Say Good-Bye to Picasso’s Women of Algiers, Disappearing for $140M | Hacker News Reader

Say Good-Bye to Picasso’s Women of Algiers, Disappearing for $140M

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48 pointsJacobAldridge83 comments

I'm going to assume that just taking a high-res scan of the thing and making prints would actually miss something of the original. Maybe there's artistic merit in how the thickened wodges of paint in each brush-stroke glisten as you move around the room; perhaps educational value in the particular refractive indices of the paint in demonstrating how to paint that way.

My question is, then: if not a flat 2D scan, what would be enough to capture everything relevant to the structural identity of the work? Could we, say, take a 3D scan of the surface, combine it with a spectrographic analysis of all the relevant oils, mix up some of the same oils in their old styles, and then 3D-print those oils onto canvas to create an exact replica? Would that be enough to alleviate the author's ennui?

You'll never satisfy someone who wants an original. It actually won't even devalue the work much if it was reproduced near exactly. As an artist and art buyer, I want originals. It's about linage and the greater art narrative. If it was painted, I want the one the artist touched, bar none. I'm buying pieces in the $400-800 range and I'm of that opinion. Those that are buying in the 400,000-800,000 definitely also share it. (They are also buying as investment.)

There's a difference when the artist is dead. By buying an original you become a patron of the artist and generally contribute to artistic development.

Assume the artist maintains IP over copies of his work, aren't you also contributing to his continued development by buying a copy?

thats depends on the kind of art and the audience it attracts. its great for musicians and other popular art forms, but if painters start making art with the mindset of selling many copies of it, many will be disappointed

And I can understand that, too. Modern art especially is all about the narrative context of the work—if not for the statement being made by painting a Mondrian or a Warhol when and where they did, they would be worthless.

But that context is something that exists whether or not the original is in front of you. It's something captured in a book about art history, not in the painting itself.

I can understand a collector wanting originals. But why does a museum need originals, now that the technology exists to faithfully reproduce the originals? Why not just sell all the works and put up reproductions? If the point is to teach the public about art and its history, you don't need the actual art there (which has probably been restored five times by then anyway, or, if not, has aged to the point that its appearance no longer matches the artist's original intent); you just need an excellent diorama.

Intellectually I'm with you completely. But I think I wouldn't want to go the the replica Louvre. I have certain stories in my head that I don't want to give up.

Well, it's something that's been done for the Lascaux cave and more recently with the Chauvet cave in France, because allowing the public in the real caves would damage the paintings on the wall.

So if the integrity of the work is at stake, it's definitely something that might be done. But museum visitors are kinda like collectors but with less money: they want to see the real thing, not some cheap replica they could buy to put in their home.

Museums don't exist only to teach about art and its history, they exist for people who want the experience of seeing the real thing without being millionaires. Even though most people wouldn't see the difference between the original and the replica and would be subject to some sort of placebo effect if they think the replicas are the originals.

I have wondered the same thing. For example, I was at the Musee d'Orsay last summer and was absolutely blown away by van Gogh's "Starry Night". It is stunning. But look at the picture the the d'Orsay's website [0]? "Drab" would be generous.

On the other hand, I have seen a "Rembrandt" at a Japanese museum that has dubious provenance. The sign at the museum said that they were quite sure their's was real, but that an identical painting exists in an American museum and apparently nobody know's which one is the real one. Either way it was an amazing painting. In fact there is a museum in Otsuka which houses only replicas of famous works (which I really want to go to, but haven't been to yet).

Skilled artists can make convincing replicas. If someone wants to pay $140 million for a painting, it might be interesting if $50k were reserved for painting a replica to hang in a museum. However, I think the author is being a bit over the top anyway. As they even note in the article, that Picasso has been shown at exhibitions.

[0] - http://www.musee-orsay.fr/en/collections/works-in-focus/sear...

That link is a van Gogh reduced to a gif (two actually, as part of their obfuscation attempt) that's only 0.3MP. There wasn't much chance that the digital version would do it justice.

I've twice been to the Van Gogh museum in Amsterdam and twice I've been totally bowled over, overwhelmed with emotion, esp. toward the end of his life paintings. You can't see the same thing in 2D.

That was an amazing museum. I felt so lucky to have been able to visit.

One of my favorite experiences as far as museums are concerned!

For anyone who might visit: be sure to take the (free) tour. My guide was actually one of the conservators(?) who, among other things, had traveled to inspect found/bought paintings for the museum. She was incredibly knowledgeable and passionate about Van Gogh, which made the whole experience even better.

To offer a different example, it's fairly rare to see real dinosaur bones on display - at least mounted into a dinosaur shape. There are lots of problems with mounting bones and naturally a lot of care and expense has to go into it. Many museums simply exhibit painted casts and 90% of people won't notice the difference unless they're told.

Right, but for bones, the structure of the skeleton in place is what's interesting, not so much the fact that it's original.

For Van Gogh's work, the image itself is not really what's amazing about it. They are quite nice if that's the style you like, but if you've ever seen one of his originals up close, you can tell that it's actually more of a color bas relief made with oil paint. I find them to be exquisite in person.

If someone made Van Gogh reproductions that actually were more or less accurate in terms of the sculpturey nature of the works, I would spend at least a thousand dollars to have one of my favorites.

I don't know too many other artists that have paintings that are like Van Gogh's though, where it's not just the image, but the material that's the soul of the work.

> but if you've ever seen one of his originals up close, you can tell that it's actually more of a color bas relief made with oil paint. I find them to be exquisite in person.

+10 , saw a Van Gogh at the Hermitage Museum in St Petersburg, wasn't expecting that much physical depth in the painting itself.

If someone made Van Gogh reproductions that actually were more or less accurate in terms of the sculpturey nature of the works, I would spend at least a thousand dollars to have one of my favorites.

There are lots of companies and artists that will happily do that for you. www.vangoghstudio.com for example seem to do it on fairly large scale.

Jackson Pollock's Alchemy has been subjected to a variety of 3D scans and xrays to try and capture its texture and height. The Guggenheim museum in Venice has a 3d printed monochrome reproduction of it that's pretty impressive.

Here's a link to the visualization project: http://vcg.isti.cnr.it/alchemy/

For me, personally, I'd be delighted to have some really good Rembrandt and Goldie forgeries (that is, copies executed in oils), and maybe a few impressionists. The texture of the works is a big part of the experience. But I'd also like the originals to be available as part of our shared cultural history and heritage, rather than locked in a vault to gloat over.

That said, the shared culture/history is undermined by the way many galleries and museums behave - my wife is a painter and is moved to fury by the way that sketching and painting is now forbidden by many institutions; the artists being exhibited may well have learned their own trade sitting in a museum copying the revered masters of their own era; that options is denied to modern students.

Indeed, one of the interesting things about a world with "forgery museums" is how much less protected they would need to be.

Imagine if the public were actually allowed to touch the (replica) painting. Sounds crazy, doesn't it? If a reproduction was a $30K capital cost for scanning and oil synthesis, followed by a $2K marginal cost for reproduction, though, why not let the public touch it? Just print another one each year. Heck, destroy the reproductions when you would normally rotate them out of display, and then print them again when you want to install them anew.

For that matter, imagine if one could study (excellent forgeries of) old masters in their local museum/gallery, instead of having to fly to Europe. In fact, imagine if you could "run off" a replica for group study in art school from the room beside the offset printer!

I found this old news article interesting.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0xyZ63s43uM

There was also a doco about the industry in China that I watched but can't recall the name.

Océ does 3D scanning and printing.

Here a Youtube movie of the process: https://youtu.be/EXRt64HEBrk

Edit: this was only printed by Océ. More info can be found here: http://www.timzaman.com/2013/09/3d-scan-and-print-paintings/

Interesting quote: We noticed that things like glossiness and transparency that are in each painting are very distinguishing in the original, and we are not yet able to reproduce.

The Louvre and the D'orsay actually sponsor sketching and copying. So luckily the trend isn't everywhere.

> Maybe there's artistic merit in how the thickened wodges of paint in each brush-stroke glisten as you move around the room; perhaps educational value in the particular refractive indices of the paint in demonstrating how to paint that way.

No, the reason you own a $140M original Picasso painting is so that you can hang it on your wall and show the world you own a one hundred and fourty million dollar painting. Something that most people could never dream of affording in one, ten, or even a hundred of their lifetimes.

There is value in being an original. I remember seeing a news piece on an unsigned landscape painting. Experts were divided on whether it was done by a famous painter (name escapes me) or by one of his students. If the former, it was worth $200k. If the latter, $2k. The actual beauty of the work itself was literally only worth 1% - who did the painting was worth the other 99%...

You need a 4+ dimensional image to capture the various reflections: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Light_field

Making an exact replica of a work of art would be tantamount to destroying the original, or so an artist friend told me when I asked him that very question.

On a related note, you can buy lab-created rubies for a few dollars each that are pretty much indistinguishable from rubies found in the ground that are sold for millions of dollars. They have the exact same chemical formula, same optical properties, same everything (except for relative proportions of various isotopes and the fact that lab-created rubies tend to have fewer blemishes).

What's the reason for the difference? As far as I can tell, it's this: people don't buy rubies, they buy the right to advertise the fact that they spend millions of dollars on jewelry. Same goes for paintings.

I do wonder, re: the rubies (and the same goes for diamonds)—would it be in the best interest of the gem seller (e.g. De Beers) to still put on a show of mining the gems, but in reality synthesize most of their stock?

You can tell which rocks are natural because of the flaws contained in them. The flaws in natural rocks can not be created using a synthetic process. Synthetic stones are flawless. Yes you can introduce flaws in synthetic stones but they don't look like natural flaws.

How would you know? For all we know they figured that out years ago and are putting up a show of how impossible it is to reproduce natural flaws while laughing all the way to the bank. Anyway, even if you can't synthesize a perfect replica now, it will be possible someday.

This is a wider problem for all scarcity driven industries. As we improve materials science natural scarcity will go away, and those industries will either run towards intellectual property rights or be forced to change their business model.

Synthetic diamond research is not owned or controlled by the cartels that control the from-the-ground gem market. The processes and limits of making diamonds are the subject of scientific papers, industrial processes, academic conferences, etc.

The gemstone industry's approach to this is to call mined gemstones "real gemstones" or "natural gemstones" and ones made in a lab "synthetic gemstones". This leads the general public to believe that lab-created stones are somehow artificial or fake, like leather-imitation vinyl.

Wow. I had no idea... http://www.geolite.com/ruby.htm

you're touching on some interesting ideas about what art is. the economic half of your question can sort of be answered by the irrational behavior of the consumption of Veblen Goods[0]. the existential question has been addressed by a few artists, popularly by Richard Prince and less popularly (but more fascinatingly, imo) by folks like Elaine Sturtevant[1].

Contemporarily, artists like Clement Valla[2] are doing nifty things looking at the limits and our existing fascination with digital facsimile.

Here's an old essay http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Work_of_Art_in_the_Age_of_M... that asks some of these same questions (in particular the question of what would be missing). i think more interesting is the idea of what it means to own art and why we feel compelled to do it at all. Like they say: Everyone has their reasons.

this sort of question (which for me was triggered by Sturtevant) was hugely influential in getting me interested in fine art as a whole.

[0]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Veblen_good

[1]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elaine_Sturtevant

[2]: http://clementvalla.com/work/wrapped-terracotta-neck-amphora...

No one really cares about what's drawn on it, the only thing that matters is that it is a Picasso. Even if you were making an exact molecule for molecule replica, art collectors wouldn't even use it as a rug.

It reminds me of a very old painting found recently. They were entire debates on whether it had been painted by a very famous artist or not, and if it did it would be worth millions. At no time did anyone wonder if the painting was actually beautiful.

And I know, it shows I am an ignorant unbeliever. Modern art isn't even meant to be "beautiful", it is meant to be "an original concept", but not too original, it still has to comply with the current trend.

I've been thinking that the commercial side of art is based on magical thinking, more specifically the 'law of contagion' http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Law_of_contagion

EDIT: This comment illustrates it beautifully:

> much of its value lies in the fact that you are looking at an object that was "there" with "them" when "it" happened.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9530060

The commercial side of most things is based on magical thinking - specifically the collection of totem objects like companies, stock options, brand reputations, and luxury consumables that confer juju on their owner.

Art auctions are one of the more obvious examples of this. But they're hardly unique. The entire business world leans heavily on the same pre-rational kinds of thinking and feeling.

Which is not to say that engineers don't sometimes build stuff that works. Or that Picasso wasn't an amazing artist. (Not many people know about Picasso's very early work, where he totally nailed basic figurative painting and drawing.)

But that's not where the value is. The value is in status games and perception, not content.

There would be a great experiment to do. We recently learned that Picasso's handyman was paid in paintings and that he probably stole a few others. That means he has Picasso paintings that are unknown to the world. It would be great to alter the signature on one of them to some unknown czech artist of the same period and see if museums will even want to pay a penny to acquire it and if art critiques will even bother spending a minute looking at the painting if they don't know it is a Picasso!

Art forgery/reproduction is a well studied craft and as such making decent replicas is not hard (my wife has a half dozen fairly decent Monet's and Matisse's kicking about our attic from her art school days). But even if you could reproduce a painting to the point where it is indistinguishable from the original it still doesn't reflect the fact that paintings are historical artifacts as much as simply an aesthetically beautiful objects. And much like any historical artifact much of its value lies in the fact that you are looking at an object that was "there" with "them" when "it" happened. That is something you can never reproduce.

To be frank, museums are kind of crappy for viewing art anyway. You can never get too close and the light inevitably gets in the way. A virtual, 3D-scanned museum with VR goggles? Now that would be amazing!

>Technically speaking, not factoring time on loan to exhibitions, Women of Algiers has only been on public view for the last ten days.

What is that supposed to mean? That's essentially saying that, except for a very common method of having art viewable by the public in museums, it wasn't viewable by the public. That seems like a completely pointless observation.

I took it to mean that the author of the article was incapable of researching how frequently the painting was on loan to exhibitions.

The point is that works of art by great artists are world heritage artefacts, and shouldn't be held in private hands. Who knows if the new buyer will even loan the painting out?

How would they have ever ended up with that designation unless there was a private market to determine 'proper value,' thereby conferring notability on the artists?

Market value is not the only means of determining aesthetic value.

90% of the art in the collections of most big museums will never be seen by anybody. Held "in private hands", there's arguably a better chance people will eventually get to see it than if it sits in storage indefinitely - the fate of all but a tiny fraction of artefacts held in major museums.

I would think that the risk of concentration of the artifacts in one place would cause concern. Consider what happened at the Library of Alexandria.

> there's no doubt in my mind that the prices for all art, masterpieces included but especially contemporary, recent, and new art, are completely out of whack and ridiculously overpriced. I am sorry, but it seems sick to me to see new artists selling art out of their first shows for between $30,000 and $40,000. Something's gotta give.

I give this person the benefit of the doubt as having thought about this a lot more than I have, but this surprises me. Why is it bad if new artists are able to make a living?

Of course artists should be able to make a living, but spending that much money on unknown and inexperienced artists suggests that the relationship between the monetary value of art and the quality/importance of it is completely out of whack. But it's not as if that's news to anybody.

>spending that much money on unknown and inexperienced artists

it is called VC investing in high-tech

Well, maybe this suggests that the relationship between the monetary value of startups and the quality/importance of them is completely out of whack as well.

Which is exactly why that's a great post.

What is the correct way to value art?

The only answer I can see is - whatever the market is willing to pay.

I can't understand the high prices for art, but I can see it for musical instruments [1].

My wife can "hear" a Stradivari. It doesn't make my hearing bad or hers good - it's just different.

A violin + played as the Titanic sunk? The story behind the instrument makes it valuable (to me!)

As with anything emotional, how do you value the first time you hear your child's giggle, the first time you kissed a lover, the first time someone close to you passed away?

For me, articles like this just reaffirm: Am I happy? (right now, in the moment) and if not, what do I need to do to make it so?

[1] http://www.cmuse.org/12-most-expensive-violins/

So why is the artist being known or experienced more important than the quality of the picture? I mean, people will pay crazy amounts for a known name, but if good pieces from newcomers are not expected to be worth much, that's a point where I'd call art prices a sham.

I saw a TV show once about a painting that is suspected to be by da Vinci. Various attempts to authenticate it have been made, and so far none have proven it is not a da Vinci. Whether it is or not is a factor of 100 in the amount it is worth.

But it's still exactly the same painting either way.

Your first art show easily represents a year of work. I fail to see how earning $40k for a year of work is "completely out of whack" - unless you were arguing that artists are underpaid?

Journalists jealous.

That is not it.

"My stomach turned at the sight of a woman carrying a yapping Yorkshire terrier while heading out of this overcrowded gallery."

Does anyone else not view this entire essay as the definition of a first world problem? (and even then, the term doesn't do it justice?)

Surely there's a witty comment to be made about THAT turning the author's stomach, while someone in a third world nation starves...however for me it'd just suffice to point out the struggles of the overworked single mother of two to three in the US of A, the NYTimes' piece today about the disappearance of the middle class [1], and then juxtapose that with this article.

[1] http://www.nytimes.com/2015/05/12/us/politics/as-middle-clas...

and it sold for $179M

http://www.upi.com/Top_News/US/2015/05/11/Picasso-painting-s...

The penultimate line of the article negates the headline.

> When I carped about all this art disappearing forever after auction, she said, in a tone that was distinctly silly boy, "A lot of it will be back here next season."

Where 'she' is an art expert and employee of the auction house handling the sale.

Right, but that comment was in jest about the state of Art buying. That's the point of the piece, Art buying is bullshit. Who's buying these pieces? They aren't buying them to add to the greater art narrative but as an investment. Art Critics love to hate the fact that their world couldn't exist without the wealthy supporting as investment. No one buys a 140mm Picasso because that's what it's worth. They buy it because they think they can sell it for more. Hence his tone about it being gone forever and her joking that he knows it will be back.

OK, I didn't get the joke I guess.

I am torn back and forth whether to approve or disapprove art collecting. On the one hand I think you should never buy trash, but save for the very best of something that makes you really happy and buy the minimal amount of it. On the other hand I hate buying things just for the sake of status, especially when it has only idealistic utility.

When I am ever in the position to buy a Picasso, I hope nobody reads this comment, because I am going to casually put it on a wall in the hallway along with some prints. The troll fun you would have by your own would totally outweigh the status points you could gain by telling others.

Way too attached to a bit of paint on paper. It was painted after all, to be sold.

Do you think that art as a commodity is less valuable that "art for arts sake"? Or the fact that an artist (like everyone else in society) needs to get paid to continue to create is a bad thing or cheapens anything they might create?

Assuming you are trying to say that artists deserve to get paid for their work, I very much agree. Many people consider themselves to be working in creative professions (many of us on HN do this) and all demand excellent wages for our work. I think a visual artist is deserving of the same!

Nothing cheap about it at all, any more than an engineer selling their skills. If anything, artists are arrogant in claiming creativity as their prerogative, and assigning it value over anyone else's efforts.

Way too attached to a bit of paint on paper.

Is there a name for the rhetorical device where one tries to devalue something by referring to it in this technically-correct-debasing kind of way? I feel like I'm seeing it more and more often on HN and elsewhere. It's some kind of anti-intellectualism but I feel like it must be more specific.

People have opinions. Sometimes, missing the opportunity to understand the other side of the equation, they attach an oversimplified label in order to make their opinion seem obvious and correct. Usually, though, it is an honest expression of their opinion however much they are ignoring the other opinions around them.

As you correctly point out, it is very common. You can choose to break the cycle, if you like. Acknowledging the other person's opinion as valid is the first step. After that, you may or may not want to encourage them to expand their view. However, if you think that the other person is unable to understand this point you may choose not to waste your time.

I suspect that you could find a simplified label to describe the comment of the parent post, but perhaps it would be better to consider their opinion as valid and move on.

Meiosis

http://rhetoric.byu.edu/figures/M/meiosis.htm

I've gone s far as to call it the "yellow metal" fallacy. (ie gold)

Its all just matter in the end, but sometimes there's value in how its arranged. Ignoring that is stupid.

No, its called intellectual honesty, or integrity. To subscribe to someone else's value system and order your life according to their views is stupid.

Reductionism, or substituting the part for the whole.

Way too attached to your body, your intellect, your values, your hobbies. You were created to replicate DNA, after all.

Ah. No. See, the painter got to paint it and sell it, presumably to a private individual, whereupon it was not seen for decades. This was ok.

Now that private individual seeks to resell it, exactly as the artist did originally, and is marked a philistine and evil person, who 'disgusts' the OP. I called double standard.

Clear?

The discussion of the valuation of art here reminds me of this Planet Money episode

http://www.npr.org/blogs/money/2013/10/09/230950901/episode-...

http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/EvilIsCool

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