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The thing I love about modern art is that initial instinctive reaction of "Anyone could do this!". I have absolutely zero training in art so this might be a inf
by aketchum 6y ago
The thing I love about modern art is that initial instinctive reaction of "Anyone could do this!". I have absolutely zero training in art so this might be a infantile opinion, but I am delighted by the pieces that makes me realize "Anyone could do this, but no-one did until now."
All that to say, I really like this series of works.
- Waterluvian 6y agoThis might be your whole point, but what your comment inspired in me was the excitement that art is accessible to anyone. That we're not out of "easy ideas" with only "hard ideas" left. Which touches on one of the disenchanting things about technology (that is probably not actually true, but how I feel): it feels like we've only got "hard ideas" left, most accessible to the experts, those with resources, those with a lot of time.
- beamatronic 6y agoThere are layers of meaning here - truly a reflection of modern times.
- ableal 6y agoThis may be the starting point: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fountain_(Duchamp) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fountain_(Duchamp)
- teawrecks 6y agoYeah, but for a lot of modern art, I think the claim many people are making is both that "anyone could do it" and "people already have and just didn't make a big deal of it". Ex. When people say "my kid could paint that" they mean "something very similar to that is already hanging on my refrigerator".
- andmarios 6y agoI think they couldn't really. If you look into modern artists they are extremelly talented and their unique style that seems like _anyone could do it_ comes in later stages in their life. It's a bit like coding, where simple and elegant solutions only come to you after you reach a certain level. People looking into your work might think that the solution is simple enough that even a junior could do it, but it's not the case. It takes another good engineer to spot one. :)
- kansface 6y ago> I think they couldn't really. If you look into modern artists they are extremelly talented and their unique style that seems like _anyone could do it_ comes in later stages in their life. This is incorrect (although I don't know anything about the artist in question). Contemporary art degrees are heavily moving away from teaching craft or even consider it a valid aesthetic or criterion for judgement (along the lines of rejecting the notion of good/bad/better/worse). Was there any identifiable craft involved in this piece? Did the artists remove from circulation the boxes that weren't broken in just the right way? Is the art more interesting to look about than to talk about? Marginally... I find the pile of boxes sorta aesthetically pleasing, but its not clear to me that was even done by the artist (and not the gallery). What part of this piece are you proposing that a total outsider/complete amateur couldn't create on a first pass? The form of the glass looks to be haphazard, (ie, unimportant the artist). The boxes are off the shelf. What else is left?
- cwmartin 6y ago> Is the art more interesting to look about than to talk about? That is an interesting perspective. I have always judged art by its aesthetics and its ability to elicit thought / conversation equally. In my view art becomes shallow when it is purely visually appealing with no conceptual backing or purely conceptual with uninteresting visual components.
- esyir 6y agoI'll put it the other way though, if you attribute it to any other artist, would the appeal be greatly reduced? Can the art stand alone and be great on its own merit rather than the borrowed fame of its creator?
- tshaddox 6y agoCoding seems like a bad example, at least for me. I’m a professional coder with several years of experience, but I routinely encounter code or software architectures that very much impress me and make me think “not just any coder could have come up with this, at least without a great deal of thought and effort.”
- jweir 6y agoSome modern art does not stand on its own. It requires the expert explanation to transform it from garbage to art. For myself this is “clever art” and has little cultural value. Damien Hirst once had a work on display and a janitor threw it out - because he truly thought it was garbage. My toddler daughter once “ruined” a Mathew Barney work on a wall - it was a smear of black jelly that she smeared some more. The guard quickly looked the other way while motioning us to leave. Working in the gallery world I would read the epic descriptions of works for sale. A lot of ink went in to creating and describing the value of art works that had no apparent worth. It is fashion to be sold and adorn and tell your friends about. Not all modern art is like this, some works can be appreciated for its intrinsic properties. But this requires more skill, and dedication, and is rather rare. I value art similar to the rule about food - if your grandmother would recognize it as art then it probably is, if not then maybe not. And all things art - it boils down to opinion. This is mine.
- teddyh 6y agoThe same sentiment was also described here: http://absurdnotions.org/an20020724.gif http://absurdnotions.org/an20020724.gif http://absurdnotions.org/an20020731.gif http://absurdnotions.org/an20020731.gif http://absurdnotions.org/an20020814.gif http://absurdnotions.org/an20020814.gif (Images taken from (http://absurdnotions.org/page104.html http://absurdnotions.org/page104.html) and (http://absurdnotions.org/page105.html http://absurdnotions.org/page105.html))
- u678u 6y ago> Damien Hirst once had a work on display and a janitor threw it out Actually I thought it was Tracey Emin, I searched for it and it was both - and more other occurrences in other countries. https://www.bing.com/search?q=cleaner+throws+away+art&first=15 https://www.bing.com/search?q=cleaner+throws+away+art&first=...
- petre 6y agoOh that's the woman with the messy bed. Stuckists would like a word with YBA. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sir_Nicholas_Serota_Makes_an_Acquisitions_Decision https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sir_Nicholas_Serota_Makes_an... No wonder the janitor thought it was trash and threw it out.
- petre 6y agoArt is also about communicating ideas, concepts. Most abstract expressionists could paint photorealistic scenes in detail, but they just found it boring and went on with soak staining or squeezing tubes.
- JALTU 6y agoScott McCloud's "Understanding Comics" is a excellent book for understanding art.
- ggm 6y agoI bought a tea-towel gift in the local modern art gallery: Modern Art == "I could have done that" - "Yea, but you didn't"
- lanewinfield 6y agoI am reminded of the work in equation form by Craig Damrauer: Modern art = I could do that × Yeah, but you didn't https://design-milk.com/images/2010/11/modern-art-craig-damrauer.jpg https://design-milk.com/images/2010/11/modern-art-craig-damr...
- renewiltord 6y agoHa! You turned sum into product and have now produced a novel derivative work.
- lanewinfield 6y agoHahaha. Didn't even notice. Er, I mean, this comment is now for sale.
- HPsquared 6y agoOr is it integrative?
- oehpr 6y agoOne thing to keep in mind is the context you're observing this in. Imagine instead, someone makes a post on https://www.reddit.com/r/DIY/ https://www.reddit.com/r/DIY/ about how they connected some glass panels together and shipped them in fedex boxes. Then put them in their living room on top of the boxes they shipped in as an art piece. The next place that post would end up is DIWHY. The reason anyone thinks its a truly inspired meaningful commentary on modern times is simply that it's being presented as such. It's on a clean floor, with professional photography, with a news article about it. The context, the author, and the opinions of the people around you, all work to subconsciously influence your opinion.
- dash2 6y agoIf you did it as DIY, yes, but not all modern - really, contemporary - art is done by Important People who get magazine interviews. A colleague of mine at a web design shop had done his degree in fine art. He was into minimalism and Arte Povera, and his main work was a large ball of grey paint which he had kept with him for years. He would grind down stuff from his daily life and mix his own paint (which he named after himself) to add to this ball. It just kept growing and growing.... Weird, but fun.
- mFixman 6y agoThe reason why /r/DIWhy exists at all is because people find weird objects interesting. I could totally see the top post in the subreddit with the carpet-pedal bike as part of a season exhibition in the Tate Modern.
- stretchcat 6y agoOften I think anybody could make it, but only a privileged few have the elite social connections to make a career out of it.
- renewiltord 6y agoIt also sometimes matters who it is: (apart from the straightforward joke) A novice was trying to fix a broken Lisp machine by turning the power off and on. Knight, seeing what the student was doing, spoke sternly: “You cannot fix a machine by just power-cycling it with no understanding of what is going wrong.” Knight turned the machine off and on. The machine worked.
- btilly 6y agoThis is based on a true story. And the required understanding was that the power had to be gone for long enough that it actually shut down completely.
- renewiltord 6y agoA problem I have never really found a satisfactory answer to. On some computers in some places, I have found that occasionally one has to disconnect them from mains to get them to power up occasionally. Some people have said I needed to discharge some capacitors but that never felt satisfactory. Very heisenbuggy. Like Tom Knight, I was able to fix a broken machine by slowly power-cycling it :)
- kens 6y agoI'm not sure how the discussion went from art to power supplies, but... Turning off a computer doesn't completely turn it off. Specifically, ATX power supplies have a standby +5V output, even when the computer is off. (This is how Wake-on-LAN works, for instance.) So it's quite possible that you needed to disconnect the computer to get it to fully restart. As far as discharging capacitors, that's an issue if you turn the computer off and on rapidly; the power supply can continue supplying power for a few seconds due to its capacitors, so the system might continue uninterrupted.
- andreareina 6y agoI was a naughty boy and would occasionally try to cycle the switch fast enough that the machine didn't turn off.
- jsw97 6y agoAs it happens, this has been done before: https://skrekkogle.com/projects/postpost/ https://skrekkogle.com/projects/postpost/ Not that this incarnation isn't clever as well.
- Guest19023892 6y agoIt reminds me of logo design. Anyone could draw the Apple, Pepsi, or Microsoft logo in a minute. However, if any of these brands approached you, would you have been able to deliver a logo that's as iconic? It's unlikely. You might get lucky once, but you wouldn't be able to do it day after day as a career unless you're incredibly talented.
- SilasX 6y agoOkay, but then none of the actual artists are making iconic logos day after day either, and when they make any at all, it's not from some artistic genius that us philistines could never understand, it's because they make a ton of variants and then a whole crew of marketers refines and A/B tests it before settling on "the" icon.
- tshaddox 6y agoWhen people say “anyone could do that” in reference to art, they’re usually not just saying that anyone could copy that after having seen it. Of course most people could take a famous novel and type out all the same words. They’re saying (regardless of whether they’re correct) that the actual conception of the new work doesn’t seem like it required significant creative effort.
- Guest19023892 6y agoI don't think I entirely agree. If you're correct, why doesn't anyone point at a famous portrait painting by a renowned artist, or a photorealistic pencil sketch of a fruit bowl and say, "anyone could do that"? These works might have very little creative effort, but people recognize they wouldn't be able to reproduce such a piece, so they don't make that statement. Instead, they look over at that painting with the square patches of color (https://cdn.kastatic.org/ka-perseus-images/f832e28211a5c9793935b60e12c9cb53d555a391.jpg https://cdn.kastatic.org/ka-perseus-images/f832e28211a5c9793...) and say their child could do that. So, when someone says, "anyone could do that", it's likely a statement about being able to produce a similar piece of art. Could they paint a painting similar to the squares above that people could mistake as another painting from the same artist? Yes, so they make that statement. Could they write a novel that could be mistaken as a follow-up book from a famous writer? Not likely, so they don't say it. So, it's not a statement about being able to directly copy the work (like I might have referred to in my previous comment), or a reference to the creative effort involved, but a statement about being able to produce a similar piece. However, I think people mostly take into consideration the technical ability of the artist, they overlook the creative process to reach that point, and they're focused on a single piece when a large part of the talent is in being able to consistently produce such work.
- forgotmypw17 6y agoSure, anyone could do this, just come up with a meaningful idea, learn how to make large glass objects, procure glass panes of exactly the right size, attach them together, test the rigidity of the structure, probably some test shipments, make arrangements with museums to receive and display them, place them in the boxes, ship them, receive them, unpack them, take some photos, publish a website, done!
- TheGallopedHigh 6y agoYou do realize that often artist don’t physically make a large portion of larger art pieces. Nor do they set them up in galleries it is often done by teams but the artist gets the sole credit.
- forgotmypw17 6y agoYes, it's good evidence that the project is not a light undertaking.
- AndrewKemendo 6y ago"It's obvious in retrospect" True of all good design - Art and Software included
- joebob42 6y agoI don't think this expresses the problem accurately. Something like facebook is "obvious on retrospect" in the sense that lots of people could theoretically have built a similar site if they just had the idea and the right timing, but didn't so so. A lot of modern art I've seen maintains the "lots of people could do that relatively easily" aspect, but it doesn't have the "if someone else had built the same thing, I can see how it would have succeeded." Ie it's easy in retrospect, but it's not obvious. My personal take on it is just that a lot of it is basically nonsense / garbage, but perhaps I'm just cynical and closeminded.
- Blikkentrekker 6y agoYou do not know whether no one else did. Art is showbusiness, and success is largely the result of flukes and many of the great names of history would easily have been unremarkable if it hadn't been for several fluke events. It's entirely possible that many did such things before, but never became famous with it, and one did, and largely became so as a fluke simply because, say, an influential critic came across it by chance, and decided to write a positive piece, after which the ball was set in motion.
- tshaddox 6y agoIsn’t it more like “no one thought to do it before who isn’t sufficiently famous, well-connected, or lucky to get noticed for it”?
- banana_giraffe 6y ago> but no-one did until now Yeah, that's the problem. Surely people did this for kicks from time to time. When I was younger, I used to fill old wine bottles with water, freeze them, then turn the cracked remains into candle holders. I had a few of them, and thought they looked cool. There's some disconnect between what I did as a bit of crafts, and calling it an objet d'art that's a commentary on .. well, anything, that I don't fully grok.
- kevin_thibedeau 6y agoSome of it is meta commentary on the whole game of convincing wealthy patrons to fork over money for these things. I once saw an piece in a Boise gallery that consisted of a cardboard box filled with opened tubes of squeezed paint. Many people would walk by dismissively but upon closer inspection the entire thing was a ceramic sculpture.