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To speak meaningfully about art
- Animats 4y agoA job soon to be taken over by successors to GPT-3. Soon, the chattering classes will be automated out of jobs.
- whateveracct 4y agoThis is a very HN/SV take right here. Most technologists are philistines (hence the obsession with art automation).
- Animats 4y ago> Most technologies are philistines Did you mean "Most technologists are Philistines"?
- whateveracct 4y agoApparently technology (my phone) is too. Thanks :)
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- ch4s3 4y agoI mean I think I care about books and interesting films and things...
- jrm4 4y agoCoincidentally, it definitely feels like something GPT-ish wrote this piece.
- Animats 4y agoGPT-3 has a style. It's coherent blithering somewhat unconnected to the real world. This, not coincidentally, is the same style popular with bloggers, pundits, and people who have the need to create text without having much to say. GPT-3, unanchored to any underlying world model, shows this style in its purest form. After you've read enough GPT-3 output, unanchored blithering becomes painfully obvious. The parent article does look like that. This is a repost, by the way. The same article was posted on HN two weeks ago.[1] [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32235100 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32235100
- oldstrangers 4y agoTo speak meaningfully about art you only need to expand your understanding of what constitutes art. "Thoughtful" conversations on art have nothing to do with brush strokes or color palettes or even taste. Qualifying art as "good" or "bad" is a subjective measure you probably should've left in middle school. And realistically, you'll never really know what is "good" or "bad" art without years of exposure to the ideas and thoughts that go into the work.
- abrokenpipe 4y agoI don't agree, and I suppose this is just my opinion but I just tend to dislike the idea that art is in the eye of the beholder. I think we've extended the use of the word art too far. In my opinion art is really just paintings and sculptures. Good art involves a lot of skill, eg: years of practice, attention to detail, sophisticated processes, careful choice of mediums, tasteful composition, and choice of subject matter. While a lot of this stuff is opinionated there are definitely rules to a lot of these things. There are essentially guidelines that have log existed for measuring an artists ability to capture color, shapes, light, and movement. Even with more modern styles like van Gogh and Monet these rules applied. At some point we threw this out the window with the post modern movement and said art can be anything, becoming more focused on the cleverness and profound underlying message that this new "art" contained rather than the skill, dedication, and aesthetics that went into it.
- User23 4y agoI remember the first time I walked into a gallery and saw that someone had stenciled "FUCK" on the wall and the docent was smugly explaining about how artistically creative it was. Nah, sometimes a "FUCK" is just a "FUCK." So-called modern art is, at best, a money laundering scheme, and other applications go downhill from there. That's not to say there aren't tons of gifted and talented artists making art today, they just aren't who you're going to see in the galleries.
- tayo42 4y agoModern art includes a bunch of amazing artists like Picasso
- labrador 4y agoI've recently become fascinated with Man Ray and Robert Rauschenberg and I don't know why. I have no intention of becoming an expert on art so I am not bothering to look up the theory behind their mixed media creations. Even if they had one, I'm not sure it would interest me. I'm more interested in what my reaction to art says about me. Art for me is a tool for self-discovery. What the artist or art critic says about the work might be interesting, but mostly irrelevant to me.
- xcambar 4y agoA perfectly sane reaction to art. Most people are not aware there can be a difference between "art I love" and "masterpieces of Art History". You do not have to appreciate La Joconda or the Last Supper,just as you might like the art from your neighbor. Both are fine.
- labrador 4y agoI came up with this after watching several documentaries about Andy Warhol. In one, his brother says that he became very ill when he was 9 or 10. His mother took loving care of him and nursed him back to health. She would daily feed him Campbell's soup from the familiar red and white labeled can. That's when I found my answer: Art is personal. What the artist hopes for is that the viewer will have a similar reaction and appreciate it the way the artist does. He succeeded with his Campbell soup can series to say the least.
- fleddr 4y ago"But in conversation you will be unable to speak with others who do not share your tastes, you will be unable to defend these tastes beyond asserting that you like what you like, and you will be unable to understand the weakness in what you like because what you like is good, and what you do not like is not good, and that is the totality of your understanding of art." The art world is already so off-putting, nice how the above tone of conversation doubles down on it. Can hardly get any more snobby. Modern art is a scam. It's ugly low skill garbage where winners are selected by jury, a type of incest. In similar vain, all our buildings and infra are butt ugly. How pathetic is that when archeologists dig up artifacts once belonging to the oldest of civilizations, their art is stunning and way ahead of us. We've artistically devolved, effectively to a state of no art. Which we then mask with bullshit like "art can't be defined", "it's in the eye of the beholder".
- pizzathyme 4y agoThis framework and article don’t just apply to traditional painting art. This applies to any art: video games, movies, TV shows, books, even web design. Discussion of all of these things would be elevated if people can separate what is good and bad from their own preferences. Edit: typo
- yladiz 4y agoIt's really impossible to separate good and bad are from your own subjective opinion, as there is no true objective criteria that you can judge art by. There are criteria that can be chosen -- for example, how did the artist apply light to their painting -- but these criteria 1. depend on the specific kind of art (in the same vain, not all paintings utilize light in the same way or for the same purpose) and 2. are inherently subjective because they are being chosen by a subjective being. The closest we can maybe come to being able to objectively judging art is as a collective/society saying that some art is good, and that the opinion holds true over time.
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- vonnik 4y agoThis essay would have been 10x better if the author had included at least one concrete example of every category they were attempting to use in their framework; eg > Art that is good and to your taste > Art that is bad and to your taste > Art that is good and not to your taste > Art that is bad and not to your taste. Just tell me what you mean so that I can figure out whether I agree or not, please!
- 4lp 4y agoI find these categories to be self explanatory. How would an example help you here?
- vonnik 4y agoAs good writers expand their audience, they slowly narrow the things they consider self-explanatory, because the wider your audience, the fewer shared understandings they all have. The art of explanation, and communication, is finding enlightening ways to make sure your audience understands your frame, even if some will find it repetitive, while others to stretch to grasp it.
- thfuran 4y agoI don't think examples would be repetitive, I think they'd be counterproductive because the tastes of the audience are varied and that would confound the point of the categorization. To the extent that the examples have explanatory power, they'd be explaining the author's taste in art, which isn't relevant.
- bearmode 4y agoI'm honestly not sure what examples you're expecting here, it seems pretty clear?
- scyzoryk_xyz 4y agoDude has 7 followers and is writing under “Illuminati Ganga Agent” nom de plume. Plenty people out there applying academic rigor and discipline to discourse on this subject. This is not that.
- stagas 4y agoI believe there is a category error when we try to say anything about art as art is a mode of being or a mode of experience which cannot be put into words, the same way we can't talk about what the color red looks like or explain what the sea or the sky look like. They can only be experienced. Now, when I see someone talking about "art", there is probably a hidden word next to it they are referring to. It could be art "industry" or art "people" or art "culture" but never art in itself. Even what i'm saying now is not about art, i'm really talking about art "discourse" and art "experience". But they're still away from the thing in itself which cannot be put into words. You just feel it and when it's felt, you can call that art and noone has to agree with you.
- vagabund 4y agoThis essay [1] by Peter Schjeldahl, originally given as a lecture to the School of Visual Arts in NY, gives, in my opinion, a much more poignant treatment of the subject of this blogpost. [1] https://www.frieze.com/article/ourselves-and-our-origins-subjects-art https://www.frieze.com/article/ourselves-and-our-origins-sub...