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A lot of the comments on HN art posts are people bitching about how they don't understand modern art or think a specific artist is undeserving of their fame, co

A lot of the comments on HN art posts are people bitching about how they don't understand modern art or think a specific artist is undeserving of their fame, conflating "skillful execution" with artistic merit.

ddebernardy 8y ago
Maybe they need a short primer to understand modern art. What Duchamp did when he submitted his Fountain to an art expo he was a jury member of, was to send a giant middle finger to art critics of the time, which only focused on technique. His message was: this is art because I as the artist say it is, and the purpose of modern art is to send a message. Art critics may or may not understand the message's meaning, but meaning there is. To supplement that, a relevant Duchamp quote on how to find a piece of art's meaning might be of interest: "The most interesting thing about artists is how they live". (And to HNers who read this and think it all sounds like mental masturbation, you are right: it is; but some artists are better at communicating the ongoing conversation, much like there are bloggers that are better at communicating what the coolest programming language or framework or pattern or what have you is.)
- hnhg 8y ago
  Also, I'd argue that a valid purpose of art is something akin to 'play', in which it explores ideas intellectually that are not suitable for the formalities of philosophy or science. However, this seems frivolous or useless to many folks, from the outside.
- krapp 8y ago
  I watched a video[0] on the Art Assignment Youtube channel (which I highly recommend) about Agnes Martin's paintings which illustrates this (pun slightly intended.) A literal interpretation of her work would be that she's just putting basic, pale, repeating colors and shapes onto a canvas. Simple, repetitive, obviously anyone can do that, so there cannot be any talent involved, much less any signal in the noise. But they're meant to be attempts to describe emotions and abstractions without resorting to metaphor. One can disagree about the effectiveness of her message, but there is a message. [0]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=phYyRNrhZwc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=phYyRNrhZwc
- cam_l 8y ago
  There is a link in one of the comments above by theoh. There is reasonable evidence to suggest the urinal was not even his work, but of a friend of his for which he (eventually, much to her dismay) took credit. Edit: And also.. I see the comment put forward quite often that the urinal was about the primacy of the artist or the message in defining art. But what i think is often overlooked is it is also about the context (the gallery and the viewer) and the recursion of meaning inherent in the contextualisation. Ie. The meaning created in the viewers mind that 'found' objects can be art. And the subsequent finding of art-meaning in everyday life.
bravura 8y ago
There's an argument on HN and other techie circles I see which is pretty insidious and it goes like this: "There is very little meaningful content being exchanged between artists / fashion people / etc. The successful people in these fields are the ones that are good at personal branding + PR. They don't have any significant skill or insight over everyone else." For example, from today: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19409610 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19409610 Do you really think it's likely that millions of highly educated people are just exchanging noise and there is really no signal underneath it? What many people miss is that there is a legitimate conversation happening in fashion, or modern art. It's just over your head, you don't understand it, so you dismiss it as nonsense. And yeah, luck and personal branding are PART of success, like everywhere. But these fields also filter out most of the people who are not intrinsically excellent, in addition to being good at branding.
- hhs 8y ago
  Did you read today's Lunch with the FT? It's between Jo Ellison and Victoria Beckham. There's an interesting conversation in the paper on Victoria's fashion design career, and the problems she's faced along the way with branding and investment, yet she's pushing.
XaoDaoCaoCao 8y ago
Maybe "modern art" is just a boring game compared to everything else in the noosphere. I mean for my cognitive buck, it seems like it gives a poor return. Just my opinion

ddebernardy 8y ago

Maybe they need a short primer to understand modern art. What Duchamp did when he submitted his Fountain to an art expo he was a jury member of, was to send a giant middle finger to art critics of the time, which only focused on technique. His message was: this is art because I as the artist say it is, and the purpose of modern art is to send a message. Art critics may or may not understand the message's meaning, but meaning there is. To supplement that, a relevant Duchamp quote on how to find a piece of art's meaning might be of interest: "The most interesting thing about artists is how they live". (And to HNers who read this and think it all sounds like mental masturbation, you are right: it is; but some artists are better at communicating the ongoing conversation, much like there are bloggers that are better at communicating what the coolest programming language or framework or pattern or what have you is.)

hnhg 8y ago
Also, I'd argue that a valid purpose of art is something akin to 'play', in which it explores ideas intellectually that are not suitable for the formalities of philosophy or science. However, this seems frivolous or useless to many folks, from the outside.
krapp 8y ago
I watched a video[0] on the Art Assignment Youtube channel (which I highly recommend) about Agnes Martin's paintings which illustrates this (pun slightly intended.) A literal interpretation of her work would be that she's just putting basic, pale, repeating colors and shapes onto a canvas. Simple, repetitive, obviously anyone can do that, so there cannot be any talent involved, much less any signal in the noise. But they're meant to be attempts to describe emotions and abstractions without resorting to metaphor. One can disagree about the effectiveness of her message, but there is a message. [0]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=phYyRNrhZwc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=phYyRNrhZwc
cam_l 8y ago
There is a link in one of the comments above by theoh. There is reasonable evidence to suggest the urinal was not even his work, but of a friend of his for which he (eventually, much to her dismay) took credit. Edit: And also.. I see the comment put forward quite often that the urinal was about the primacy of the artist or the message in defining art. But what i think is often overlooked is it is also about the context (the gallery and the viewer) and the recursion of meaning inherent in the contextualisation. Ie. The meaning created in the viewers mind that 'found' objects can be art. And the subsequent finding of art-meaning in everyday life.

bravura 8y ago

There's an argument on HN and other techie circles I see which is pretty insidious and it goes like this: "There is very little meaningful content being exchanged between artists / fashion people / etc. The successful people in these fields are the ones that are good at personal branding + PR. They don't have any significant skill or insight over everyone else." For example, from today: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19409610 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19409610 Do you really think it's likely that millions of highly educated people are just exchanging noise and there is really no signal underneath it? What many people miss is that there is a legitimate conversation happening in fashion, or modern art. It's just over your head, you don't understand it, so you dismiss it as nonsense. And yeah, luck and personal branding are PART of success, like everywhere. But these fields also filter out most of the people who are not intrinsically excellent, in addition to being good at branding.

hhs 8y ago
Did you read today's Lunch with the FT? It's between Jo Ellison and Victoria Beckham. There's an interesting conversation in the paper on Victoria's fashion design career, and the problems she's faced along the way with branding and investment, yet she's pushing.

XaoDaoCaoCao 8y ago

Maybe "modern art" is just a boring game compared to everything else in the noosphere. I mean for my cognitive buck, it seems like it gives a poor return. Just my opinion