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Well, the phrasing sure leans towards the intellectual side, however Calvin adopting the artistic attitude (and lingo) before even making a name for himself or

• teekert 8y ago
  Funny how one can interpret things so differently. I see a lot of art just like this, like the clothes of the emperor: All nice and well until someone says: Wtf you speak a lot of hefty language but in the end my 4 y/o can do the same thing, but for the hefty language. Sure, Art can make you think and the way you interpret it may teach you something about yourself (that is how I find value in art), but so can the painting of a 4 y/o and a nice river flowing in the distance. Call me barbaric but I appreciate art when it took skill to make it. A nicely constructed, elegant, functional Python class with minimal but readable code, that is (also) art to me. The thing is, I'm often getting away with this opinion because I have a PhD so somehow my intellectualism isn't easily dismissed, it's insane.
  • milquetoastaf 8y ago
    For a PhD you have a pretty philistine stance on art. Seriously, "my 4 y/o can do it" is not "intellectualism," it is the most basic and unimaginative critique of modern and contemporary art
  • throwaway-hn123 8y ago
    Dunning-Kruger in effect. Thanks for the demonstration.
  • cgriswald 8y ago
    Criticizing the art because it’s not technically advanced is like criticizing a Python class because it’s just text on a screen and any four-year-old can put text on a screen. What makes the Python class meaningful to you is the context you bring with you. The world of art is a lot bigger than technically proficient realism.
    • minkzilla 8y ago
      Chances are the python class does something useful as well as being of a beautiful form. Probably not true for what a 4 year old would do.
      • cgriswald 8y ago
        A 4yo isn’t going to accidentally stumble onto a masterpiece on composition either. In any case, the utility of the code is not in question here. Ugly code can have the same utility as beautiful code. Utility is not completely separated from beauty but it is neither necessary nor sufficient. If it were, only applied math would be considered beautiful, but plenty of other math is beautiful too.
        • minkzilla 8y ago
          After typing out my response I don’t know if I totally agree with what I’m saying here. And I don’t know if it even makes much sense but here it is anyway: I think what I’m getting at is you wouldn’t call a proof with an error in it beautiful. Just like you wouldn’t call a useless python class beautiful. The purpose of pure math is finding truths. The purpose a python class is to do something useful. For something to be beautiful it has to complete its purpose (I don’t think I would go so far as utility) as well as be of a beautiful form. Relating this back to traditional art the question becomes what is the purpose of traditional art? Here by traditional art I mean making things with the intention of it being “art” and for people to look at/ hear/feel and doesn’t have other utility.