David in Florence
There have been some others I really liked, having been to about 5 really top museums, but I remember those ones as being like “whoa”
I’ve never really understood why Picasso is considered as good as he is
Picasso (with Georges Braque) literally invented, pioneered, and perfected a new artistic style, cubism. It's like saying "I've never really understood why Isaac Newton is considered as good as he is."
Give me a picasso painting and a year and I guarantee you I could reproduce something indistinguishable to 99% of people. If I gave anybody a year to learn and make mathematical discoveries even 1/100th as impactful as Newton, it's likely no one would come close.
Invent an entirely new and impactful style of painting, that hasn't been seen before, from dust. Just like Newton invented a whole new "style" of mathematics.
I still think Picasso is less important but you haven't even begun to draw the correct analogy here.
Pretty sure that's GP's point. Nowadays, any graduate physics student can solve calculus problems. The amazing part is the creation of new ways to see and describe the world.
While working in AI research, we have known that many of the similar works gets generated when you accidently wire networks differently or if network has short of schizophrenia and works on a region and then sort of randomly but still somehow similar way does something else on other region. There is no rhym or reason except that our brains gets surprised by patterns that it hadn't expected.
I feel people who appreciate this art and put down others for not seeing things are in same category as wine testers. As one of the commentor said, if you didn't knew if this was from Picaso, your level of appreciation would be much less.
You think that Picasso’s style was nothing more than mental illness?
You think Picasso used no “reasoning”, and there is no “mystery” involved, because it was not intentional/skillful?
And you think everyone who likes it is just a snob?
I think there's something to be appreciated in Picasso, but that's a bad example. Physics has Newton, Einstein, maybe Galileo, and then no one who can match those 3. Art easily has dozens of people who can match Picasso. Just because he invented something new doesn't mean the work he did extends throughout the entire discipline, like Newton does. Picasso is not that important.
It would be better to compare to, say, Wilt Chamberlain in basketball or something. Or if you want to reach to physics, say Neils Bohr or James Clerk Maxwell. But then I think Bohr might even be reaching too far. Schrodinger?
I know: Hugh Everett is the Picasso of physics. He gave us an interesting and different way to see the world (many worlds interpretation of quantum mechanics). He was no doubt brilliant, and many modern physicists continue to lean on his ideas regularly. But, of course, tons of physics would exist without him.
Anyone with basic knowledge of history of Physics or Maths can tell why Newton is considered good, I don't see same happening with Picasso.