Comment by smokel | Hacker News Reader

Comment by smokel | Hacker News Reader

I don't trust this for one bit. For the owners there is quite the incentive to label this as the work of a genius. But in reality, this is just pretty complex for a 12 year-old to produce by yourself.

Edit: as others have pointed out, and if I were to actually read the article carefully before commenting, the composition is not attributed to Michelangelo. So it is just a copy. Quite the achievement, but possible for a twelve-year old.

I once confronted a gallery owner who was proudly presenting a newly discovered work by Mondriaan [1]. An original black and white photo in an old newspaper [2] was shown as proof of authenticity. But many details such as the creases in fabric differ in the original and the new painting. No OpenCV required to see that. Mind you, the picture is already framed with Mondriaan standing next to it. Unlikely that he's still working on it.

Instead of responding, the gallery owner simply turned away.

[1] https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/b/bb/Cavalini...

[2] https://www.vrt.be/vrtnws/nl/2022/03/02/nieuwe-werken-mondri...

Just to engage with your “12 year old to produce by yourself” , here are some examples of art made by Picasso in his early teens to mid teens.

It’s absolutely possible to be that good. Especially in the middle ages / early renaissance with the work you did for guilds and working for masters as an apprentice.

At eleven years old: https://www.pablo-ruiz-picasso.net/work-3939.php

At fourteen at his sisters wedding: https://www.pablo-ruiz-picasso.net/work-9.php

At fifteen https://www.pablo-ruiz-picasso.net/work-11.php

> It’s absolutely possible to be that good.

Sure, but not if this is your first painting. Humans can't one-shot art like this

The title is sensationalised. They mean the earliest painting of his that we have. It's also a copy of an existing engraving.

Then that's very believable (well, depending on what age he started).

As a comparison, Mozart's compositions when he was 15 years old was unbelievable, unless you put in context he was already composing music at 5 years old

But he had not been an apprentice before making this, he started the apprenticeship that year, and this is supposed to be the first thing he ever painted.

> Michelangelo's biographers—Giorgio Vasari (1511–1574) and Ascanio Condivi (1525–1574)—tell us that, aside from some drawings, his first work was a painted copy after a well-known engraving by Martin Schongauer (1448–1491) showing Saint Anthony tormented by demons. Made about 1487–88 under the guidance of his friend and fellow pupil Francesco Granacci, Michelangelo's painting was much admired; it was even said to have incited Ghirlandaio's envy. [https://www.metmuseum.org/exhibitions/listings/2009/michelan...]

I can’t respond much too this being Michelangelo’ painting, but if he was an apprentice under his fellow pupil it’s possible that he just did minor things or filled in. It was how you learned. You did final retouching and such.

More broadly, we're doing people a disservice today by treating them as juveniles until they graduate college. When someone's that good, we shouldn't waste four years of his life in school he doesn't need, but instead let him be productive immediately out of college.

Christ a-fucking mighty, in some states, the law says that Michelangelo, had he been alive today,would have had to sit on a booster seat at the age at which he made this painting. Absurd.

One of my more heretical beliefs is that tech companies should do more hiring of high brilliant people right out of high school.

> When someone's that good, we shouldn't waste four years of his life in school he doesn't need, but instead let him be productive

Or perhaps we need more challenging schools. I'd hate to harvest before cultivation has a chance to grow without the constraints of organizational biases

18 years is more than enough time to ripen.

- Marquis de Lafayette was only 19 when he helped the US win independence.

- Alexander began conquering when he was 20, smashed Persia at 25, and "wept, for there were no more worlds to conquer" at 30.

- Pascal and Galois did revolutionary math before 20.

- Mary Shelly wrote Frankenstein at 18!

We need more rigorous secondary education and a pathway that lets people with rocket-ship trajectories skip useless tertiary education. I am sick and tired coddling mediocre people by pretending geniuses don't exist. If I ran things, I'd set up magnet schools nation-wide.

What is stopping people from creating schools for gifted youth?

It's controversial in education schools to "track" students, i.e. sort them into ability-categories and tailor each category's experience to its needs. For example, activist groups in New York City have been trying to kill gifted-and-talented schools and programs (e.g. Bronx Science high school) for years. It's painful to watch.

People can and do create rigorous private schools, but they're not accessible to the masses and often embody the same anti-talent mentality public ones do.

Communists.

Nothing, based on the existence of thousands of exactly such schools within the US alone.

On the other hand: a disagreement about the actual definition of gifted, based on the existence of thousands of such schools in the US alone. "Gifted" in some jurisdictions simply means something anodyne like "top 10%" which obviously doesn't get close to creating an actually targeted school environment for your Mozarts.

Mozart wrote his first symphony at eight, his first opera at 14. There are some people who have something extra that most people can barely comprehend.

> - Alexander began conquering when he was 20, smashed Persia at 25, and "wept, for there were no more worlds to conquer" at 30.

I think that we do NOT want to promote this. We need less of that, not more in fact. In fact, we need to keep people like that far away from power.

Some of us don't view the world through the lens of effete slave morality. Success is good.

Hard to make a school designed for a very small group of students. Who's paying?

>One of my more heretical beliefs is that tech companies should do more hiring of high brilliant people right out of high school.

I have more. Most average people need less education. No point in putting them through 15+ years of 'education'. They can start working at least part time by the time they are 12 or so. This way they also grow up psychologically very soon.

The children yearn for the mines

True, no phones, no distractions, I can see someone who finds their passion early on to get this good.

And who typically have a robust economy for craft built around them.

So with AI we can expect such artistic development to effectively cease, or to be almost always channeled through the averageness-finding-machines.

True this - without hacker news I might have emptied the dishwasher.

Agreeing with the main point; on a tangential note:

> At eleven years old: https://www.pablo-ruiz-picasso.net/work-3939.php

This one is a copy (Bargue plate − a famous set of plates designed to train students efficiently). And to be fair, it's not _that_ great of a copy.

The paintings really aren't impressive either: compare them to student works from e.g. the Angel Academy[0] (yes, they are older than 15). Incidentally, they also use Bargue plates a little to train students, and are far, far more demanding with themselves than Picasso in terms of accuracy and cleanliness.

Picasso wasn't terrible − he's definitely better than a non-painter − but he's genuinely far from having ever reached the level of his peers.

It's like comparing a food truck with historical French cooks.

[0]: https://angelacademyofart.com/student-works/

They are 18+ at Angel Academy, right? I would say they are a lot older than 11, 14, and 15. One year I think is a lot of development in the teens. Doesn't seem a fair comparison

They are indeed. Have a look here [0] for ≤18 works

[0]: https://www.artrenewal.org/14thARCSalon/Category/DaVinciInit...

Klimt did the first three when he was 17. There are even earlier works which are not much less sophisticated.

http://art-klimt.com/early_works.html

Some people are just prodigies - very, very few, but it's a real phenomenon. Even with early craft training, which people don't get today, exceptional talent still cuts through.

This is why the common "There's no such thing as talent, it's just hard work" line can't possibly be true. It's soothing to believe that you too could be a genius if only you put the hours in, but it just doesn't work like that.

Ability is set by a talent ceiling, which is on a bell curve. "Most people don't reach their ceiling" and "There are extreme outliers of native ability" can both be true at the same time.

Along with the self-deluding work=genius idea:

- Some use extreme outliers to justify their own failure to get close to their ceiling. "I can't be Einstein, why should I try?"

- Some (parents, coaches, motivational speakers) also use extreme outliers to claim there are no limits/ceilings for others. "If you can dream it you can do it!" (but somehow it doesn't seem to apply to them)

> This is why the common "There's no such thing as talent, it's just hard work" line can't possibly be true.

please stop killing my delusions.

The best essay I read last year described how there are two types of artists: those born with great talent, that usually create their masterpieces in their early 20s and coast for the rest of their life, and those that take most of their adulthood before finding their voice, peaking late in their 40s and 50s. The author used Picasso as an example of the former, and Kurt Vonnegut for the latter.

Gave me the greatest impulse to explore my creative drive like nothing else before, after spending my 20s lost in a daze. I know you’re joking, but if you aren’t, do not lose hope yet.

Wow. A great service to us as these are almost a "photo" into that world.

The part with being an apprentice in a masters workshop is of great importance in regard to that time imho. Neuroplasticity at that age is insane and if you spent all your time on just that, especially if predisposed to a certain way of processing visuals and image, that is a totally different circumstance then a 12 to 13 year old that is also capable of writing, maths, history, different languages, and all the other things we do in the way generalised education at that age is laid out in our modern world.

I don't have an opinion on whether the attribution is correct, but I don't think the complexity of the composition is a strong argument against it considering the artist was copying the engraving by Schongauer exactly (maybe even painting on top of it?) which takes a lot of the complexity out of it.

You might be right but the gallery owner has probably learnt that disputing the authenticity of his pieces with walk in punters rarely leads to a fruitful discussion

Is there a consensus among art historians about whether it's a work by Mondriaan or not? Christies seems to say it is: https://www.christies.com/en/lot/lot-6435483

It seems unbelievable that this is the first time the child ever picked up a paintbrush and applied paint to a surface.

It's probably more like: this is the first "published" final painting he ever did, after doing hundreds of other practice paintings/sketches that don't "count"

Reply on news.ycombinator.com