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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 piece

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.
- me_me_me 5y ago
  But at some stage the artist does random ordinary thing and call it an art. butter with knives in it slowly melting away - art bucket full of trash - art white canvas - art Sure, you get to analyse it, ponder its setting. But to me that is no different than pondering meaning of my own bucket of trash. I don't get modern art. But the older I get the more I read ridiculous stories about it and the amount of financial scams going on behind the scenes, and the more it feels like 'the king is naked'. Just bunch of pretentious people with some clout doing low effort word plays or performances for people who pretend to get it to fit in, propped up by speculation and tax avoidance money .
- silicon2401 5y ago
  > The average person is (perhaps unfortunately) not the judge of art. I disagree. This, to me, is equivalent to being a linguistic prescriptivist. If art is subjective, then art academics and modern artists hold no exclusive claim to judging art. If 99% of people look at modern art and consider it a joke, then that means within their subjective interpretation of what art is, they're correct. It's not like math where you can say 1 doesn't equal 2. And if you go out of your way to define art so that you can justify modern art and exclude normal people, then you're just playing semantics and defining something that the average person never cared about in the first place.

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.
me_me_me 5y ago
But at some stage the artist does random ordinary thing and call it an art. butter with knives in it slowly melting away - art bucket full of trash - art white canvas - art Sure, you get to analyse it, ponder its setting. But to me that is no different than pondering meaning of my own bucket of trash. I don't get modern art. But the older I get the more I read ridiculous stories about it and the amount of financial scams going on behind the scenes, and the more it feels like 'the king is naked'. Just bunch of pretentious people with some clout doing low effort word plays or performances for people who pretend to get it to fit in, propped up by speculation and tax avoidance money .
silicon2401 5y ago
> The average person is (perhaps unfortunately) not the judge of art. I disagree. This, to me, is equivalent to being a linguistic prescriptivist. If art is subjective, then art academics and modern artists hold no exclusive claim to judging art. If 99% of people look at modern art and consider it a joke, then that means within their subjective interpretation of what art is, they're correct. It's not like math where you can say 1 doesn't equal 2. And if you go out of your way to define art so that you can justify modern art and exclude normal people, then you're just playing semantics and defining something that the average person never cared about in the first place.