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Comment by d--b | Hacker News Reader

yeah it’s definitely a genre in itself.

It’s like there are 2 axes: - cool technique and - cool picture. The second is way more important than the first, which is way painters are still on top of the 2D art world.

Some people can do both though. And i’d say even in these cases the art world tend to dismiss the weird technique as gimmicky.

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There are a few modern artists who mix cool techniques to great results and get recognized. Olafur Eliasson and James Turrell come to mind.

Damien Hirst is a more polarizing third contender.

Edit: also Yayoi Kusama

And the reason 'cool picture' is way more important than 'cool technique' is because the technique is essentially no longer part of the art / picture at completion.

You've just got the sausage, and there's (not necessarily) any indication of how it was made inherent to the sausage - even if the way the sausage is made is cooler than the sausage itself.

(that analogy got tiresome quickly)

I'm not sure it's so fitting. You can see hoe this technique was done and how it's different from painting. Or like, a portrait made of pennies, or string and nails, etc, etc.

Another way to see this is that most obsessed artists live within constraints they created years ago, and their art stands out as it is something never seen before: the best someone has ever done within the constraints they took decades to explore and master.

You may still end up with the sausage but the meticulously prepared one will most likely be the most delicious.

I don't understand this at all in respect to the actual topic at hand. The "cool technique" in this case is creating 2D art by means of cracking glass. It's quite obvious at completion, just by seeing the art, what the general technique was. It's not like people are mistaking this for a watercolor.

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