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

178 points by wallflower 8y ago

mortenjorck 8y ago
> 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."
- mc32 8y ago
  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?
- whatshisface 8y ago
  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.
  - protonfish 8y ago
    I don't see how this is "cynical". If you have no way to discern the difference between good and bad employees, it makes sense to at least hire somebody you know.
- fsloth 8y ago
  Actually I think network will drive success even if talent has some measure - but if talent evens out the one with the better network will likely triumph.
- mannykannot 8y ago
  The thing is, though, that performance can be measured, to a degree: if a 'forger' produces an original work that passes as the work of an acknowledged master, then, in purely performance terms, the two artists could be regarded as being at the same level, and if the art world were only interested in performance, it would not care about provenance. Works of art are more than just the objects themselves, however. In particular, works that have expanded the boundaries of what is regarded as art have value as historical artifacts, and the artist who created them reached a higher level of performance, on that particular work (as originality is an important aspect of performance), than those producing works that follow the pattern (including that artist, when producing subsequent works in the same vein.) This point of view would assign considerable value to Duchamp's original 'Fountain', but not much to a replica, which would compare unfavorably to other, original, examples of signed plumbing. If you want a replica of it, there's probably more intrinsic value in making one for yourself than in buying one.
  - mcguire 8y ago
    The art world assigned zero value to the original Fountain and $17 million to one of a number of reproductions.
    - mannykannot 8y ago
      Indeed - when history is an aspect of value, values will change over time. I would be very interested if the replicas' value holds up, though not particularly surprised if it does, as my previous post was not intended to be a description of how things work, but more of a speculation of how things might work if performance was valued above all else.
uniformlyrandom 8y ago
Very interesting. I have added the [book](https://smile.amazon.com/Formula-Universal-Laws-Success-ebook/dp/B07B863X6B/ https://smile.amazon.com/Formula-Universal-Laws-Success-eboo...) this piece was adopted from to my backlog.
async_dev 8y ago
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...
- TheOtherHobbes 8y ago
  I strongly suspect art museums had sanitary plumbing long before it moved to the gallery area. Grayson Perry has a far more insightful critique. https://www.windsorflorida.com/app/uploads/2017/11/Grayson-Perry-The-Island-of-Bad-Art-2013.jpg https://www.windsorflorida.com/app/uploads/2017/11/Grayson-P... If you have £15,000 to spare you can buy a print and hang it on your wall.
- csomar 8y ago
  I'm confused. Does this mean that the "real plumber" was an artist; or the art museum didn't have WC before putting a urinal art piece.
  - async_dev 8y ago
    Yeah, I can see how that's confusing. My take is that the first person to display a urinal (as an art piece) was an artist - but the second person to _try_ to display a urinal (as an art piece) was just a plumber (meaning: not an artist).
  - lowdest 8y ago
    Succinctly, it's the same as telling a joke a second time to the same audience.
- baroffoos 8y ago
  Its the common conversation "I could have done that" "But you didn't do that" Most things are easy to copy, coming up with the idea in the first place is the hard part.
drcode 8y ago
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)
- leesec 8y ago
  What a weird and condescending take.
  - duado 8y ago
    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.
    - airstrike 8y ago
      Young, sure. Talented, maybe. But attractive is probably not what you're optimizing for if you're hanging out in the art scene. Might have better luck in the fashion world
      - clojurestan 8y ago
        Not everyone is attracted to the same thing. Personally I don't know much about the "art scene" but many of the people I find attractive have turned out to be artists and musicians.
    - borkt 8y ago
      Sounds like owning a winery around these parts.
    - Angostura 8y ago
      Sure. Is there any data that shows that modern art is primarily bought by lonely people?
dwaltrip 8y ago
> 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.
- astazangasta 8y ago
  >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.
  - rdiddly 8y ago
    So in effect, you're saying all domains are like the art world.
    - astazangasta 8y ago
      Metaphysics are a problem created by the fact that your brain is smaller than the universe. It's hard to walk away from that.
  - mcguire 8y ago
    E pur si muove.
    - astazangasta 8y ago
      If you are an empiricist worth your salt this (the fundamental lack of objectivity in human knowledge) is a vital piece of understanding. Being blind to the flaws of your instruments is a terrible way to do science. Also I find it ironic that this quote is probably apocryphal and yet is offered in defense of objectivity.
astazangasta 8y ago
The story in the opening is probably apocryphal, and there is evidence Fountain is not the work of Duchamp, but of Baroness Elsa von Freytag-Loringhoven : >On 11 April 1917 Duchamp wrote to his sister Suzanne and said that, "One of my female friends who had adopted the pseudonym Richard Mutt sent me a porcelain urinal as a sculpture; since there was nothing indecent about it, there was no reason to reject it." https://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/art/features/was-marcel-duchamps-fountain-actually-created-by-a-long-forgotten-pioneering-feminist-10491953.html https://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/art/feature...
- esnible3 8y ago
  Exactly this. Barabási says "networks drive success." The Baroness was a leaf node. She connected mostly through Duchamp. His network allowed him to succeed. Her packets got dropped by the Duchamp node.
feluso 8y ago
Very insightful! art definitely sure look like it is the prime example of how important networks are, in my opinion art is entirely subjective, no matter if we are talking if it's modern or not, we really can't measure it with objective standards. I think this article kind of gave me an inspiration to go out and get involved more, I definitely worry too much about my performance in my field and not really on how I interact.
paulpauper 8y ago
What percent of art fetches such high prices? Probably very small. He won the equivalent of the artist lottery, just as some authors win the literary lottery. just randomness.
- compiler-guy 8y ago
  The data he is referring to shows that it isn't just randomness. That's the point of the article.
- csomar 8y ago
  Not really. The lottery (unless cheating) should provide real randomness. ie: A president has the same chance as the next guy. If both a former president and the next guy do an art piece, I'm pretty certain the president will fetch a higher price for his art work. That's the network effect.
wazoox 8y ago
Contemporary art is a sophisticated form of money laundering for the very rich. As it almost completely exempt from taxation, it's an ideal vehicle, relatively fungible and open to crazy speculation. The crazy financiarisation of our world made many collectible objects prices skyrocket (see old cars, art, etc). But Contemporary art is the best of all, because, contrary to ancient art or old ferraris, its supply is unlimited. A boon to hide in plain sight the billions happily printed at the Fed and BCE.
- cheerlessbog 8y ago
  Exempt from taxation? Isn't it subject to capital gains?
  - wazoox 8y ago
    In most countries, it's less taxed than other forms of capital (in Europe, it benefits from reduce VAT, no tariffs, and many other advantages) .
  - habosa 8y ago
    A lot of art is "donated" by putting it in a museum. However this is basically a massive tax writeoff for someone watching and securing your art for you! And it still confers all the status on you because it will have a plaque saying "generously donated from the Richie Rich Foundation"
- drcode 8y ago
  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.
  - cl0ckt0wer 8y ago
    Here's a great podcast on it: https://www.npr.org/sections/money/2018/02/09/584555705/episode-823-planet-monet https://www.npr.org/sections/money/2018/02/09/584555705/epis...
fmajid 8y ago
Piers Manzoni canning his own feces is an even more pointed criticism of the scam modern art has become.
- jaclaz 8y ago
  Typo? Piero https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Piero_Manzoni https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Piero_Manzoni https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Piero_Manzoni#Artist's_Shit https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Piero_Manzoni#Artist's_Shit
mcguire 8y ago
"Because as the First Law of Success reminds us, the harder it is to measure performance, the less performance matters." Performance, nonetheless, exists as a variable.
buboard 8y ago
> it’s based on little more than mutual belief in one another crypto-coins are an abstraction over art commodities. Devoid of any specific meaning, they are valued according to pure belief. One is justified at any time to purchase them and they are unique. They can be interpreted to have almost any meaning. maybe they should be considered works of art themselves.
- GoatOfAplomb 8y ago
  One can find an appraiser to value one's fine art at 10x what one paid for it just prior to donating it to a museum. It then provides tax reduction in excess of the purchase price, and so there can be a logical expectation of positive ROI at time of purchase. I'm not aware of any analog with cryptocoins. They suffer a fatal flaw of having a clear market value.
marxfits 8y ago
>No matter the field, discipline, or industry, if we want to succeed, we must master the networks…The harder it is to measure performance, the less performance matters. although i absolutely agree with the analysis of the art world, or world in general, to actually read this makes me very disheartened. and it does not make me want to give up any time spent creating for the sake of networking. but on modern artists, with my own favourites, there is generally a reason to their success other than being brilliant marketers...Jackson Pollock, for example, had lots of criticism of his work, only for forty years later to discover that his paintings could be judged to be real or fake, by whether or not there were fractals present [1]. i think that is a clear case of someone taking a modern approach to creation, and spending countless hours honing and perfecting their craft for the sake of pure natural aesthetics and discovery. this article paints like the artists themselves are as fame hungry as the artists critics. lo to find that the 21st century van gogh avoided the art scene completely because of toxicity. [1]https://aeon.co/ideas/feel-good-fractals-from-ocean-waves-to-jackson-pollocks-art https://aeon.co/ideas/feel-good-fractals-from-ocean-waves-to...
paganel 8y ago
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 CIA at some point. [2] Later edit: I mean, compare this Soviet painting called "The Last Letter" [3] to Pollock's "One, Number 31, 1950" (taken from the artist's wikipedia page). The first painting instantly made me feel the blood flowing through my veins, even though I had last seen it 7 or 8 years ago (when I also left a related comment here on HN), while Pollock's painting doesn't make me feel anything. [1] http://www.allworldwars.com/Soviet%20War%20Paintings.html http://www.allworldwars.com/Soviet%20War%20Paintings.html [2] https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/modern-art-was-cia-weapon-1578808.html https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/modern-art-was-cia-... [3] http://www.allworldwars.com/image/008/SovietPictures065.jpg http://www.allworldwars.com/image/008/SovietPictures065.jpg [4] http://www.moma.org/media/W1siZiIsIjIyMzgwNSJdLFsicCIsImNvbnZlcnQiLCItcmVzaXplIDIwMDB4MjAwMFx1MDAzZSJdXQ.jpg?sha=8d0bddb8f7566c7e http://www.moma.org/media/W1siZiIsIjIyMzgwNSJdLFsicCIsImNvbn...
- umvi 8y ago
  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 was able to replicate lifelike looking veins in marble. It's difficult for me to even fathom his skill level but I recognize that it is much, much higher than mine. But a sideways urinal with some marker on it? Anyone with no skill can do random things with random items and call it art. "Any sufficiently advanced art is indistinguishable from garbage"
  - rhombocombus 8y ago
    Anybody could do it, but they didn't and you didn't either. It's really easy to bag on any art with that line of reasoning, but the fact of the matter is that art lives in time and space, and at the time that piece was made nobody else did it, and readymade had a colossal influence on every other aspect of modern art (and even design) that came after that. It's easy to dismiss it as a urinal with marker when you ignore the context in which it was created and presented and the influence it had on other art, much of which is universally regarded as beautiful.
tonyedgecombe 8y ago
"The simple truth is we have no way of objectively determining the value of any work of art or the performance of its maker." It's not so different from software really.
circlefavshape 8y ago
The daftest thing I've seen in an art museum https://www.tate.org.uk/art/artworks/floyer-monochrome-till-receipt-white-t12894 https://www.tate.org.uk/art/artworks/floyer-monochrome-till-... (a receipt from a supermarket) I've also seen some stuff in modern art museums (e.g. Anselm Kiefer's stuff in the Guggenheim in Bilbao) that has absolutely blown me away AFAICS all art scenes are conversations. Individual things people say are not necessarily understandable if you're not familiar with the conversational context (and even if you were you might think that some of the things they say are stupid)
everyone 8y ago
Meh, the whole art scene is just another racket / gambling parlour for the riches' money / investment opportunity. What's valuable or not is all decided by a few big galleries and collectors. Mystery solved.
sleepysysadmin 8y ago
>How? Replace the corporate ladder with a social bridge. We never work in isolation—even when we think we do. Our collective definition of success requires us to think about the ways that our work impacts others. Collectivists hate art. Capitalists love art. If you look at socialist countries like Cuba, there are 0 artists. You must get approval from the government to make a "Creative Production" https://havanatimes.org/?p=141068 https://havanatimes.org/?p=141068 This is why capitalism is amazing. Capitalism works so well that we can have $2M urinals. I want artists in my society. Enough of this communism from this author.
- jvs0n 8y ago
  What an offensive comment. Socialist countries don't have art and artists? lol. Some of the greatest musicians, filmmakers, visual artists were from the Soviet Union
  - thundergolfer 8y ago
    Not to mention the myriad anti-capitalist artists the produce great work within capitalist economies. That comment is so absurdly wrong I wonder what kind of person has the ignorance and gall to make it.
  - sleepysysadmin 8y ago
    In the USSR before Stalin's death. It was a crime to make any art. After Stalin's death they decriminalized art but it was still illegal to be an artist. That isn't even to get into the censorship. The fundamental reasoning here, in communism where everyone gets the same pay regardless of performance. If artist is an option, everyone would become an artist; why work a hard when it doesnt matter. That's why communism/socialism bans artists. You never addressed this. You simply asserted I was offensive. You risked going to a gulag and near certainly probably death by creating art. Nobody did this, the few who did, did it in secret.
solotronics 8y ago
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.
potiuper 8y ago
Science Mag Article: http://barabasi.com/f/972.pdf http://barabasi.com/f/972.pdf
jl2718 8y ago
This article is not really about art. My father was a “scrape yourself up from the bottom” guy. He was the hardest working person I’ve ever known, first as a physical laborer, then as an operating systems programmer. Microsoft used his Wang kernel for NT, but he never got on that train. He was deeply skeptical of all institutions of prestige and never attended college. His father was a professor, double math/physics PhD at Berkeley. The hard road for him was a conscious choice, something he had to prove to himself every day. Life eventually beat it out of him, but that’s a different story. I don’t match up to him, but I have a habit of leaving the professional world to live among laborers and soldiers for the comforts of their ethos. It seems that everybody exists somewhere on the spectrum from ascetic to charlatan: monk, soldier, athlete, laborer, coder, doctor, manager, lawyer, salesman, founder, artist, celebrity, criminal. You may dispute the order, but that’s where I’ve seen the category _medians_ fall. The art example: buy a toilet and sell it for millions, is brazen chicanery; in fact that’s what gives it value, although you might also agree that the network made it possible. Similarly, many startups are technical garbage before they get money-bombed into a foregone conclusion. Network? Charisma? Luck? Outrageous claims that offend technical experts? It’s not that different from the art world. But is it good advice to network? PG says no. AVC says no. Trust that there are plenty of failed artists trying to network their way into million dollar toilets too. On average, plumbers do better, but nobody’s impressed with a working toilet until they stop going to burning man and divorce the artist.
- jl2718 8y ago
  Note: I think I was probably unfair to artists in this characterization. It's a hard path to follow; there must have been some deeper and more socially generative yearning than to make a fortune by pissing off art critics and confusing or offending normal folk. Art has historically been the enduring edifice of civilizations, and I appreciate anybody that builds and creates and invents.
pradn 8y ago
A 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-america https://www.guggenheim.org/exhibition/maurizio-cattelan-amer...
- pnathan 8y ago
  That installation has acquired a certain noteriety - when the White House requested an art piece, the toilet was offered... https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/dc-politics/the-white-house-wanted-a-van-gogh-the-guggenheim-offered-a-used-solid-gold-toilet/2018/01/25/38d574fc-0154-11e8-bb03-722769454f82_story.html https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/dc-politics/the-white-h...
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amelius 8y ago
Provocation in search of a reason ...
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TLAFanBoy 8y ago
"Displayed at an angle and out of its normal context, it was oddly beautiful" I disagree, the toilet was not "oddly beautiful" and displaying it at an angle and out of its normal context didn't make it any more "oddly beautiful." It was a sort-of clever "troll" mocking the pretentiousness of the "art crowd" and it's significant because 100 years later the "art crowd" is still, how to put it? "Butthurt" over Duchamp's mockery of them. The "troll" stung so bad that 100 years later they are still embarrassed, even humiliated, by it. 100 years of terrible nonsense and thousand-word essays of bullshit and they still haven't gotten over it. Which I guess means that Duchamp made a piece of very significant art.
- Aeolun 8y ago
  Maybe if we sent in a more beautiful urinal?
- leoc 8y ago
  That seems incorrect. The contemporary fine-art world, or certainly the public-gallery, taxpayer-funded side of it at least, has been dominated by conceptual art https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conceptual_art https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conceptual_art for decades now: in other words, by people chasing heavily diminished returns on Duchamp's old hack. It's hard to imagine that the people adulating and spending millions on Damien Hirst's bisected shark and other, even slighter stuff are still upset about Duchamp.
WheelsAtLarge 8y ago
Wow, this is a very rare article that crystalizes a very real aspect of success. It's worth reading. We constantly read about people working night and day to create a successful project but failing to succeed at it. Networking is a very real and needed aspect of success. We regularly start projects with other people in mind but if you can't get your constituents to agree with what you want to create then you're headed towards failure. It is nice to think that we don't need and don't want to deal with other people but that's a fallacy that will get you nowhere in life. The sooner we realize that the faster we'll move forward. Excellent article, thanks to the person that posted it.
kumarski 8y ago
Art is a money laundering substrate intended to violate all sorts of FINCEN/FATF/CFTC Controls and to play tax gymnastics with.
willart4food 8y ago
Eat your . . . heart out Marcel! #AMERICA https://qz.com/quartzy/1190158/the-guggenheim-offered-trump-a-golden-toilet/ https://qz.com/quartzy/1190158/the-guggenheim-offered-trump-...
mirimir 8y ago
Hmmm. For me, "art = networks" looks a lot like "art = bullshit". That plus speculative bubbles.
scotty79 8y ago
> Performance drives success, but when performance can’t be measured, networks drive success. That distills the essence of modern internet content economy for me.
leoc 8y ago
The Guardian's "The class pay gap: why it pays to be privileged" feature https://www.theguardian.com/society/2019/feb/07/the-class-pay-gap-why-it-pays-to-be-privileged https://www.theguardian.com/society/2019/feb/07/the-class-pa... seems to me a more detailed and more nuanced treatment of much the same topic.

178 points by wallflower 8y ago

> 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."

mc32 8y ago
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?
whatshisface 8y ago
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.
- protonfish 8y ago
  I don't see how this is "cynical". If you have no way to discern the difference between good and bad employees, it makes sense to at least hire somebody you know.
fsloth 8y ago
Actually I think network will drive success even if talent has some measure - but if talent evens out the one with the better network will likely triumph.
mannykannot 8y ago
The thing is, though, that performance can be measured, to a degree: if a 'forger' produces an original work that passes as the work of an acknowledged master, then, in purely performance terms, the two artists could be regarded as being at the same level, and if the art world were only interested in performance, it would not care about provenance. Works of art are more than just the objects themselves, however. In particular, works that have expanded the boundaries of what is regarded as art have value as historical artifacts, and the artist who created them reached a higher level of performance, on that particular work (as originality is an important aspect of performance), than those producing works that follow the pattern (including that artist, when producing subsequent works in the same vein.) This point of view would assign considerable value to Duchamp's original 'Fountain', but not much to a replica, which would compare unfavorably to other, original, examples of signed plumbing. If you want a replica of it, there's probably more intrinsic value in making one for yourself than in buying one.
- mcguire 8y ago
  The art world assigned zero value to the original Fountain and $17 million to one of a number of reproductions.
  - mannykannot 8y ago
    Indeed - when history is an aspect of value, values will change over time. I would be very interested if the replicas' value holds up, though not particularly surprised if it does, as my previous post was not intended to be a description of how things work, but more of a speculation of how things might work if performance was valued above all else.

uniformlyrandom 8y ago

Very interesting. I have added the [book](https://smile.amazon.com/Formula-Universal-Laws-Success-ebook/dp/B07B863X6B/ https://smile.amazon.com/Formula-Universal-Laws-Success-eboo...) this piece was adopted from to my backlog.

async_dev 8y ago

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...

TheOtherHobbes 8y ago
I strongly suspect art museums had sanitary plumbing long before it moved to the gallery area. Grayson Perry has a far more insightful critique. https://www.windsorflorida.com/app/uploads/2017/11/Grayson-Perry-The-Island-of-Bad-Art-2013.jpg https://www.windsorflorida.com/app/uploads/2017/11/Grayson-P... If you have £15,000 to spare you can buy a print and hang it on your wall.
csomar 8y ago
I'm confused. Does this mean that the "real plumber" was an artist; or the art museum didn't have WC before putting a urinal art piece.
- async_dev 8y ago
  Yeah, I can see how that's confusing. My take is that the first person to display a urinal (as an art piece) was an artist - but the second person to _try_ to display a urinal (as an art piece) was just a plumber (meaning: not an artist).
- lowdest 8y ago
  Succinctly, it's the same as telling a joke a second time to the same audience.
baroffoos 8y ago
Its the common conversation "I could have done that" "But you didn't do that" Most things are easy to copy, coming up with the idea in the first place is the hard part.

drcode 8y ago

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)

leesec 8y ago
What a weird and condescending take.
- duado 8y ago
  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.
  - airstrike 8y ago
    Young, sure. Talented, maybe. But attractive is probably not what you're optimizing for if you're hanging out in the art scene. Might have better luck in the fashion world
    - clojurestan 8y ago
      Not everyone is attracted to the same thing. Personally I don't know much about the "art scene" but many of the people I find attractive have turned out to be artists and musicians.
  - borkt 8y ago
    Sounds like owning a winery around these parts.
  - Angostura 8y ago
    Sure. Is there any data that shows that modern art is primarily bought by lonely people?

dwaltrip 8y ago

> 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.

astazangasta 8y ago
>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.
- rdiddly 8y ago
  So in effect, you're saying all domains are like the art world.
  - astazangasta 8y ago
    Metaphysics are a problem created by the fact that your brain is smaller than the universe. It's hard to walk away from that.
- mcguire 8y ago
  E pur si muove.
  - astazangasta 8y ago
    If you are an empiricist worth your salt this (the fundamental lack of objectivity in human knowledge) is a vital piece of understanding. Being blind to the flaws of your instruments is a terrible way to do science. Also I find it ironic that this quote is probably apocryphal and yet is offered in defense of objectivity.

astazangasta 8y ago

The story in the opening is probably apocryphal, and there is evidence Fountain is not the work of Duchamp, but of Baroness Elsa von Freytag-Loringhoven : >On 11 April 1917 Duchamp wrote to his sister Suzanne and said that, "One of my female friends who had adopted the pseudonym Richard Mutt sent me a porcelain urinal as a sculpture; since there was nothing indecent about it, there was no reason to reject it." https://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/art/features/was-marcel-duchamps-fountain-actually-created-by-a-long-forgotten-pioneering-feminist-10491953.html https://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/art/feature...

esnible3 8y ago
Exactly this. Barabási says "networks drive success." The Baroness was a leaf node. She connected mostly through Duchamp. His network allowed him to succeed. Her packets got dropped by the Duchamp node.

feluso 8y ago

Very insightful! art definitely sure look like it is the prime example of how important networks are, in my opinion art is entirely subjective, no matter if we are talking if it's modern or not, we really can't measure it with objective standards. I think this article kind of gave me an inspiration to go out and get involved more, I definitely worry too much about my performance in my field and not really on how I interact.

paulpauper 8y ago

What percent of art fetches such high prices? Probably very small. He won the equivalent of the artist lottery, just as some authors win the literary lottery. just randomness.

compiler-guy 8y ago
The data he is referring to shows that it isn't just randomness. That's the point of the article.
csomar 8y ago
Not really. The lottery (unless cheating) should provide real randomness. ie: A president has the same chance as the next guy. If both a former president and the next guy do an art piece, I'm pretty certain the president will fetch a higher price for his art work. That's the network effect.

wazoox 8y ago

Contemporary art is a sophisticated form of money laundering for the very rich. As it almost completely exempt from taxation, it's an ideal vehicle, relatively fungible and open to crazy speculation. The crazy financiarisation of our world made many collectible objects prices skyrocket (see old cars, art, etc). But Contemporary art is the best of all, because, contrary to ancient art or old ferraris, its supply is unlimited. A boon to hide in plain sight the billions happily printed at the Fed and BCE.

cheerlessbog 8y ago
Exempt from taxation? Isn't it subject to capital gains?
- wazoox 8y ago
  In most countries, it's less taxed than other forms of capital (in Europe, it benefits from reduce VAT, no tariffs, and many other advantages) .
- habosa 8y ago
  A lot of art is "donated" by putting it in a museum. However this is basically a massive tax writeoff for someone watching and securing your art for you! And it still confers all the status on you because it will have a plaque saying "generously donated from the Richie Rich Foundation"
drcode 8y ago
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.
- cl0ckt0wer 8y ago
  Here's a great podcast on it: https://www.npr.org/sections/money/2018/02/09/584555705/episode-823-planet-monet https://www.npr.org/sections/money/2018/02/09/584555705/epis...

fmajid 8y ago

Piers Manzoni canning his own feces is an even more pointed criticism of the scam modern art has become.

jaclaz 8y ago
Typo? Piero https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Piero_Manzoni https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Piero_Manzoni https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Piero_Manzoni#Artist's_Shit https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Piero_Manzoni#Artist's_Shit

mcguire 8y ago

"Because as the First Law of Success reminds us, the harder it is to measure performance, the less performance matters." Performance, nonetheless, exists as a variable.

buboard 8y ago

> it’s based on little more than mutual belief in one another crypto-coins are an abstraction over art commodities. Devoid of any specific meaning, they are valued according to pure belief. One is justified at any time to purchase them and they are unique. They can be interpreted to have almost any meaning. maybe they should be considered works of art themselves.

GoatOfAplomb 8y ago
One can find an appraiser to value one's fine art at 10x what one paid for it just prior to donating it to a museum. It then provides tax reduction in excess of the purchase price, and so there can be a logical expectation of positive ROI at time of purchase. I'm not aware of any analog with cryptocoins. They suffer a fatal flaw of having a clear market value.

marxfits 8y ago

>No matter the field, discipline, or industry, if we want to succeed, we must master the networks…The harder it is to measure performance, the less performance matters. although i absolutely agree with the analysis of the art world, or world in general, to actually read this makes me very disheartened. and it does not make me want to give up any time spent creating for the sake of networking. but on modern artists, with my own favourites, there is generally a reason to their success other than being brilliant marketers...Jackson Pollock, for example, had lots of criticism of his work, only for forty years later to discover that his paintings could be judged to be real or fake, by whether or not there were fractals present [1]. i think that is a clear case of someone taking a modern approach to creation, and spending countless hours honing and perfecting their craft for the sake of pure natural aesthetics and discovery. this article paints like the artists themselves are as fame hungry as the artists critics. lo to find that the 21st century van gogh avoided the art scene completely because of toxicity. [1]https://aeon.co/ideas/feel-good-fractals-from-ocean-waves-to-jackson-pollocks-art https://aeon.co/ideas/feel-good-fractals-from-ocean-waves-to...

paganel 8y ago

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 CIA at some point. [2] Later edit: I mean, compare this Soviet painting called "The Last Letter" [3] to Pollock's "One, Number 31, 1950" (taken from the artist's wikipedia page). The first painting instantly made me feel the blood flowing through my veins, even though I had last seen it 7 or 8 years ago (when I also left a related comment here on HN), while Pollock's painting doesn't make me feel anything. [1] http://www.allworldwars.com/Soviet%20War%20Paintings.html http://www.allworldwars.com/Soviet%20War%20Paintings.html [2] https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/modern-art-was-cia-weapon-1578808.html https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/modern-art-was-cia-... [3] http://www.allworldwars.com/image/008/SovietPictures065.jpg http://www.allworldwars.com/image/008/SovietPictures065.jpg [4] http://www.moma.org/media/W1siZiIsIjIyMzgwNSJdLFsicCIsImNvbnZlcnQiLCItcmVzaXplIDIwMDB4MjAwMFx1MDAzZSJdXQ.jpg?sha=8d0bddb8f7566c7e http://www.moma.org/media/W1siZiIsIjIyMzgwNSJdLFsicCIsImNvbn...

umvi 8y ago
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 was able to replicate lifelike looking veins in marble. It's difficult for me to even fathom his skill level but I recognize that it is much, much higher than mine. But a sideways urinal with some marker on it? Anyone with no skill can do random things with random items and call it art. "Any sufficiently advanced art is indistinguishable from garbage"
- rhombocombus 8y ago
  Anybody could do it, but they didn't and you didn't either. It's really easy to bag on any art with that line of reasoning, but the fact of the matter is that art lives in time and space, and at the time that piece was made nobody else did it, and readymade had a colossal influence on every other aspect of modern art (and even design) that came after that. It's easy to dismiss it as a urinal with marker when you ignore the context in which it was created and presented and the influence it had on other art, much of which is universally regarded as beautiful.

tonyedgecombe 8y ago

"The simple truth is we have no way of objectively determining the value of any work of art or the performance of its maker." It's not so different from software really.

circlefavshape 8y ago

The daftest thing I've seen in an art museum https://www.tate.org.uk/art/artworks/floyer-monochrome-till-receipt-white-t12894 https://www.tate.org.uk/art/artworks/floyer-monochrome-till-... (a receipt from a supermarket) I've also seen some stuff in modern art museums (e.g. Anselm Kiefer's stuff in the Guggenheim in Bilbao) that has absolutely blown me away AFAICS all art scenes are conversations. Individual things people say are not necessarily understandable if you're not familiar with the conversational context (and even if you were you might think that some of the things they say are stupid)

everyone 8y ago

Meh, the whole art scene is just another racket / gambling parlour for the riches' money / investment opportunity. What's valuable or not is all decided by a few big galleries and collectors. Mystery solved.

sleepysysadmin 8y ago

>How? Replace the corporate ladder with a social bridge. We never work in isolation—even when we think we do. Our collective definition of success requires us to think about the ways that our work impacts others. Collectivists hate art. Capitalists love art. If you look at socialist countries like Cuba, there are 0 artists. You must get approval from the government to make a "Creative Production" https://havanatimes.org/?p=141068 https://havanatimes.org/?p=141068 This is why capitalism is amazing. Capitalism works so well that we can have $2M urinals. I want artists in my society. Enough of this communism from this author.

jvs0n 8y ago
What an offensive comment. Socialist countries don't have art and artists? lol. Some of the greatest musicians, filmmakers, visual artists were from the Soviet Union
- thundergolfer 8y ago
  Not to mention the myriad anti-capitalist artists the produce great work within capitalist economies. That comment is so absurdly wrong I wonder what kind of person has the ignorance and gall to make it.
- sleepysysadmin 8y ago
  In the USSR before Stalin's death. It was a crime to make any art. After Stalin's death they decriminalized art but it was still illegal to be an artist. That isn't even to get into the censorship. The fundamental reasoning here, in communism where everyone gets the same pay regardless of performance. If artist is an option, everyone would become an artist; why work a hard when it doesnt matter. That's why communism/socialism bans artists. You never addressed this. You simply asserted I was offensive. You risked going to a gulag and near certainly probably death by creating art. Nobody did this, the few who did, did it in secret.

solotronics 8y ago

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.

potiuper 8y ago

Science Mag Article: http://barabasi.com/f/972.pdf http://barabasi.com/f/972.pdf

jl2718 8y ago

This article is not really about art. My father was a “scrape yourself up from the bottom” guy. He was the hardest working person I’ve ever known, first as a physical laborer, then as an operating systems programmer. Microsoft used his Wang kernel for NT, but he never got on that train. He was deeply skeptical of all institutions of prestige and never attended college. His father was a professor, double math/physics PhD at Berkeley. The hard road for him was a conscious choice, something he had to prove to himself every day. Life eventually beat it out of him, but that’s a different story. I don’t match up to him, but I have a habit of leaving the professional world to live among laborers and soldiers for the comforts of their ethos. It seems that everybody exists somewhere on the spectrum from ascetic to charlatan: monk, soldier, athlete, laborer, coder, doctor, manager, lawyer, salesman, founder, artist, celebrity, criminal. You may dispute the order, but that’s where I’ve seen the category _medians_ fall. The art example: buy a toilet and sell it for millions, is brazen chicanery; in fact that’s what gives it value, although you might also agree that the network made it possible. Similarly, many startups are technical garbage before they get money-bombed into a foregone conclusion. Network? Charisma? Luck? Outrageous claims that offend technical experts? It’s not that different from the art world. But is it good advice to network? PG says no. AVC says no. Trust that there are plenty of failed artists trying to network their way into million dollar toilets too. On average, plumbers do better, but nobody’s impressed with a working toilet until they stop going to burning man and divorce the artist.

jl2718 8y ago
Note: I think I was probably unfair to artists in this characterization. It's a hard path to follow; there must have been some deeper and more socially generative yearning than to make a fortune by pissing off art critics and confusing or offending normal folk. Art has historically been the enduring edifice of civilizations, and I appreciate anybody that builds and creates and invents.

pradn 8y ago

A 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-america https://www.guggenheim.org/exhibition/maurizio-cattelan-amer...

pnathan 8y ago
That installation has acquired a certain noteriety - when the White House requested an art piece, the toilet was offered... https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/dc-politics/the-white-house-wanted-a-van-gogh-the-guggenheim-offered-a-used-solid-gold-toilet/2018/01/25/38d574fc-0154-11e8-bb03-722769454f82_story.html https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/dc-politics/the-white-h...

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amelius 8y ago

Provocation in search of a reason ...

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TLAFanBoy 8y ago

"Displayed at an angle and out of its normal context, it was oddly beautiful" I disagree, the toilet was not "oddly beautiful" and displaying it at an angle and out of its normal context didn't make it any more "oddly beautiful." It was a sort-of clever "troll" mocking the pretentiousness of the "art crowd" and it's significant because 100 years later the "art crowd" is still, how to put it? "Butthurt" over Duchamp's mockery of them. The "troll" stung so bad that 100 years later they are still embarrassed, even humiliated, by it. 100 years of terrible nonsense and thousand-word essays of bullshit and they still haven't gotten over it. Which I guess means that Duchamp made a piece of very significant art.

Aeolun 8y ago
Maybe if we sent in a more beautiful urinal?
leoc 8y ago
That seems incorrect. The contemporary fine-art world, or certainly the public-gallery, taxpayer-funded side of it at least, has been dominated by conceptual art https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conceptual_art https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conceptual_art for decades now: in other words, by people chasing heavily diminished returns on Duchamp's old hack. It's hard to imagine that the people adulating and spending millions on Damien Hirst's bisected shark and other, even slighter stuff are still upset about Duchamp.

WheelsAtLarge 8y ago

Wow, this is a very rare article that crystalizes a very real aspect of success. It's worth reading. We constantly read about people working night and day to create a successful project but failing to succeed at it. Networking is a very real and needed aspect of success. We regularly start projects with other people in mind but if you can't get your constituents to agree with what you want to create then you're headed towards failure. It is nice to think that we don't need and don't want to deal with other people but that's a fallacy that will get you nowhere in life. The sooner we realize that the faster we'll move forward. Excellent article, thanks to the person that posted it.

kumarski 8y ago

Art is a money laundering substrate intended to violate all sorts of FINCEN/FATF/CFTC Controls and to play tax gymnastics with.

willart4food 8y ago

Eat your . . . heart out Marcel! #AMERICA https://qz.com/quartzy/1190158/the-guggenheim-offered-trump-a-golden-toilet/ https://qz.com/quartzy/1190158/the-guggenheim-offered-trump-...

mirimir 8y ago

Hmmm. For me, "art = networks" looks a lot like "art = bullshit". That plus speculative bubbles.

scotty79 8y ago

> Performance drives success, but when performance can’t be measured, networks drive success. That distills the essence of modern internet content economy for me.

leoc 8y ago

The Guardian's "The class pay gap: why it pays to be privileged" feature https://www.theguardian.com/society/2019/feb/07/the-class-pay-gap-why-it-pays-to-be-privileged https://www.theguardian.com/society/2019/feb/07/the-class-pa... seems to me a more detailed and more nuanced treatment of much the same topic.