Earlier quoted context omitted.
At that point it becomes a meme. Are memes art?
Memes are absolutely art. Why not? That's actually the thesis behind my startup, Memes On Canvas: https://www.memesoncanvas.com
Amazing, good luck with your lawsuits. /s
The $2M Urinal: Why Hard Work Doesn’t Cut It (2018)
141–150 of 188 posts
Re: The $2M Urinal: Why Hard Work Doesn’t Cut It (2018)
#142Earlier quoted context omitted.
The end goal is that everything gets donated and written off. Here's the basic scheme: * 10 rich guys buy 100 paint splotch canvases from a dude who wears black and smokes cigarettes * they keep 90 canvases in their basement and sell 10 of them back and forth to each other for increasing sums of money, paying taxes along the way * when the prices are at $20 million per painting, they donate all of them, including the…
It's an interesting theory, but I'm not sure the details work. If the goal is making lots of money, and one is able to pump up the price of an artists works by 1000%, wouldn't one come out farther ahead by selling (at least a few) of the paintings to outsiders, rather than donating all of them? While it seems possible that flooding the market with all 100 paintings at once might crash the price down more than the tax…
I've simplified the strategy. Imagine instead of all 100 paintings being from Pierre, imagine one canvas each from Pierre's last 100 sexual partners. The entire art market can crash, sure, but because of the easy outlet of a museum + IRS, the price is insured by the value of the painting as a tax shield.
Re: The $2M Urinal: Why Hard Work Doesn’t Cut It (2018)
#143A few years back, Maurizio Cattelan made a solid-gold working toilet and installed it in the Guggenheim. Regular museum goers could stand in line, go into the little bathroom, and use the toilet. It was a completely functioning toilet. As I recall, the solid-gold toilet seat was very very heavy - go figure.
Cattelan's artwork riffs off Duchamp's artwork: how much is a toilet worth? Well, a solid-gold toilet is work a lot!! He also named the work "America", so there's a whole bunch of extra meanings on top. The work is so solid, but it's got a hundred meanings on top. It's garish and obscene, but also completely democratic!
https://www.guggenheim.org/exhibition/maurizio-cattelan-amer...
Re: The $2M Urinal: Why Hard Work Doesn’t Cut It (2018)
#144[deleted]
Re: The $2M Urinal: Why Hard Work Doesn’t Cut It (2018)
#145Earlier quoted context omitted.
That seems more like a criticism of art critics and the subjectivity of art valuation than modern art as a category, given that most modern art isn't done by chimpanzees. Although, ironically, the hoax itself makes it a valid form of performance art anyway.
>Although, ironically, the hoax itself makes it a valid form of performance art anyway. This is the bullshit that makes people weary of modern art. If you disagree, you fail to realize that this post, and indeed hacker news itself, is postmodern performance/interactivity art. Your opinion is wrong and invalid if you disagree.
>If you disagree, you fail to realize that this post, and indeed hacker news itself, is postmodern performance/interactivity art. Your opinion is wrong and invalid if you disagree.
No one is actually saying that, though. The only people trying to invalidate anyone's arguments and opinions are the ones who disagree that modern art has any value. And no one mentioned anything about hacker news itself.
What I am trying to imply is that there is more than one valid interpretation of this particular event. That, even if paintings by chimpanzees weren't art,and the hoax wasn't intended as art, the effect of the hoax still serves the purpose of art.
Please stop being defensive and please appreciate that context is sometimes relevant to a discussion.
Re: The $2M Urinal: Why Hard Work Doesn’t Cut It (2018)
#146Provocation in search of a reason ...
Re: The $2M Urinal: Why Hard Work Doesn’t Cut It (2018)
#147> 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…
>Ehh... Not having objective, quantitative metrics is not the same thing as having no quality what so ever. I am shocked that in 2019 there are adults walking around with this epistemology. Every quantitative metric is an exercise in narrative. The notion of objectivity is an appealing construct in a world constructed by second hand observations, but alas, it remains just another implement in the narrative toolkit.
HN is not famous for its deep philosophical thinking. People want to believe that the world simply quantitative and we are objective observers. Subvert the narrative and you get downvoted.
Re: The $2M Urinal: Why Hard Work Doesn’t Cut It (2018)
#148Whenever 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…
These are really pretty great, and do what - in my opinion - art should do (in as much as art should do anything at all). And that is to tell a story.
The best paintings provide a connection with a subject - person, place or time - and maybe stir up some emotion about the scene. Some of my favorite are 16th and 17th century Dutch paintings of naval battles. The artists were the war correspondents of their time and their work is as moving as any photograph from a modern battlefront.
Pollock's paintings tell a story in their own way too. I worked in theater in high-school and college and also painting boats and for an industrial coatings company. In short, I spent a lot of time around paint. A Pollock painting reminds me of these workshops: of years, sometimes decades of overspray, splatter, drips, spills and all of the other marks of "work being done here".
The scarred and stained surface of the workbench from my grandfather's garage could hang in a museum. Sixty years of paint and oil; holes from when tools were bolted to it or when parts were drilled; cuts from countless handsaws; scorch marks from blowtorches and soldering irons.
The painting is like the artistic expression of the evidence of work accomplished.
Re: The $2M Urinal: Why Hard Work Doesn’t Cut It (2018)
#149Earlier quoted context omitted.
This implies that donated art basically has an arbitrary valuation (set by "experts" based on some not really free or transparent "market"). Is this true? How is this handled for other assets?
If Pierre's paintings are being exchanged regularly by a bunch of hedge fund guys for $20 million each, isn't $20 million the market price of a different, arbitrary, painting from Pierre? It isn't really a problem for other assets because they don't have the museum donation market that's key to the scheme working. You can't find a charity who is looking for superyacht donations.
> isn't $20 million the market price
Not at all: to have a "market" you need buyers, sellers and goods to be fungible.
In your example buyers and sellers are only 0.000001% of humanity: other people cannot afford to play this game.
Also the goods are unique. Brand new paintings would not be sold by the author him/herself at that price 99% of the time. They skyrocket in value only when sold between billionaires.
Re: The $2M Urinal: Why Hard Work Doesn’t Cut It (2018)
#150Earlier quoted context omitted.
>Although, ironically, the hoax itself makes it a valid form of performance art anyway. This is the bullshit that makes people weary of modern art. If you disagree, you fail to realize that this post, and indeed hacker news itself, is postmodern performance/interactivity art. Your opinion is wrong and invalid if you disagree.
>If you disagree, you fail to realize that this post, and indeed hacker news itself, is postmodern performance/interactivity art. Your opinion is wrong and invalid if you disagree. No one is actually saying that, though. The only people trying to invalidate anyone's arguments and opinions are the ones who disagree that modern art has any value. And no one mentioned anything about hacker news itself. What I am trying…
>No one is actually saying that, though. The only people trying to invalidate anyone's arguments and opinions are the ones who disagree that modern art has any value. And no one mentioned anything about hacker news itself.
I was intentionally being standoffish in a manner so as to imitate modern art fanatics. See, you just don't understand the _performance art_ that is contained within a HN discussion (this is facetious).
I would agree that "ones who disagree that modern art has any value." are misinformed. And on the flip side, I would argue that those who believe _all_ modern art _has value_ and is _worthwhile_ are incorrect. There is a lot of shitty modern art out there that can and should be dismissed (I realize beauty is in the eye of the beholder) and by not doing so, you only hurt the worthwhile modern art.
I once saw a coca-cola bottle filled to the brim with cigarettes, placed into a red circle, in the SF MOMA. That isn't art; that's every weekend outside my apartment in college.