Fifteen years of Ringo Starr's computer art | Hacker News Reader

Fifteen years of Ringo Starr's computer art

ringostarrart.com

56 pointskuhewa40 comments

Those thumbnails are like, the platonic ideal of what I was expecting when I clicked on that link. Wow.

I would say "don't give up your day job, Ringo" but the fact that he is already insanely famous means that he will probably sell some of these things for more than I will ever make with my art in my lifetime.

I think part of this art is the story behind it.

I'm sitting here trying to imagine Ringo Starr on a computer in MS Paint (or whatever he used) drawing blobby spacemen, and that alone makes me want to have one hanging on my wall.

I would say that this is what sets apart "classical art" and "modern art".

"Classical art" is a technical feat that produces emotions in you through its execution, through the beauty of the "art piece" itself. Beatles' songs were closer to "classical art"; I want to hear "Yesterday" because of its melody.

"Modern art" is an otherwise uninteresting material piece with a large bunch of metainfo attached: the author's personality and connections, the stories behind its creation / exhibition / resale, being in the circle of those who know about this particular piece or author, a practical joke or an ironic reference that the art piece or its metainfo comprises, etc. This metainfo is what produces the emotions, not the object which formally is the "art piece". Ringo's gallery items are firmly in the "modern art" category.

except anyone with the slightest background in art history can tell you that those metadata mattered immensely for "classical art" pieces at the time that those pieces were made. and indeed even today two pieces of equivalent beauty and craftsmanship will not sell for the same price if one is a Michaelangelo and the other comes from a less famous artist.

I'm sorry, because I'm sure you didn't realize this, but your taxonomy breaks down to "pieces I like, for which the metadata is old," and "pieces I dislike, for which the metadata is recent."

edit — or, at best, "pieces I like, with a continuous aesthetic tradition, which made quality easy to evaluate, for which the metadata is old," vs "pieces I dislike, created after that continuity disintegrated, which made quality very subjective, for which the metadata is recent." because there was a massive break in that continuity, and there is a real distinction between modern and "classical" art (at least in the European/Western tradition), but it just doesn't have anything to do with the metadata.

I do not say that the metadata for old pieces does not play a role! It very much does, beginning from the very age of an old piece. A lot of primitive ancient art coveted by museums or collectors is not aesthetically notable. The auction price of an old painting changes drastically depending on whether it's considered "genuine <insert a famous name>" or not.

The difference I'm trying to make is that in "modern art" (not all art produced in modern times, but the kind that inherits from what Duchamp invented) the metadata is basically all that's interesting, and the art is produced with this assumption in mind. A "classical" piece of art usually had to also work without the metadata being known.

I've heard this summarized before as "product" versus "process".

This is such a nice succinct metaphor.

But which is which?

> "Classical art" is a technical feat that produces emotions in you through its execution, through the beauty of the "art piece" itself.

This is true mostly for a fairly brief window of visual art produced in Europe. The idea that all art for all of time was judged through its execution and achievement of beauty until the 20th century came and ruined everything is just completely ahistorical.

All that exact same metadata is there and evaluated in the price of the piece for classical art as well, and whether something is interesting to you or not is in the end subjective. There are plenty of people who find pieces of modern art interesting even without knowing the metadata. I’m not sure there is a meaningful concrete distinction here.

I.e., have you just said that the fundamental difference between modern art and classical art is that you personally find classical art more interesting?

Not I personally.

Take 100 pieces of "classical art" and show them to somebody who does not have a context of it at all (a faraway country, Amazon jungles, kids these days); the reaction would mostly be "wow" or "hmm", because the pieces are usually technically interesting, without any metainfo attached.

Do the same with 100 pieces of "modern art" like this [1], and the reaction will mostly be "wtf", because there is nothing to appreciate without the metainfo, like "this is a piece of art by X sold for $YM".

[1]: https://www.cnn.com/style/article/banana-artwork-eaten-scli-...

BTW, by this measure, Dali produced "classical" art.

So, show a piece to someone without an art education, and if they think it is interesting it’s classical art, and if they think it is wtf then it’s modern art, nothing to do with when it was made or the definitions of those terms today?

This still seems to me like you have redefined modern and classical as interesting and not interesting art you like.

Modern art is something specific: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Modern_art. I would be surprised if you could really show a Van Gogh to someone without an art education, and without explaining the context, and they wouldn’t say it was interesting. Or any of the other art on that page.

If you’re just saying in the end modern and classical art don’t exist as defined concepts except by showing individual pieces to people without art educations who are then qualified to sort them into modern or classical categories based on whether they find them interesting or wtf then fine, I don’t really agree but now I see what you’re saying. But if you think all modern art on that page would be found uninteresting by anyone without an art education I’d encourage you to do your experiment and I think you’d be surprised.

All art is a mixture of craft and marketing. There's just a lot more marketing to modern art than classical art.

Agree. If you showed his artwork, without mentioning the artist, you wouldn’t get much of a reaction.

Nah. Ringo just is objectively bad at art. That's ok. You don't have to call it modern art. It's utter trash. He's not even trying. There's 0 self awareness here. But that probably happens when you're a Beatle and everyone around you just says yes.

I agree about the art, especially at those prices, but I will also note that all proceeds from sales are donated to a charitable foundation.

I'm absolute garbage at visual art, and I think your take is super unfair.

They're all super weird but, notably the newer ones, also really competent in a way that this newbie would never be able to replicate. Kind of like the work he's actually famous for, now that I think about it.

> They're all super weird

I made it as far down as the revolver tied in a knot with IMAGINE written on the barrel. I’m not sure you could come up with a more uniformly ham-fisted image of “peace” if it was plastered over a peace sign…

So I’m not knocking the art or technical ability or anything. I don’t care. But I personally wouldn’t describe anything there “super weird”.

> I’m not sure you could come up with a more uniformly ham-fisted image of “peace” if it was plastered over a peace sign…

It's Ringo Starr! He might as well have invented this cliche.

Look again.

It WAS plastered over a peace sign.

Never change, Ringo.

I know. I’ve been working on making more subtle jokes :) I was hoping someone would go look and make that comment though.

These are near-perfect NFT targets.

Well he did do the work of helping to make The Beatles what it became, so it's not entirely unfair.

Ringo was a much better drummer than I appreciated as demonstrated by Grahame The Drummer. I realized that the stylings of Ringo made me love these songs as much as anything else

https://www.tiktok.com/@grahamethedrummer/video/702419516832...

Can we say that Ringo's professionalism and artistic choices were at a higher level than his technical skill? It seems as though he made great choices, but I get the sense that he's nowhere near the level of a Bonham or Peart technically.

At the end, The Beatles weren't a masterfully technical band. It wasn't being the greatest at the guitar or the bass or the drums that made them great. It was being creative that made them great.

Hey Jude is an incredibly simple and easy to play song yet it is infamous

I've always considered songwriting to be an independent skill playing music. Some musicians are just so good at writing songs that it almost doesn't matter whether or not they're above average in their musicianship. I don't think anyone would rate Bob Dylan as an exceptional singer or guitarist, but he's unquestionably one of the most prolific musicians of the 20th century. I'm probably an even worse singer and guitarist than Dylan, but if I could write something as good as Like a Rolling Stone, there's no question I would try to perform it myself and have it released before giving the song to someone else.

And yet Dylan's vocal delivery is still very good in its way. It seems very personal and authentic.

If you listen to early 70s Dylan (his tracks on Concert for Bangladesh come to mind) he sounds a bit better vocally in that period. I read that it was because he quit smoking.

You can listen to tapes from his teenage years in the late 50s, where he's singing in almost that exact early 70s croon. But his voice throughout most of the 60s was very different and, for the most part, intentionally so.

Dylan occasionally produced exceptional vocal performances https://youtu.be/pxr22ih0r9A?t=19

Ironically Bob Dylan is also on their roster: http://artcelebs.com/bob-dylan/

The pace at which they were releasing new albums was also unrealistic.

no one would argue that Ringo was a technically skilled drummer. George Martin said "Ringo hit good and hard and used the tom-tom well, even though he couldn't do a roll to save his life".

and yet he's one of the most beloved and influential drummers of all time, and for good reason. Ask Bonham or Peart to create fills as emotional as those in "A Day in the Life".

I guess Paul McCartney probably had the most prolific post-Beatles career of any of them, but it was close. Ringo's no slouch of a musician.

I feel like that's comparing apples, oranges, and bananas.

These make rounds every once and a while, and I've dunked on his art before, so I clicked around a little more and landed on this one that had some pictures of Ringo actual holding a print of it.

https://www.ringostarrart.com/product/eye-lidded-man/

Scale and viewing conditions matter, and that'd look fine hanging in a music room. It's obviously not for everyone, but at $1600 to have a signed Ringo it's not bad. Definitely a conversation starter.

No idea what the vaguely defined Lotus Foundation is, what it does, or how well, but he's not pocketing the money, so there's that.

Bob Dylan as well: http://artcelebs.com/bob-dylan/

Seem to be a few run by the same company/gallery: http://artcelebs.com/art/

Classic. Yer Baby and Bad Finger are my favorites.

"Art".

How long before these get minted as NFTs?

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