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Comment by jimsimmons | Hacker News Reader

You think Van Gogh and Picasso are nonsense?

Or even Mondrian

Mondrian rules! In my youth I tiled the bathroom in my house in a Mondrian pattern. Mostly white, lowering the cost since white tiles were much cheaper than red yellow and blue.

Yes and no. On one hand, my social class and upbringing almost command that I should find beauty in Van Gogh and Picasso's works. I defer to the masters on matters I do not understand, but it's not where my personal taste and love really lie.

Have you seen Picassos or (especially) Van Goghs in person?

I have. I do a lot of traveling and inevitably people want to go to art installations and museums and I'm always fine with going. Anways, there's not a lot of legendary art pieces (that are in public places) I haven't seen in person. Not a single one of them really inspire me. I'd go so far as to say I don't really understand how art became such a huge market to begin with. I literally wouldn't pay $100 for anything other than sculptures.

I wouldn't put most of the legendary pieces on my wall unless you paid me.

edit: it always tickles me the negative reactions I get when people hear my opinion on art. Doesn't seem to matter how I phrase it, it's always offensive to someone that I can't see the undeniable beauty in popular art. Putting time and effort into something is a prerequisite for me to be in awe, but it does not automatically interest me. Many professional athletes put in far more time and effort into their craft to play a decorative game and I similarly don't care about their mastery of their strictly decorative achievements.

Fascinating! Well I hope you wind up with your own ideal number of pieces whether that be 0 or 1000 :)

I might already be there at 0, haha! I much prefer decorating my spaces with plants over art. I certainly wouldn't argue plants are objectively better than art, but for me the beauty of even the most common pothos far surpasses the majority of popular art.

I don't get houseplants. Inside they look stark, isolated, completely removed from their element. I love a good garden and outdoor flowers but houseplants seem ridiculous to me even excluding the ongoing maintenance and the inability to just leave home for a few weeks without having to setup someone to water. Why do I want to be physically tied down by my home decor? Or have the quality of my home decor dependant on the quality of my green thumb skills? Give me a Dali on the wall any day that invariably leads to a discussion on what a person sees in the scene.

I also enjoy playing with tech, which automated watering among other cool tech solutions to keeping up with indoor plants is fun for me. Always fun to hear about differing opinions and wonder about how we arrived at our opinions. I can't imagine ever caring what anyone saw in a dali. Having taken an elective art class in college I recall feeling quite uncomfortable having to listen to people who relished the opportunity to hear themselves speak on a subject that has no wrong answers.

Personally I have a hard time valuing questions that have no wrong answer. Seems like a polite ritual at best and a waste of time at worst.

Art is a financial instrument. The value of art is how much a wealthy person will pay for it.

That being said, there are lots of intense and pretty drawings and paintings that obviously took a lot of skill to create. No need to expect inspiration. A lot of the language around "art" is a reflection of the self-regard of the people who own it.

> edit: it always tickles me the negative reactions I get when people hear my opinion on art.

People want to fit in, it's a survival skill. Public negative opinions about Marvel movies will get you death threats and accusations of trying to destroy companies for the sake of other companies.

> People want to fit in, it's a survival skill.

I think you're probably touching the root cause, but it still stands to question how exactly people feel they're more fitted by publicly disagreeing with an anonymous person on the internet. I guess it's just a learned action in meatspace that incidentally carries over to the internet where it has no benefit and only detriment? Human behavior is always interesting.

What does Van Gogh have to do with the article? He lived in the wrong century.

I am unsure why he was brought up in this thread tbh, but it was many comments above mine

I actually love experimental and avant garde works but one problem is it feels like a lot of it is a bit of a dead end. Like 4’33” was an interesting idea once but there’s kind of nowhere you can take that. Once you get past the first presentation it’s not interesting to do a slight variation. Or, you know, Jackson Pollack, neat, but not like I need to see 10 more guys flinging paint at a canvas.

Absolutely, without exception.

Picasso was a communist and his art was representational. His form of 'modernism' has nothing to do with the kind of actual nonsense that the CIA wanted to push.

I certainly do

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