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The $2M Urinal: Why Hard Work Doesn’t Cut It (2018)

behavioralscientist.org

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Re: The $2M Urinal: Why Hard Work Doesn’t Cut It (2018)

#4
Seth Godin has a great line about how the first person to put a urinal in an art museum was an artist, but the second person to do it was a plumber.

It makes an interesting thought experiment about what makes art, what it means to be "creative", and how the world may (or may not) appreciate your work...

Re: The $2M Urinal: Why Hard Work Doesn’t Cut It (2018)

#5
I feel like modern art market is primarily a way for a subsegment of rich people to buy certain intangible goods: These are people that feel lonely, and have low self esteem... They really would like to socialize with cool and charismatic people, and the "modern art scene" is basically a very pricey matchmaking service for them to make friends and go to parties with people that fit this description (i.e. the artists)

Re: The $2M Urinal: Why Hard Work Doesn’t Cut It (2018)

#6

> The art world is a wonderful illustration of the First Law of Success: 'Performance drives success, but when performance can’t be measured, networks drive success.' This is a thought-provoking reframing of "it's not what you know; it's who you know."

When things like art are hard to qualify, it seems it’s rasy to fall back on reputation. It seems a similar thing happens with investment. Have they had success in the past, with that do they have what it takes to succeed in the future?

It’s imperfect, but without a crystal ball, what else can you use as proxy given the unknowns?

Re: The $2M Urinal: Why Hard Work Doesn’t Cut It (2018)

#7
post #5

I feel like modern art market is primarily a way for a subsegment of rich people to buy certain intangible goods: These are people that feel lonely, and have low self esteem... They really would like to socialize with cool and charismatic people, and the "modern art scene" is basically a very pricey matchmaking service for them to make friends and go to parties with people that fit this description (i.e. the artists)

What a weird and condescending take.

Re: The $2M Urinal: Why Hard Work Doesn’t Cut It (2018)

#8

> The art world is a wonderful illustration of the First Law of Success: 'Performance drives success, but when performance can’t be measured, networks drive success.' This is a thought-provoking reframing of "it's not what you know; it's who you know."

The difference is that it's admitting that in some areas the managers/consumers can discern between good and bad, just not in every area. It's a bit closer to, "it's not what you know but who you know, when nobody else knows anything."

When a non-technical manager hires his nephew to write PhP, he isn't thinking "I love my nephew so much that I am willing to sacrifice our company's technology plan to help his career," he's thinking, "I have no idea how to evaluate web developers, so I might as well hire my nephew." Cynically, most people serve themselves first - so if you find them serving an in-group of the fashionable or blood-related it's often because they don't know how to serve themselves.

Re: The $2M Urinal: Why Hard Work Doesn’t Cut It (2018)

#9
post #7
post #5

I feel like modern art market is primarily a way for a subsegment of rich people to buy certain intangible goods: These are people that feel lonely, and have low self esteem... They really would like to socialize with cool and charismatic people, and the "modern art scene" is basically a very pricey matchmaking service for them to make friends and go to parties with people that fit this description (i.e. the artists)

What a weird and condescending take.

Why? It’s not strange to think that an old man in leveraged buyouts would be willing to spend some money to be catered to by a group of young, talented, attractive people... and if he’s rich enough or lucky enough, maybe even fuck a few of them.

Re: The $2M Urinal: Why Hard Work Doesn’t Cut It (2018)

#10
> But I do mean to say that there is no quality in art.

> The simple truth is we have no way of objectively determining the value of any work of art or the performance of its maker.

Ehh... Not having objective, quantitative metrics is not the same thing as having no quality what so ever.

It seems very strange (and utterly wrong) to claim there is not even a smidgen of underlying truth or insight about the world found in art.

The article is long, and I grew disheartened upon reading the above and stopped, so perhaps I missed a later redemption.

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