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I went to an exhibit on modern art at SAM. It was full of ironic pieces, like a gauge that measured its own distance to the floor and ceiling (and had some sort

I went to an exhibit on modern art at SAM. It was full of ironic pieces, like a gauge that measured its own distance to the floor and ceiling (and had some sort of ironic name about literalism or something). The centerpieces was a big blank canvas with the words "I could have done that" scrawled across it in marker. I stick to historic exhibits for the most part now.

lelandfe 5y ago
The Tate Modern has a huge room filled with what seems to be detritus left over from mounting art - ladders, glue, tape, and so on. Your first reaction is that they are switching out an exhibition. It’s only when you read the placard that you find out that each item had been painstakingly carved out of something like resin and painted over a span of years. Nearby is an empty room, where they actually are switching out an exhibition.
- thrwyoilarticle 5y ago
  So you visited the Tate Modern and, out of all the pieces, the one you recall an anecdote about was the obnoxious detritus? Seems like it did the job.
  - lelandfe 5y ago
    I actually quite liked that piece :)
Neil44 5y ago
For me modern art is about my reaction to the piece, and the insight and illumination into myself that that gives. So looking at a piece is in a way looking at myself. Modern art can also be a way of communicating feelings and ideas that language cannot express very well.
- wyager 5y ago
  You may enjoy the recent episode of the Good Ol Boyz podcast with Dr Hans Georg Moeller on Profilicity. It’s an in-depth analysis of the phenomenon you’re describing.
- 123pie123 5y ago
  If an object can induce a feeling - any feeling, even of disgust then I would class it as art. doesn't mean it's good art though, that's extremely subjective
  - int_19h 5y ago
    Garbage in the middle of the street can induce a feeling of disgust, but I don't think that makes it art. Even if somebody were to put a fence around it and stick a sign that says "this is art" on that.
dexwiz 5y ago
Post Modern art is terrible. At least with early modern art (think Vienna Secession or other movements ~100 years ago), most of the artists had classical training and moved into modern art. Now they are just all terrible. The devaluation of aesthetics in favor of meaning make it unapproachable to those with no context on the subject, and unappealing to even those with context. Contemporary artists with any skill now work in classical styles, illustrations, or graphic design. EDIT: I should clarify by Post Modern I mean a specific genre of art focused on deconstruction. Not all contemporary art is Post Modern, and there are many genres alive today that are not Post Modern.
- silicon2401 5y ago
  > The devaluation of aesthetics in favor of meaning make it unapproachable to those with no context on the subject, and unappealing to even those with context. This is an incredibly concise and effective summary of the situation. I agree completely. I think aesthetics have really been devalued in the modern world. Even comparing distant lands like Ancient Rome or Ancient China, there are still commonalities in their approach to aesthetics compared to modern culture.
  - sjg007 5y ago
    Oh to appreciate the aesthetics of pornography.
    - int_19h 5y ago
      It exists, e.g. DOMAI.
- guardiangod 5y ago
  While I don't know anything about art to disagree with you, I'd imagine people say the same thing no matter if it's 100, 500, or 2000 years ago. I suspect the situation is the same with old appliances- only the Good Stuff survives the test of time.
  - 5y ago
silicon2401 5y ago
Modern art is a great example of how semantics don't change reality. You can call modern art art, but the average person will never put something like the pieces you described in the same category as something like a Michelangelo painting.
- thrwyoilarticle 5y ago
  Isn't that survivorship bias? Most artists from any period can't compete with Michelangelo. And why bother trying to compete with it today when we can get a Michelangelo print for one millionth of the price?
- CobrastanJorji 5y ago
  The average person is (perhaps unfortunately) not the judge of art. Duchamp signed a urinal and stuck it in a museum over a hundred years ago, and the average person certainly didn't consider that art, and today the stupid thing is absolutely in art history textbooks with Michelangelo. The praise is different, to be sure. Michelangelo's work is a achievement, technically, historically, and artistically. Scrawling "my kid could do this" in marker and hanging it in a museum isn't trying for any of that, but it does provoke thought and emotion and discussion, and that's what it's trying successfully to do. The artist does not expect anyone to say "wow, such amazing technical talent, they must have studied calligraphy for years, they are surely Michelangelo reborn." Is it great art? Well, I'm not an art critic, I dunno, but if I saw it in a museum it'd probably make me think and feel more than some random landscape.
  - biztos 5y ago
    > signed a urinal and stuck it in a museum ...sort-of, but not really, but sure it's in museums now. More than one! However, this would have been the smallest of art-historical footnotes had Duchamp not then gone on to do the rest of the things he did, and we put it in the art history textbooks because of its (minor) place in one of the most ground-breaking modern artists' development and career. It's worth remembering that Michelangelo was also breaking a lot of rules, and was something of a rebel within the context of his time. His talent also developed within a context -- the same amazing guy, born 400 years earlier or later, would have been making a very different kind of art.
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
klyrs 5y ago
Last time I went to MOMA, there was a huge composition that looked like an all-black canvas. Didn't look out of place. But when you get closer, find that it's covered in a thick layer of dead flies. It was a hoot. Take or leave the composition itself; the biggest fun was in watching other patrons' reaction to the piece. When I buy art, it's usually from folks who live on the street, not from galleries. edit: found it https://www.damienhirst.com/texts1/series/fly https://www.damienhirst.com/texts1/series/fly
- NautilusWave 5y ago
  What a ride from "I could do that!" to "Why would anyone do that!?"
thrwyoilarticle 5y ago
It's unfair not to mention how much some historic art sucks. I went to the Tate Britain and a large section of the historic works were 'aristocrat pays someone to paint his family very flatteringly but with obvious lighting and perspective flaws'. If you take a step back and imagine a celebrity today commissioning the same kind of artwork, it becomes painfully obvious how egotistical and unworthy of praise these works are. See also: displaying unfinished sketches. Nice for a collector but let's not pretend there's any artistic value in it.
- tomcam 5y ago
  IMHO unfinished sketches by great artists can be amazing little stories unto themselves. They can give you insight into the creation process of the artist, which fascinates me. And sometimes they are even more fresh and dynamic than the finished work.
- beambot 5y ago
  I once rode in an original Model T. Ride was horrible: super slow, very uncomfortable, and the handling was ghastly. But clearly we don't judge "ancient" developments exclusively by modern standards... Artwork of old was commissioned and preserved by the wealthy. All of the old works are rare (relatively), fairly impressive for the time, and some are true masterpieces.
- dylan604 5y ago
  It depends on your view point. A lot of art is critized for the artist's abilities and techniques to create the art and much less for the subject matter. The David could have been any random dude, but it is the ability of accurately recreating that randome dude in stone that makes it impressive. Some of the painted pieces that are extremely large and take up an entire museum wall are impressive just for the shear accomplisment. Yes, it helps that it looks so real as well. >See also: displaying unfinished sketches. Nice for a collector but let's not pretend there's any artistic value in it. If you imagine those sketches being underneath the painting and realizing that those sketches were how the artist worked on creating the actual piece is interesting in the same way watching behind-the-scenes videos on how a movie was made are interesting--to those that are interested in the first place. Similar to Show HN articles on some use of fad language to redo something else already in existence. If you have no interest in that language or the thing being made, they aren't interesting.
Xylakant 5y ago
The most memorable art exhibitions for me are modern. There's a lot of trash, but one particularly memorable piece is (or was, it's been a while) hanging right on top of the exit door of the Berlinische Galerie. It's just a unpretentious ticker that scrolls a single sentence in red dots: "Do you feel better now?". True, anyone could have done that. But the placement, the simplicity, the style resonated with me in that moment so that I remember that ticker better than Mona Lisa in Paris.
- 88840-8855 5y ago
  Yup, same for me. It was a TV in a room with a video on a loop displaying a woman in a mirror who was ripping our her hair and repeating "art must be beautiful". First thought it was dumb, but then i caught myself thinking about it. This is 4 years ago now and I still remember it, while the Rembrandts and Monets have never provoked any feeling or thought in me.
- elisbce 5y ago
  You are confused of being memorable with being artistic or valuable. I could scare you with a big TV screen showing dead bodies, and that would be the most memorable thing you see that entire month.
  - Xylakant 5y ago
    I think you’re misreading what I’m saying. I’m not saying that this is art because it’s memorable. I’m saying that this is memorable to me because it’s a piece of art that resonated with me in a special way, like only few other pieces of art did. Whether it’s truly art or just a clever trick is certainly up for debate and bigger minds than mine failed at finding objective criteria, but at least the curators of the museum considered it art or they wouldn’t exhibit it.
m_ke 5y ago
My worst date ever was a trip to MOMA, I had to go to a museum as an assignment for an art history class. The girl must have thought I was a weirdo for taking her there and we pretty much stopped talking after that night.
- dylan604 5y ago
  I mean, yeah. Context my friend. If you go on a date, it should be for the shared experience of whatever you're doing. Taking someone with you while you do homework is not that. It's no different than bringing a date to work to watch you work. Few dates will actually appreciate that experience.
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
user-the-name 5y ago
So this either says something about the entire field of modern art and the huge number of artists creating it. Or it says something about you.
dan_quixote 5y ago
Is it not just a case of survivorship bias? I'd expect that the historical stuff in museums is carefully (not randomly) selected. There were probably all kinds of crap art from the same era that simply got trashed.
panda888888 5y ago
But modern art is funny! There's a difference between art and craft. If you prefer craft, that's fine. At least in my book, modern art isn't about craft. It's about making you think. Sometimes it's stupid, overdone, plays into tropes too much, etc., but usually it invokes an emotion. For example, consider Banksy's painting that shredded itself. That's hilarious! The people who accidentally left a pineapple in a museum, only to return later and find that it had been covered with a glass case? That's equally funny. And in this instance, props to the artist for deciding to take the money and run. It fits the title of their work.
littlestymaar 5y ago
I actually like this kind of art, I find it funny and entertaining. It's like real-life 9gag or reddit shitposting. What I don't like though, is that those shitposters get paid hundreds of thousand dollars, or even million, often in public money (or “charity” money which is a way to avoid taxes and is eventually public money), because they have a network (it's not even their “name” that matters because practically no-one know them in the public, they just happen to know the right persons).

lelandfe 5y ago

The Tate Modern has a huge room filled with what seems to be detritus left over from mounting art - ladders, glue, tape, and so on. Your first reaction is that they are switching out an exhibition. It’s only when you read the placard that you find out that each item had been painstakingly carved out of something like resin and painted over a span of years. Nearby is an empty room, where they actually are switching out an exhibition.

thrwyoilarticle 5y ago
So you visited the Tate Modern and, out of all the pieces, the one you recall an anecdote about was the obnoxious detritus? Seems like it did the job.
- lelandfe 5y ago
  I actually quite liked that piece :)

Neil44 5y ago

For me modern art is about my reaction to the piece, and the insight and illumination into myself that that gives. So looking at a piece is in a way looking at myself. Modern art can also be a way of communicating feelings and ideas that language cannot express very well.

wyager 5y ago
You may enjoy the recent episode of the Good Ol Boyz podcast with Dr Hans Georg Moeller on Profilicity. It’s an in-depth analysis of the phenomenon you’re describing.
123pie123 5y ago
If an object can induce a feeling - any feeling, even of disgust then I would class it as art. doesn't mean it's good art though, that's extremely subjective
- int_19h 5y ago
  Garbage in the middle of the street can induce a feeling of disgust, but I don't think that makes it art. Even if somebody were to put a fence around it and stick a sign that says "this is art" on that.

dexwiz 5y ago

Post Modern art is terrible. At least with early modern art (think Vienna Secession or other movements ~100 years ago), most of the artists had classical training and moved into modern art. Now they are just all terrible. The devaluation of aesthetics in favor of meaning make it unapproachable to those with no context on the subject, and unappealing to even those with context. Contemporary artists with any skill now work in classical styles, illustrations, or graphic design. EDIT: I should clarify by Post Modern I mean a specific genre of art focused on deconstruction. Not all contemporary art is Post Modern, and there are many genres alive today that are not Post Modern.

silicon2401 5y ago
> The devaluation of aesthetics in favor of meaning make it unapproachable to those with no context on the subject, and unappealing to even those with context. This is an incredibly concise and effective summary of the situation. I agree completely. I think aesthetics have really been devalued in the modern world. Even comparing distant lands like Ancient Rome or Ancient China, there are still commonalities in their approach to aesthetics compared to modern culture.
- sjg007 5y ago
  Oh to appreciate the aesthetics of pornography.
  - int_19h 5y ago
    It exists, e.g. DOMAI.
guardiangod 5y ago
While I don't know anything about art to disagree with you, I'd imagine people say the same thing no matter if it's 100, 500, or 2000 years ago. I suspect the situation is the same with old appliances- only the Good Stuff survives the test of time.
- 5y ago

silicon2401 5y ago

Modern art is a great example of how semantics don't change reality. You can call modern art art, but the average person will never put something like the pieces you described in the same category as something like a Michelangelo painting.

thrwyoilarticle 5y ago
Isn't that survivorship bias? Most artists from any period can't compete with Michelangelo. And why bother trying to compete with it today when we can get a Michelangelo print for one millionth of the price?
CobrastanJorji 5y ago
The average person is (perhaps unfortunately) not the judge of art. Duchamp signed a urinal and stuck it in a museum over a hundred years ago, and the average person certainly didn't consider that art, and today the stupid thing is absolutely in art history textbooks with Michelangelo. The praise is different, to be sure. Michelangelo's work is a achievement, technically, historically, and artistically. Scrawling "my kid could do this" in marker and hanging it in a museum isn't trying for any of that, but it does provoke thought and emotion and discussion, and that's what it's trying successfully to do. The artist does not expect anyone to say "wow, such amazing technical talent, they must have studied calligraphy for years, they are surely Michelangelo reborn." Is it great art? Well, I'm not an art critic, I dunno, but if I saw it in a museum it'd probably make me think and feel more than some random landscape.
- biztos 5y ago
  > signed a urinal and stuck it in a museum ...sort-of, but not really, but sure it's in museums now. More than one! However, this would have been the smallest of art-historical footnotes had Duchamp not then gone on to do the rest of the things he did, and we put it in the art history textbooks because of its (minor) place in one of the most ground-breaking modern artists' development and career. It's worth remembering that Michelangelo was also breaking a lot of rules, and was something of a rebel within the context of his time. His talent also developed within a context -- the same amazing guy, born 400 years earlier or later, would have been making a very different kind of art.

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

klyrs 5y ago

Last time I went to MOMA, there was a huge composition that looked like an all-black canvas. Didn't look out of place. But when you get closer, find that it's covered in a thick layer of dead flies. It was a hoot. Take or leave the composition itself; the biggest fun was in watching other patrons' reaction to the piece. When I buy art, it's usually from folks who live on the street, not from galleries. edit: found it https://www.damienhirst.com/texts1/series/fly https://www.damienhirst.com/texts1/series/fly

NautilusWave 5y ago
What a ride from "I could do that!" to "Why would anyone do that!?"

thrwyoilarticle 5y ago

It's unfair not to mention how much some historic art sucks. I went to the Tate Britain and a large section of the historic works were 'aristocrat pays someone to paint his family very flatteringly but with obvious lighting and perspective flaws'. If you take a step back and imagine a celebrity today commissioning the same kind of artwork, it becomes painfully obvious how egotistical and unworthy of praise these works are. See also: displaying unfinished sketches. Nice for a collector but let's not pretend there's any artistic value in it.

tomcam 5y ago
IMHO unfinished sketches by great artists can be amazing little stories unto themselves. They can give you insight into the creation process of the artist, which fascinates me. And sometimes they are even more fresh and dynamic than the finished work.
beambot 5y ago
I once rode in an original Model T. Ride was horrible: super slow, very uncomfortable, and the handling was ghastly. But clearly we don't judge "ancient" developments exclusively by modern standards... Artwork of old was commissioned and preserved by the wealthy. All of the old works are rare (relatively), fairly impressive for the time, and some are true masterpieces.
dylan604 5y ago
It depends on your view point. A lot of art is critized for the artist's abilities and techniques to create the art and much less for the subject matter. The David could have been any random dude, but it is the ability of accurately recreating that randome dude in stone that makes it impressive. Some of the painted pieces that are extremely large and take up an entire museum wall are impressive just for the shear accomplisment. Yes, it helps that it looks so real as well. >See also: displaying unfinished sketches. Nice for a collector but let's not pretend there's any artistic value in it. If you imagine those sketches being underneath the painting and realizing that those sketches were how the artist worked on creating the actual piece is interesting in the same way watching behind-the-scenes videos on how a movie was made are interesting--to those that are interested in the first place. Similar to Show HN articles on some use of fad language to redo something else already in existence. If you have no interest in that language or the thing being made, they aren't interesting.

Xylakant 5y ago

The most memorable art exhibitions for me are modern. There's a lot of trash, but one particularly memorable piece is (or was, it's been a while) hanging right on top of the exit door of the Berlinische Galerie. It's just a unpretentious ticker that scrolls a single sentence in red dots: "Do you feel better now?". True, anyone could have done that. But the placement, the simplicity, the style resonated with me in that moment so that I remember that ticker better than Mona Lisa in Paris.

88840-8855 5y ago
Yup, same for me. It was a TV in a room with a video on a loop displaying a woman in a mirror who was ripping our her hair and repeating "art must be beautiful". First thought it was dumb, but then i caught myself thinking about it. This is 4 years ago now and I still remember it, while the Rembrandts and Monets have never provoked any feeling or thought in me.
elisbce 5y ago
You are confused of being memorable with being artistic or valuable. I could scare you with a big TV screen showing dead bodies, and that would be the most memorable thing you see that entire month.
- Xylakant 5y ago
  I think you’re misreading what I’m saying. I’m not saying that this is art because it’s memorable. I’m saying that this is memorable to me because it’s a piece of art that resonated with me in a special way, like only few other pieces of art did. Whether it’s truly art or just a clever trick is certainly up for debate and bigger minds than mine failed at finding objective criteria, but at least the curators of the museum considered it art or they wouldn’t exhibit it.

m_ke 5y ago

My worst date ever was a trip to MOMA, I had to go to a museum as an assignment for an art history class. The girl must have thought I was a weirdo for taking her there and we pretty much stopped talking after that night.

dylan604 5y ago
I mean, yeah. Context my friend. If you go on a date, it should be for the shared experience of whatever you're doing. Taking someone with you while you do homework is not that. It's no different than bringing a date to work to watch you work. Few dates will actually appreciate that experience.

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

user-the-name 5y ago

So this either says something about the entire field of modern art and the huge number of artists creating it. Or it says something about you.

dan_quixote 5y ago

Is it not just a case of survivorship bias? I'd expect that the historical stuff in museums is carefully (not randomly) selected. There were probably all kinds of crap art from the same era that simply got trashed.

panda888888 5y ago

But modern art is funny! There's a difference between art and craft. If you prefer craft, that's fine. At least in my book, modern art isn't about craft. It's about making you think. Sometimes it's stupid, overdone, plays into tropes too much, etc., but usually it invokes an emotion. For example, consider Banksy's painting that shredded itself. That's hilarious! The people who accidentally left a pineapple in a museum, only to return later and find that it had been covered with a glass case? That's equally funny. And in this instance, props to the artist for deciding to take the money and run. It fits the title of their work.

littlestymaar 5y ago

I actually like this kind of art, I find it funny and entertaining. It's like real-life 9gag or reddit shitposting. What I don't like though, is that those shitposters get paid hundreds of thousand dollars, or even million, often in public money (or “charity” money which is a way to avoid taxes and is eventually public money), because they have a network (it's not even their “name” that matters because practically no-one know them in the public, they just happen to know the right persons).