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

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

#101

Post by jcranmer » Thu, Mar 07, 2019, 6:31 PM UTC

baud147258 wrote: post #72

drcode wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can you provide documentation for these supposed tax benefits? (I'm genuinely curious) AFAIK there are no tax benefits at the point of buying the art, and cap gains benefits are no different than stocks, real estate, etc.

If I remember right, in France arts pieces are not taxed as other assets (like flats) are. edit: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solidarity_tax_on_wealth#Basis The English version is lacking some exempted elements compared to the French version, where works of arts are explicitly cited.

The French list is basically the same as the English list, except for the second and second-to-last lines which look like overly abbreviated translations:

* objets d'antiquité, d'art ou tout simplement de collection, parts de sociétés civiles propriétaires de tels objets (antiques, art, collections, and shares in what I think are trusts of various kinds)

* biens ruraux loués à long terme et participation dans des groupements fonciers agricoles (which appears to have been translated as "anonymous bonds"--a better translation is long-term rural bonds and agricultural cooperatives).

The French Wikipedia also states that this was replaced in 2018 with a new tax that's on property. My grasp on the French legal terminology here is weak, but I think it refers to real estate property only and does not include personal property, which would include things like artwork.

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

#102

Post by [deleted] » Thu, Mar 07, 2019, 6:31 PM UTC

krapp wrote: post #96

umvi wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Obviously very subjective, but modern art seems like a case of emperor's new clothes to me, a humble engineer. When I was in college I would see art around campus take the form of random metal shapes welded together, concrete blobs, or Pollock-esque splatters and shake my head. How can you judge a category of art for which there are no rules? I can look at Michelangelo's "The David" and be awed to the core at how he…

>How can you judge a category of art for which there are no rules? Why are you assuming that modern art is arbitrary, random and has no rules? For that matter, why do you seem to assume the purpose of art is to be "judged" according to some objective set of rules? Have you tried to study any modern artistic movements, or artists, and what those movements or artists were actually trying to express? It seems like you'r…

[deleted]

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

#103

Post by barbecue_sauce » Thu, Mar 07, 2019, 6:33 PM UTC

omnimus wrote: post #84

umvi wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Obviously very subjective, but modern art seems like a case of emperor's new clothes to me, a humble engineer. When I was in college I would see art around campus take the form of random metal shapes welded together, concrete blobs, or Pollock-esque splatters and shake my head. How can you judge a category of art for which there are no rules? I can look at Michelangelo's "The David" and be awed to the core at how he…

With invention of photography artists realized that there is no reason to depict reality anymore. But they also realized that there is much more happening than watching image. It is whole experience of contexts, mood of place and the way how the art is shown and all kinds of subtle things. It is not about what anyone can physically do nor if it's easy or hard. It is about the ideas and navigating culture and finding…

If you pursue art academically, you are expected to push the form. Much like a CS PhD is expected to do novel research, an MFA is trying to make something nobody has ever seen before. In both cases, there are many practitioners that fail at this. But in both situations, their work is inaccessible to laymen by its very nature, produced after ingesting massive quantities of the prior art in their respective fields.

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

#104

Post by hguant » Thu, Mar 07, 2019, 6:35 PM UTC

paganel wrote: post #67

Whenever people discuss about contemporary art I get reminded of these incredibly poignant Soviet war paintings [1] which manage to partially describe what the atrocities on the Eastern Front meant for the people involved, but which are nevertheless a lot less well-known compared to contemporary art "darlings" like Jackson Pollock whose works don't tell me absolutely anything and who had his career propped up by the…

I think the problem is that you're comparing art pieces that have different purposes, and even more, different value systems. Those Soviet pieces are meant to be poignant, they're meant to be instantly emotionally evocative, and they're immensely successful in creating great content. The artist there is valuing impact, and truthful representation of a thing, be it the horror of war or the heartbroken silence of world shattered by a letter. However, these works are derivative. They are not novel in how they show their content; they use the same techniques that were popularized and perfected years ago. This is fine, because these paintings are complete in and of themselves.

Pollock on the other hand wasn't focused so much on the content of what he was creating, but on the process. Pollock wasn't trying to make you feel a thing, Pollock was trying to make a statement about what it means to be art. Pollock and other modern artists aren't looking to provide a story in isolation - they're iterating and expanding on a corpus of techniques, and means of representation, and questions about what it means to be art. Do I need to draw a person to show human suffering? Do I need to represent reality to make something meaningful? Can I create something that is recognizable as art while working under these arbitrary limitations?

I think this is true of any art/skill/techne - once the art reaches a certain level of maturity and sophistication. For practitioners, the new frontiers are not in the content you create (because it's established that you can create anything) but the process by which you make it. Look at modern poetry, and literature. A lot of the time these are very tangled, frustrating pieces to read because they break with the forms we are used to and iterate on them. Many of these aren't written to tell a story, or to make you feel, but to explore how one tells a story, or how one paints a thought in words. You see this to an extent in programming - there's very little value to writing conway's tree of life in brainfuck or competing to see who can write the smallest program that can reproduce the mona lisa in ASCII, but we do it because these limitations are challenging and cool to us.

(I'd argue that a Rothko painting can show just as much poignancy as any of those Soviet paintings you showed above.)

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

#105

Post by Izkata » Thu, Mar 07, 2019, 6:51 PM UTC

krapp wrote: post #96

umvi wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Obviously very subjective, but modern art seems like a case of emperor's new clothes to me, a humble engineer. When I was in college I would see art around campus take the form of random metal shapes welded together, concrete blobs, or Pollock-esque splatters and shake my head. How can you judge a category of art for which there are no rules? I can look at Michelangelo's "The David" and be awed to the core at how he…

>How can you judge a category of art for which there are no rules? Why are you assuming that modern art is arbitrary, random and has no rules? For that matter, why do you seem to assume the purpose of art is to be "judged" according to some objective set of rules? Have you tried to study any modern artistic movements, or artists, and what those movements or artists were actually trying to express? It seems like you'r…

> Why are you assuming that modern art is arbitrary, random and has no rules?

More like inference than assumption, based on occurrences like Pierre Brassau's art.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pierre_Brassau

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

#106

Post by PowerfulWizard » Thu, Mar 07, 2019, 6:55 PM UTC

paganel wrote: post #100

PowerfulWizard wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So, I personally get an emotional response to Pollock, especially that particular one, I actually have a MoMA catalog on my bookshelf with that entry bookmarked with my admission ticket from 2010 when I went to see it ( https://imgur.com/a/hFBR7Nu ). The size is a factor as well, there is no way to look at it on a computer screen that is close to how you look at it in person ( https://www.moma.org/wp/inside_out/wp-co…

I tried to understand contemporary art, up to a point, there was a time when I used to buy each issue of the FT - Weekend Edition so that I could read Georgina Adam’s articles on what was the hippest thing being transacted and the like, but in the end pretty much all of it meant nothing to me. Reguarding the representation of war, I’m afraid 200-year old paintings don’t do it for me anymore, modern warfare is so much…

I like the Goya painting in particular because a firing squad still looks the same: https://pbs.twimg.com/media/Du39t4jWsAIe6_b.jpg .

If any notable art came out of the Iraqi wars it is probably hanging in Baghdad, we might find out about it eventually.

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

#107

Post by AnIdiotOnTheNet » Thu, Mar 07, 2019, 6:55 PM UTC

umvi wrote: post #74

paganel wrote: post #67

Whenever people discuss about contemporary art I get reminded of these incredibly poignant Soviet war paintings [1] which manage to partially describe what the atrocities on the Eastern Front meant for the people involved, but which are nevertheless a lot less well-known compared to contemporary art "darlings" like Jackson Pollock whose works don't tell me absolutely anything and who had his career propped up by the…

Obviously very subjective, but modern art seems like a case of emperor's new clothes to me, a humble engineer. When I was in college I would see art around campus take the form of random metal shapes welded together, concrete blobs, or Pollock-esque splatters and shake my head. How can you judge a category of art for which there are no rules? I can look at Michelangelo's "The David" and be awed to the core at how he…

Art is a form of communication. The skill with which works are crafted is often part of how they are able to communicate so well, but it isn't strictly necessary. If you find yourself looking at highly regarded art and not understanding why, it is possible its just that you don't have the right context to understand what it is saying.

Of course it is also possible it s all just so much wankery and garbage, but you can't just assume that.

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

#108

Post by solotronics » Thu, Mar 07, 2019, 7:02 PM UTC

This makes me really upset and that seems to be the intention. Is this art? No, this is the downfall of society and a mockery of real art, rationality, and order. Chaos isn't art it's just shit.

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

#109

Post by wycs » Thu, Mar 07, 2019, 7:02 PM UTC

ggggtez wrote: post #91

umvi wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Obviously very subjective, but modern art seems like a case of emperor's new clothes to me, a humble engineer. When I was in college I would see art around campus take the form of random metal shapes welded together, concrete blobs, or Pollock-esque splatters and shake my head. How can you judge a category of art for which there are no rules? I can look at Michelangelo's "The David" and be awed to the core at how he…

One thing to consider is that being a case of the emperor's new clothes is intentional . Consider The Fountain again: The artist had the audacity to put a urinal in a gallery. It's not so much that this was a particularly lovely piece of ceramic (though some may think so). The point is the meta-awareness that urinals don't belong here . The rule-breaking is the art. The fact the emperor has no clothes is the exact re…

Art is the production of veblen goods. Duchamp, in his genius, realized that though the ability to buy something painfully handcrafted does signal wealth, buying literal garbage is a much better display of wealth. Someone who can afford to buy a meticulously painted portrait, well, one may be will willing to make sacrifices for beauty. Someone able to spend millions on literal garbage - now that is a rich man.

Another aspect is photography allowed normal people access to create cheap reproductions of beautiful art. High-class people used to be able to distinguish themselves from the mob with beautiful things the mob couldn't afford.

But this does not work with cheap reproductions allowing one to signal the same taste.

In this way, there became an incentive for high-class people to acquire and inculcate a taste for art that is actively repulsive to distinguish themselves from those normal people who desire beautiful things.

Mostly this doesn't matter. They are only hurting themselves. But the effect of these incentives on public architecture has been pretty horrifying.

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

#110

Post by sandworm101 » Thu, Mar 07, 2019, 7:09 PM UTC

paganel wrote: post #67

Whenever people discuss about contemporary art I get reminded of these incredibly poignant Soviet war paintings [1] which manage to partially describe what the atrocities on the Eastern Front meant for the people involved, but which are nevertheless a lot less well-known compared to contemporary art "darlings" like Jackson Pollock whose works don't tell me absolutely anything and who had his career propped up by the…

Whenever people discuss about contemporary art I am amazed that they see themselves somehow divorced from the larger entertainment industry. Once we acknowledge that artists are selling an experience, a pleasure, to art buyers then the 2m urinal makes perfect sense.

People are buying a pleasurable experience and each has a different taste. Some people want a light show and so go to a big rock concert. Some people want a pretty painting to look at while eating breakfast. So they buy a painting. Some people like the feeling of being better than other people. So they buy objects that, for them and their peers, are a badge. They demonstrate how much better their owners are than persons without such objects. Many people like this feeling and are willing to pay.

Some of these people buy flashy cars to show themselves off as they drive to work. Others buy paintings by the great masters and squirrel them away in a vault only to bring them out for dinner parties. In that context, a 2m$ urinal isn't all that different. It is an object that bestows barging rights on its owner. Compared to a great many cars and paintings, both of which come with substantial maintenance costs, 2m$ for a bit of porcelain is cheep.