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Comment by Luctct | Hacker News Reader

Neither murals nor graffiti is art. None of those would have been accepted in any gallery some 30~40 years ago when standards were higher and the world didn't suffer from the high number of grown-up men who are hooked up on comic books and animated cartoons it suffers through today. A lot of it is just vandalism. None of it seems to be made by or for adults. 99% looks like it's made by some comic book fan on LSD. Always the same. Always the same. Always the same. Always the same. Always the same. That's just how shallow they are. I've heard stories of places being pressured or even threatened to cede their spaces to accommodate this form of "art." It's awful all around. Real art is deep, meaningful, timeless and doesn't need to be imposed.

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Just so you know, the exact same thing was said about pretty much every major art movement over the past century and beyond. When you say, "None of it seems to be made by or for adults", the same was basically said of Salvador Dalí and Andy Warhol and Paul Gauguin and Henri Matisse.

The more things change, the more they stay the same. :)

Those examples have some similarities, but - while they had their contemporary detractors - they were, for the most part, formally educated participants in the art establishment of their times.

I'd liken it more to the works of Henri Rousseau or even maybe the French Decadent movement.

The funny thing is, the classical art of Greece, probably looked much different than how we think about it. It was much more colorful and vibrant, it's just that all the pigment washed away. https://www.ancient-origins.net/sites/default/files/styles/l...

Cities adding art back onto the walls, is probably closer to how the ancient Greek cities actually looked. Our classical architectural view of pristine white walls is wrong. https://exploringgreece.tv/wp-content/uploads/2020/04/parthe...

I refuse to believe that the people who made some of the best ancient statues had an artistic sense of a 5-year old when it came to color...

Obviously ancient status were colored but probably in a much nicer way. No way something like:

https://static.frieze.com/files/inline-images/web-cg-h-102-a...

could be even close to the original ( considering that the Romans generally managed to somehow get skin tones more or less right in the few paintings that survived)

The problem is they do careful analysis of statues and find evidence of pigmentation, but obviously they're only looking at the remnants of the base coat and don't see any of the careful detailing that almost certainly went towards making these statues look very lifelike (judging by the realistic quality of the sculpture itself.) And so the recreations look flat and uncanny because they're essentially unfinished.

I wonder if another problem might be fashion trends. Sometimes bright, contrasting, colours are in style and feel normal. https://www.apparelsearch.com/terms/images/cher-aerobics-leg...

I don't think the bright colors are the problem, just the opposite actually.

Particularly in this example: https://static.frieze.com/files/inline-images/web-cg-h-102-a...

The bright clothes are fine, but his skin is awful. It's flat and lifeless, like a cold corpse drained of blood. It looks like they put the primer coat on then left it unfinished; I think that's literally what they did. Maybe this look is what they were originally going for, but I don't think so. Look at the detail on that guy's knees, they look just like real knees. I don't believe the original artists went through so much trouble to sculpt hyper-realistic knees then let some intern half-ass the paint job.

I think it's also current museum aesthetics where they do enough to give you the idea but don't want to take any artistic license beyond what's provable. So the painting could have been more subtle especially for those close to the viewer

Maybe you should reevaluate where your own aesthetic comes from https://www.forbes.com/sites/drsarahbond/2017/04/27/whitewas...

I think the reproductions suffer a bit because the distance these statues were from a viewer varied -- but just like murals

> Maybe you should reevaluate where your own

No, I don’t think so.

The way some of these “reconstructions” look is just plain awful. And based on the surviving examples of frescoes and paintings they would look as just awful the the Romans.

> I think the reproductions suffer a bit because

They suffer because there is no shading for one thing. The skin and hair especially just look awful. It has nothing to do with the bright colors (I get that part).

Indeed, worse than that the myth of white statues as an aesthetic was created by racist euronationalists in the late 19th c. https://www.forbes.com/sites/drsarahbond/2017/04/27/whitewas...

That's not a very good argument. Putting aside the present topic, this argument doesn't address the substance and instead lazily falls back on an association fallacy: "if people said P about A in the past and we no longer think that, and you say P about B, then you must also be wrong". It's the same kind of progressive argument people use when they categorically dismiss any criticism of new music as just the same old hate old people always have for "new things". Boring, dismissive, unthinking, and refuses to consider that there might be valid criticism apart from the crankiness that does, in fact, exist. It assumes as a premise that art cannot be bad, or that it cannot be an expression of cultural decadence, whereas I claim that it can.

And I would actually claim that most Warhol is trash, good swaths of Dali worthless, and both Matisse and Gaugin mixed bags.

> It assumes the premise that art cannot be bad

The difference is that pieces of art can be bad, but you’re going to have to do a lot more work to dismiss an entire set of categories of art. Even the examples of Warhol, Dali, etc. are individual artists, not an entire medium.

Imagine arguing that there are exactly zero good pieces of software written in JavaScript bc JavaScript is a bad language.

When people say "it's bad so it's not art", they're challenging artistic value, essentially the same as what any art critic does. A cultured art critic who says "this is kitsch crap" and an unsophisticated man off the street who says "this crap isn't art" are both people expressing their dissatisfaction with the work. One expresses his thoughts in a way that is 'technically wrong' if taken literally and the other expresses his thoughts with jargon that is inaccessible to the general public.

As someone who graduated from an art school, let me be another voice here to say that you're absolutely wrong. Art is about intentionality and process. Duchamp and Wahrol are prime mainstream examples of that. The intervention in urban equipment is art. Making it yours, sharing it with the world, the dialectical dialogue between the mural and the surrounding cityscape, there is so much to unpack here.

Also, comic books are art as well. Sequential art has been recognised by everyone with an ounce of heart and one of the main mediums for storytelling. Some even been calling it the ninth art just like cinema is the seventh. It is a medium unlike painting, cinema, or photography, one in which you can do things you can't in any other medium.

I recommend checking out the following books if you want to move past your misconceptions:

- The Work Of Art In The Age Of Mechanical Reproduction, Walter Benjamin. - Understanding Comics: The Invisible Art, Scott McCloud. - Comics and Sequential Art, Will Eisner.

All those books are quite approachable and engaging reads.

Why does it matter if we call it art or not?

Because many people will refuse to call an art piece art in an effort to dismiss that work as valid. Not calling it art is a form of gatekeeping.

Thou art irony

I think your example of Duchamp is incorrect (and I’m an engineer not an arts graduate) Attempting to cast yourself. as knowledgeable and then using Duchamp without understanding his history shows lack of taste IMHO.

Duchamp stole his signature artwork from Baroness Elsa von Freytag-Loringhoven:

  a 1917 letter Duchamp wrote to his sister, Susanne, translated: “One of my female friends who had adopted the masculine pseudonym Richard Mutt sent in a porcelain urinal as a sculpture.”
  R Mutt was identified as an artist living in Philadelphia, which is where she was living at the time. 
  Duchamp said he had purchased the urinal from JL Mott Ironworks Company, adapting Mutt from Mott, but the company did not manufacture the model in the photograph
  the handwriting on the urinal matches the handwriting Von Freytag-Loringhoven used for her poems.

I recommend you avoid presenting yourself as an expert on art : or at least try to become more knowledgeable. Second-hand information from experts is often misinformation. Of course: “great artists steal” just usually not quite so literally.

First: I never called myself an expert. I said I was an arts undergrad, there is a difference there.

Second, I never mentioned that urinal. I mentioned two artists that had intentionality and process tied to their work. Duchamp is not just that urinal, please check his other work and the movements he was associated with to learn a bit more about what mechanisms gives the art piece and aura of art. In my opinion, that understanding is quite essential to appreciate certain movements such as Dadaism.

Also, I never mentioned anything about "artists" and stealing.

All I did was name check two very well-known artists whose work is part of a larger artistic revolution, one that precipitated a discussion and a new understanding about "what is art".

I also offered some book references so that instead of accepting my opinion, the OP or anyone else can go read and form their own opinion. Because instead of being an expert, I gave references to the experts.

As usual, gotta trust an engineer to arrive full of opinions and misconceptions about a field that they're clearly not well versed and attempt to put someone down.

Duchamp and not Basquiat in this context is rather dubious to say the least.

I don't want a neo-Duchamp putting a port-a-potty in my neighborhood and spitefully calling it art.

Good lord, there is so much more to Duchamp than that urinal. Also, it misses then point of my comment in its entirety. It is about what intention is behind the work, not about the piece themself (a bit more complex than that but that is enough for a small comment).

I don't care what the intention behind ugly art is, because ugly art isn't something I want to see regardless of the intention.

well, as long as you understand that ugly is not an absolute and that what you find ugly might actually be awesome for someone else.

So what was the intent behind the Urinal?

Your choice to smush intent and Duchamp is weird.

What intent is in a stolen piece of work presented fraudulently throughout Duchamp's life as his own, and still widely treated as iconic and used as an example of a movement. What value the criticism built upon a lie? There is plenty of unintentional art in this story!

You're uninformed about it all being the same. The graffiti in São Paulo has a vast range of styles. I have hundreds of photos I've taken myself. This fine art I can see outdoors is one of the most pleasurable things about living or visiting there.

I studied art in university, am an artist myself, and visit major exhibitions around the world on a regular basis. Much graffiti is indeed valid art.

Art that isn't made to make the lives of those around it better, is dead, or worse. As someone living in São Paulo, those murals are one of my favorite aspect of the city. I love them. Not that it really matters, but those large commissioned artworks are very much how Da Vinci or Michelangelo worked. I have little doubt they would be proud and amazed.

They also reflect the sensibilities and thoughts of the artist in relation to the city and its inhabitants. I love em' :)

> None of those would have been accepted in any gallery some 30~40 years ag

Graffiti started showing up in art galleries 30-40 years ago.

There is a Banksy one on now in Glasgow.

https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/rare-banksy-solo-e...

I'm not sure if this kind of parody is against HN guidelines per se, but it's less common here than, say, Twitter, and as such is usually customary to add some indicator like "/s" or similar.

Real art is deep, meaningful, largely in the eye of beholder, and far from timeless but always culturally interconnected.

I genuinely don't know if you're trolling, or actually believe what you wrote? If the latter, I'd love to hear more. I vehemently disagree with everything you said but that's no reason to downvote - we learn more from opposing viewpoints, especially if new and hard to comprehend.

> None of those would have been accepted in any gallery some 30~40 years ago when standards were higher

It's funny to see someone wax pretentious about standards in art when they obviously haven't heard of, say, Diego Rivera, and don't know that Haring's heyday was "30 to 40 years ago".

You should have kept your mouth shut instead of embarrassing yourself.

So there’s no art in comics or animation either? Pixar’s Best Picture-nominated “Up” is too lowbrow, shallow, and lacking of artistic quality?

Good art sucks. Interpret that however you want

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