so many levels

My suggestion to him: Turn in a new artwork next week: the money shredded.

Call it "you greedy bastards"

It can be explained as a revolt against the existing power structures in the financial world, where the poor are only noticed when they cause unrest.

This beats the con artistry of NFT scams any day.

Those two works have generated more publicity and awareness of the artist than anything he/she has produced. The Gallery should be ecstatic.

Personally, my guess he/she has doubled the value of his/hers existing works.

I think this is brilliant. Art is supposed to inspire emotion and tell a story. Thought doing it in a different way, this piece quite literally demonstrates the purest form of "story behind the art".

No doubt the artist will be giving the money back, this seems to be too perfect not to be the plan from the getgo. My only question is, was the museum aware of this plan from the start and is the "omg where's out money" is just manufactured for the marketing.

Either way whether just for marketing or the entire point of the art piece, brilliant.

Why would you be so sure the money will be returned?

With enough press like this, the Kunsten Museum of Modern Art might make that money back in visitors. Art can be just as much about absurdity as it can be about talent. Just look at Marcel Duchamp.

I feel like there is a parallel between this and NFTs to be made but I don't think I understand enough about either to phrase it adequately. Superficially though, I believe the price paid for those specific canvases make them "non-fungible" (I don't think the museum would just throw them away now) and I guess one could argue that they qualify as tokens, too.

Considering the publicity, I think both parties benefited. The only loser is general public.

Having majored in fine arts, I appreciate all kinds of art forms. Even Banksy's work demonstrates mastery of the medium. Hell, I'd challenge most people to recreate Rothko's paintings.

But this? It's an expression. It's a commentary. It can be a lot of things. But to me, it's not art.

To me all this cleverness has become a bit boring. I am aware that there is a story behind all these "masterpieces" and the story makes the art more or less, but it's become such a predictable trick-fest that I stopped paying attention. It's not even an original statement, it's been done countless times before. Am I missing anything?

While walking around Germany I found a truck that appeared to be a traveling dadaist art museum. It was unattended and you could walk in and see a bunch of shelves with exhibit labels. The shelves were all empty. I was not sure if that was intended. Or if perhaps it was actually a traveling museum and it's pieces were being exhibited somewhere.

"And then you get an artist / He says he doesn't want to paint at all / He takes an empty canvas / And sticks it on the wall"

- Dire Straits, "In The Gallery" (1979)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4-v6JeolLzw&t=8s

I'm honestly very surprised there's no mention of banksy's shredder stunt in the piece. I would have thought an artist would somehow try to portray themselves as being as cool as banksy.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eXKE0nAMmg4

Well would you look at that, according to my criteria [1] that’s not art!

[1] https://wndr.xyz/posts/9fjM1tOJO7MWX4fYw3AU2Q==/what-s-art-a...

Modern art is money laundering. It is crazy how it has taken over the entire industry.

It looks very similar to this other piece of art:

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

This artist just one-upped Robert Rauschenberg

Ref: https://www.moma.org/audio/playlist/40/639

I’m hoping some smart ass offers to buy it from the artist for $100,000, but only on the condition that he not return the money to the museum.

Clearly the museum got a good deal; good luck showing damages in court! Mwuhahah.

In school it used to be a running gag to speculate how astonished the philosophy teacher would be if someone would hand in an essay with just the word "No".

HN timing is so weird:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28683497

The publicity towards the museum is worth every penny of that $84k.

The best part is the work is fairly unreproducible now. Few artists will dare deliver blank canvases.

This man is a genius. We've hit Peak Modern Art.

Honestly, you can't buy this kind of PR. Do a dozen more, number and sign them on the back, profit.

Given the resulting publicity and buzz this has gotten, I'd think the money spent was worth it from the museum's point of view.

The money was never to be spend, the museum loaned them to the artist. They were suppose to be used as the literal material for the commissioned art work.

Partially incorrect. The artist was paid a fee as well as provided money to use for the piece and to purchase/frame it. This article didn't make entirely clear which of that money they're asking for.

> Haaning signed a contract with the Kunsten, promising to deliver the artwork and to return the $84,000.

It’s pretty clear the $84k was for the art and the ~$7k was for the expenses to create the art.

Imagine the (very?) likely clown shoes scenario of the museum holding him in breach of contract, being required to return the pieces, and then watching them sell for a cool million at auction.

Look at what just happened with the Banksy shredder piece for example.

I think it's brilliant. Hope they let him keep it.

...But why all the commentary on social inequality? It's more than a little... rich

> "The work is that I have taken their money," Haaning stated.

I hope he enjoys the second half of his art - legal action

Two things I would say about this...

1.) It's honest 2.) It's better than most modern / contemporary art

It's a piece of tangible performance art, which is unusual and not the medium they expected.

He should send another invoice for the extra services!

Good reminder to never pay upfront for work (or art in this case).

Can't wait for this kind of art in NFT form! /s

Be careful what you wish for https://opensea.io/collection/take-the-money-and-run

In Germany, an art collective rented the plot adjacent to the plot where Björn Höcke, a far-right politician from the AFD lives and installed a miniature holocaust memorial there. All lawsuits against it have been dismissed. Text is in german, DeepL [1] may be of help.

[0] https://politicalbeauty.de/holocaust-mahnmal-bornhagen.html

[1] https://www.deepl.com/translator#de/en/

"Art is what you can get away with."

- Andy Warhol

Art if you attach the context

Well it works for Hunter Biden so why not?

By the contemporary conception of art, this is definitely art. Perhaps even brilliant art.

Contemporary Art - Something "clever" that appreciation of signals to others that you aren't a member of the bourgeois.

At least he had the decency not to leave his excrements [1] behind, claiming it to be an art object, like that other guy. So I guess it is not the worst example of contemporary art.

[1]: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Artist%27s_Shit

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