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I like art. I don't like this work, but that should be ok. It should be ok to not like stuff. I've spent a fair bit of time in art galleries. I enjoy it. I don

I like art. I don't like this work, but that should be ok. It should be ok to not like stuff. I've spent a fair bit of time in art galleries. I enjoy it. I don't enjoy the art snobbery though. I don't know why people gaze endlessly into paintings and try to discern the meaning or whatever. It's not that deep. I don't understand the hype around the Mona Lisa. I don't understand why people stand in line for hours and then crowd around this one — in my opinion — bland painting to snap that shot and check it off their list that they've seen that one piece. The Centre Pompidou is just down the road and it's full of way more interesting stuff! My father is an artist, and any time his work is featured in a gallery he is asked to describe the meaning, the inspiration, the message, and countless other pretentious questions intended to draw in a totally unnecessary air of sophistication. His response is the same every time. "I don't know. I see shit and I paint it." I'm massively into wine. Similarly, I find wine snobbery frustrating. I have enjoyed the world's best wines. From Ukraine, from Georgia, from Moldova, Italy, France… But the people who clutch their pearls when you pair a dry red with your grilled salmon? Fuck those people especially. What's beautiful about art, and wine, and music, is that there's an entire universe of it. There's something for everybody. And it's definitely ok to not like some of it.

christkv 4y ago
Mona Lisa only got famous because it was stolen and then recovered. Before that nobody cared
robofanatic 4y ago
> people who clutch their pearls when you pair a dry red with your grilled salmon? Fuck those people especially. Bang on! I also hate the people who lecture on how to hold a wine glass.
- lopatin 4y ago
  What is the stigma about pairing dry red wine with salmon?
  - number6 4y ago
    Ohh you wouldn't understand... /s
  - ethbr0 4y ago
    Typically white wine is paired with fish, which is very lean and delicate of flavor. (Caveat: salmon, swordfish, tuna, etc. are somewhat oddballs due to their unique flavor profiles) Some would say a dry red wine with grilled salmon is like highlighting with a black sharpie. But, as parent said, if those are flavors you like... it's your tongue you're trying to please, mate! Same reason I gave people zero pushback at ice in wine at weddings. It's 90+ F (32+ C) outside! Do what makes you most happy.
  - FredPret 4y ago
    White meat - white wine, red meat - red wine… says the rule
  - krisoft 4y ago
    Small picture is that white wines are supposed to pair up better with fish, and chicken while red wines go with red meats. The big picture is that this is a shibboleth[1]. Humans, or some humans, seems to delight in finding ways to define the in-group and the out-group. Signs marking you as an outsider can be anything. Where i have grown up wearing the wrong kind of shoelaces in your boots meant that you are not a “real” rocker but a wannabe. Listening to the “wrong” bands, or listening to the right bands “wrong” can be a similar signifyer. Or wearing socks with your sandal, or asking for ketchup in a high end italian pizza place, or eating pineappe on your pizza. They all signal that you don’t belong to some group because you don’t behave according to some arbitrary norms the group made up for this very purpose. 1: funnily the word itself acts as one. There is of course the biblical story where soldiers where able to tell undercover enemies apart from the general population based on how they pronounced the word shibolleth. But also the fact that someone knows this story can signify that someone is “cultured”, or at least classically read or whatever. (Or as is the case with me had the pleasure of integrating with the authentication system of the same name.)
    - bolasanibk 4y ago
- jrm4 4y ago
  That one is especially funny because (like a lot of stuff) the practical sprawled out into the weird and pretentious. Hand makes heat, so heat close to liquid will change the temperature a tiny bit, maybe. You can hold it accordingly, but also, probably doesn't matter if you're drinking relatively quickly.
- frutiger 4y ago
  There’s a reason a wine glass has a stem, after all. But more seriously, the main reason people don’t hold a glass by the stem is because they are used to receiving too heavy a pour, and it becomes unstable to hold by the stem.
  - morelisp 4y ago
    Also most wine (at least in homes, bars, and casual parties) is served far too cold today anyway.
- innocentoldguy 4y ago
  I prefer my wine in a mug.
- amelius 4y ago
  https://www.realclearscience.com/blog/2014/08/the_most_infamous_study_on_wine_tasting.html https://www.realclearscience.com/blog/2014/08/the_most_infam... > The Legendary Study That Embarrassed Wine Experts Across the Globe > In a sneaky study, Brochet dyed a white wine red and gave it to 54 oenology (wine science) students. The supposedly expert panel overwhelmingly described the beverage like they would a red wine. They were completely fooled.
api 4y ago
I call the phenomenon you describe "aaaaaaahht." It's all about status posturing and has nothing to do with the art or enjoyment of it. Fine wine is just booze for rich people.
- PaulDavisThe1st 4y ago
  I call it "art with a capital F"
idontwantthis 4y ago
When I went I didn’t wait hours just to see the Mona Lisa. I waited hours to get into the Louvre to see everything. Mona Lisa wasn’t hard to see.
dreamcompiler 4y ago
> The Centre Pompidou is just down the road and it's full of way more interesting stuff! So much this. Don't go to Paris without visiting the Pompidou. Allocate a day because it's huge. But it's also uncrowded so you can wander peacefully and get up close to some amazing art.
- todd8 4y ago
  I like the impressionists so Musée d'Orsay is another great choice.
namdnay 4y ago
> But the people who clutch their pearls when you pair a dry red with your grilled salmon I feel there are far more people complaining about wine snobbery than there are actual wine snobs
- t6jvcereio 4y ago
  Bingo. One way memes propagate is for one faction to claim that the other faction is saying crazy things. People love getting outraged.
  - sennight 4y ago
    Ugh, there isn't anything adversarial about memes - and to say otherwise is to accidentally admit a lot more than you likely intended. They propagate for the same reason that stereotypes do: they're useful.
    - t6jvcereio 4y ago
      "admit"? What am I admitting?
      - sennight 4y ago
        That your adversarial framing, at the very least, is aligned with some pretty humorless technocrats who find themselves so thoroughly savaged by ridiculing laughter that they're openly fantasizing about going nuclear with the censorship. https://home-affairs.ec.europa.eu/networks/radicalisation-awareness-network-ran/publications/far-right-extremists-use-humour-2021_en https://home-affairs.ec.europa.eu/networks/radicalisation-aw... It isn't difficult to guess at what other defining characteristics you posses once that is established.
        t6jvcereio 4y ago
        I have no idea what you're talking about, but sounds quite dull. Technocrats? You sound like a lunatic.
noSyncCloud 4y ago
> I don't like this work Have you been out to Nevada to see this work?
widjit 4y ago
- dang 4y ago
  Please don't post in the flamewar style to HN. We ban accounts that do that. Please especially don't cross into personal attack. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html Edit: you've unfortunately been posting flamebait and/or unsubstantive comments repeatedly. That's not ok. Would you please review the rules and stick to them from now on so we don't have to ban you?
- boc 4y ago
  Thank you for more eloquently writing the reply I wanted to write. Even the backlash against art that strays from mere visual sugar isn’t new in our history. This criticism is so stale that it already ran a cycle in the 30s and ended with destroyed art, imprisonments, and the return of neoclassical art under state supervision. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Degenerate_Art_exhibition https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Degenerate_Art_exhibition
- yakshaving_jgt 4y ago
  Does being this rude normally work well for you in society? > What you've written, though, is a very, very lazy critique of art appreciation. No it isn't, because I haven't written a critique at all. I shared a fairly simple opinion broadly in response to some people's reactions of some other people's negative reactions to this work. > You make a real juvenile start just calling it "snobbery," The ad hominem here is inappropriate. > I'm sure Centre Pompidou is objectively "way more interesting" than the Louvre, why does the Louvre even exist? Thanks for clearing that up. Objectively? How have you read a position of objectivity into my comment? This is a discussion about art, which is inherently subjective. > What, did you go to Paris once and have a bad time? I love Paris. I haven't the slightest clue where you got this idea. > So: why should we--why should anyone--care about your half-arsed opinion? ... and why should I respond? Good question. Why did you respond? > therefore people who do understand that thing are, what, somehow insulting you? No. I have neither said nor implied that. You should try interpreting other people's comments more charitably in future. > Just shut up. Let people appreciate things and shut up. These words — and most of your words that precede them — are entirely inappropriate for this forum. If you would like to attack me personally, I'd be happy to share my personal phone number with you and you can say all of this to my face.
slim 4y ago
dry red with your grilled salmon man I can't taste with your taste buds, but most red wine don't go well with fish. It's not an acquired taste, you know it the first time you pair a good wine with meat. Or a good champagne with smoked salmon. It's like putting salt on food for the first time of your life, it's another level of deliciousness. Of course you can drink whatever liquid with whatever food and like it. But it's not pure snobbery, it's a real thing.
- PaulDavisThe1st 4y ago
  > It's like putting salt on food for the first time of your life, it's another level of deliciousness. Baby humans dislike salt. Most young children dislike salt. The "deliciousness" is mostly an acquired taste, though there may be some physiological-need-driven component to it under unusual circumstances.
  - ska 4y ago
    Isn’t this because children don’t taste bitter the same way adults do? Most of what salt does for us is reduce the perception of bitter, iirc (for taste, obviously it does other things). That would suggest it is physiological , not acquired.
- dllthomas 4y ago
  The guidance to prefer white wine with fish isn't a hard and fast rule, but a general suggestion if you don't know enough to make a more considered choice. Grilled salmon in particular has a richness and smokiness that pairs very well with certain reds.
starkd 4y ago
It's about status. It motivates a good portion of the population. When they gaze into that painting, they appear more intelligent, more discerning, more uniquely human. Not casting judgment on them, because we all do it in different ways.
naasking 4y ago
> I don't understand the hype around the Mona Lisa. Because the Mona Lisa is not just a piece of art, but a piece of history that had a wide ranging influence on art, and it was painted by one of the greatest artists who ever lived, who was also a polymath and excelled in engineering and science. There are also some unsolved mysteries around it. If all you see when looking at the Mona Lisa is flourishes of paint, then maybe you need to consider wider contexts. Art is valuable because it engages humanity, emotionally, socially, intellectually, and there's no doubt that the Mona Lisa has created a lot of debate and study. Maybe you don't like it by itself, but you should still appreciate the wider context.
- bdefore 4y ago
  A powerful engagement and influence was left by MySpace, but it's not put up in protective glass for ticketed visitors to take snapshots of. I appreciate the nuance of its impact on the world, but... we've moved on.
  - naasking 4y ago
    > A powerful engagement and influence was left by MySpace, but it's not put up in protective glass for ticketed visitors to take snapshots of Maybe we should have. I'm sure a MySpace archive would have significant anthropological value a century from now. I don't really find this argument convincing to be honest. I mean, you're basically arguing that we should tear down Ancient Greek and Roman buildings, tear down the Eiffel tower, and so on, "because we've moved on".
    - choko 4y ago
      No one suggested destroying the Mona Lisa or other artifacts. The comment was regarding the hype surrounding the Mona Lisa hundreds of years later.
zorked 4y ago
Mona Lisa isn't particularly significant in the history of art. It is now a very important piece of pop culture.
barrysteve 4y ago
Art is that deep, and moreso in some areas than others. Star Wars and centuries of faith based paintings have rich meaning imbued into the end product. All the star wars clones that dropped the meaningful parts didn't succeed. There's a whole class of landscape and still life paintings which have mundane subjects that express geometry in deep, layered technique. The clues in how it was constructed and are there if you look for them. The appreciation of which can change a painting you thought was 10% interesting on first glance into 110% interesting with a deeper insight. I agree though, painting what you see is a great way to suceed now.
swat535 4y ago
On of the reasons we like art, is that it gives humans a window to transcendence. Admittingly, not all art forms will have this effect on everyone but a specific painting, or sculpture or a melody might suddenly give you a tiny glimpse of this. Perhaps it was the way the colors melded together, or the symmetry in the picture or an obnoxious pattern that garbed your imagination; this is why people travel thousands of miles across the world to visit galleries, touristic sights and music events. Ever noticed how your wall looks completely dry and uninteresting until you hang a painting or a beautiful image on it? Try removing music, images, paintings and movies from your existence and see if you can bear it for more than a few seconds. Without art, life is mundane because art is the outpouring of human imagination.

christkv 4y ago

Mona Lisa only got famous because it was stolen and then recovered. Before that nobody cared

robofanatic 4y ago

> people who clutch their pearls when you pair a dry red with your grilled salmon? Fuck those people especially. Bang on! I also hate the people who lecture on how to hold a wine glass.

lopatin 4y ago
What is the stigma about pairing dry red wine with salmon?
- number6 4y ago
  Ohh you wouldn't understand... /s
- ethbr0 4y ago
  Typically white wine is paired with fish, which is very lean and delicate of flavor. (Caveat: salmon, swordfish, tuna, etc. are somewhat oddballs due to their unique flavor profiles) Some would say a dry red wine with grilled salmon is like highlighting with a black sharpie. But, as parent said, if those are flavors you like... it's your tongue you're trying to please, mate! Same reason I gave people zero pushback at ice in wine at weddings. It's 90+ F (32+ C) outside! Do what makes you most happy.
- FredPret 4y ago
  White meat - white wine, red meat - red wine… says the rule
- krisoft 4y ago
  Small picture is that white wines are supposed to pair up better with fish, and chicken while red wines go with red meats. The big picture is that this is a shibboleth[1]. Humans, or some humans, seems to delight in finding ways to define the in-group and the out-group. Signs marking you as an outsider can be anything. Where i have grown up wearing the wrong kind of shoelaces in your boots meant that you are not a “real” rocker but a wannabe. Listening to the “wrong” bands, or listening to the right bands “wrong” can be a similar signifyer. Or wearing socks with your sandal, or asking for ketchup in a high end italian pizza place, or eating pineappe on your pizza. They all signal that you don’t belong to some group because you don’t behave according to some arbitrary norms the group made up for this very purpose. 1: funnily the word itself acts as one. There is of course the biblical story where soldiers where able to tell undercover enemies apart from the general population based on how they pronounced the word shibolleth. But also the fact that someone knows this story can signify that someone is “cultured”, or at least classically read or whatever. (Or as is the case with me had the pleasure of integrating with the authentication system of the same name.)
  - bolasanibk 4y ago
jrm4 4y ago
That one is especially funny because (like a lot of stuff) the practical sprawled out into the weird and pretentious. Hand makes heat, so heat close to liquid will change the temperature a tiny bit, maybe. You can hold it accordingly, but also, probably doesn't matter if you're drinking relatively quickly.
frutiger 4y ago
There’s a reason a wine glass has a stem, after all. But more seriously, the main reason people don’t hold a glass by the stem is because they are used to receiving too heavy a pour, and it becomes unstable to hold by the stem.
- morelisp 4y ago
  Also most wine (at least in homes, bars, and casual parties) is served far too cold today anyway.
innocentoldguy 4y ago
I prefer my wine in a mug.
amelius 4y ago
https://www.realclearscience.com/blog/2014/08/the_most_infamous_study_on_wine_tasting.html https://www.realclearscience.com/blog/2014/08/the_most_infam... > The Legendary Study That Embarrassed Wine Experts Across the Globe > In a sneaky study, Brochet dyed a white wine red and gave it to 54 oenology (wine science) students. The supposedly expert panel overwhelmingly described the beverage like they would a red wine. They were completely fooled.

api 4y ago

I call the phenomenon you describe "aaaaaaahht." It's all about status posturing and has nothing to do with the art or enjoyment of it. Fine wine is just booze for rich people.

PaulDavisThe1st 4y ago
I call it "art with a capital F"

idontwantthis 4y ago

When I went I didn’t wait hours just to see the Mona Lisa. I waited hours to get into the Louvre to see everything. Mona Lisa wasn’t hard to see.

dreamcompiler 4y ago

> The Centre Pompidou is just down the road and it's full of way more interesting stuff! So much this. Don't go to Paris without visiting the Pompidou. Allocate a day because it's huge. But it's also uncrowded so you can wander peacefully and get up close to some amazing art.

todd8 4y ago
I like the impressionists so Musée d'Orsay is another great choice.

namdnay 4y ago

> But the people who clutch their pearls when you pair a dry red with your grilled salmon I feel there are far more people complaining about wine snobbery than there are actual wine snobs

t6jvcereio 4y ago
Bingo. One way memes propagate is for one faction to claim that the other faction is saying crazy things. People love getting outraged.
- sennight 4y ago
  Ugh, there isn't anything adversarial about memes - and to say otherwise is to accidentally admit a lot more than you likely intended. They propagate for the same reason that stereotypes do: they're useful.
  - t6jvcereio 4y ago
    "admit"? What am I admitting?
    - sennight 4y ago
      That your adversarial framing, at the very least, is aligned with some pretty humorless technocrats who find themselves so thoroughly savaged by ridiculing laughter that they're openly fantasizing about going nuclear with the censorship. https://home-affairs.ec.europa.eu/networks/radicalisation-awareness-network-ran/publications/far-right-extremists-use-humour-2021_en https://home-affairs.ec.europa.eu/networks/radicalisation-aw... It isn't difficult to guess at what other defining characteristics you posses once that is established.
      - t6jvcereio 4y ago
        I have no idea what you're talking about, but sounds quite dull. Technocrats? You sound like a lunatic.

noSyncCloud 4y ago

> I don't like this work Have you been out to Nevada to see this work?

widjit 4y ago

dang 4y ago
Please don't post in the flamewar style to HN. We ban accounts that do that. Please especially don't cross into personal attack. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html Edit: you've unfortunately been posting flamebait and/or unsubstantive comments repeatedly. That's not ok. Would you please review the rules and stick to them from now on so we don't have to ban you?
boc 4y ago
Thank you for more eloquently writing the reply I wanted to write. Even the backlash against art that strays from mere visual sugar isn’t new in our history. This criticism is so stale that it already ran a cycle in the 30s and ended with destroyed art, imprisonments, and the return of neoclassical art under state supervision. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Degenerate_Art_exhibition https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Degenerate_Art_exhibition
yakshaving_jgt 4y ago
Does being this rude normally work well for you in society? > What you've written, though, is a very, very lazy critique of art appreciation. No it isn't, because I haven't written a critique at all. I shared a fairly simple opinion broadly in response to some people's reactions of some other people's negative reactions to this work. > You make a real juvenile start just calling it "snobbery," The ad hominem here is inappropriate. > I'm sure Centre Pompidou is objectively "way more interesting" than the Louvre, why does the Louvre even exist? Thanks for clearing that up. Objectively? How have you read a position of objectivity into my comment? This is a discussion about art, which is inherently subjective. > What, did you go to Paris once and have a bad time? I love Paris. I haven't the slightest clue where you got this idea. > So: why should we--why should anyone--care about your half-arsed opinion? ... and why should I respond? Good question. Why did you respond? > therefore people who do understand that thing are, what, somehow insulting you? No. I have neither said nor implied that. You should try interpreting other people's comments more charitably in future. > Just shut up. Let people appreciate things and shut up. These words — and most of your words that precede them — are entirely inappropriate for this forum. If you would like to attack me personally, I'd be happy to share my personal phone number with you and you can say all of this to my face.

slim 4y ago

dry red with your grilled salmon man I can't taste with your taste buds, but most red wine don't go well with fish. It's not an acquired taste, you know it the first time you pair a good wine with meat. Or a good champagne with smoked salmon. It's like putting salt on food for the first time of your life, it's another level of deliciousness. Of course you can drink whatever liquid with whatever food and like it. But it's not pure snobbery, it's a real thing.

PaulDavisThe1st 4y ago
> It's like putting salt on food for the first time of your life, it's another level of deliciousness. Baby humans dislike salt. Most young children dislike salt. The "deliciousness" is mostly an acquired taste, though there may be some physiological-need-driven component to it under unusual circumstances.
- ska 4y ago
  Isn’t this because children don’t taste bitter the same way adults do? Most of what salt does for us is reduce the perception of bitter, iirc (for taste, obviously it does other things). That would suggest it is physiological , not acquired.
dllthomas 4y ago
The guidance to prefer white wine with fish isn't a hard and fast rule, but a general suggestion if you don't know enough to make a more considered choice. Grilled salmon in particular has a richness and smokiness that pairs very well with certain reds.

starkd 4y ago

It's about status. It motivates a good portion of the population. When they gaze into that painting, they appear more intelligent, more discerning, more uniquely human. Not casting judgment on them, because we all do it in different ways.

naasking 4y ago

> I don't understand the hype around the Mona Lisa. Because the Mona Lisa is not just a piece of art, but a piece of history that had a wide ranging influence on art, and it was painted by one of the greatest artists who ever lived, who was also a polymath and excelled in engineering and science. There are also some unsolved mysteries around it. If all you see when looking at the Mona Lisa is flourishes of paint, then maybe you need to consider wider contexts. Art is valuable because it engages humanity, emotionally, socially, intellectually, and there's no doubt that the Mona Lisa has created a lot of debate and study. Maybe you don't like it by itself, but you should still appreciate the wider context.

bdefore 4y ago
A powerful engagement and influence was left by MySpace, but it's not put up in protective glass for ticketed visitors to take snapshots of. I appreciate the nuance of its impact on the world, but... we've moved on.
- naasking 4y ago
  > A powerful engagement and influence was left by MySpace, but it's not put up in protective glass for ticketed visitors to take snapshots of Maybe we should have. I'm sure a MySpace archive would have significant anthropological value a century from now. I don't really find this argument convincing to be honest. I mean, you're basically arguing that we should tear down Ancient Greek and Roman buildings, tear down the Eiffel tower, and so on, "because we've moved on".
  - choko 4y ago
    No one suggested destroying the Mona Lisa or other artifacts. The comment was regarding the hype surrounding the Mona Lisa hundreds of years later.

zorked 4y ago

Mona Lisa isn't particularly significant in the history of art. It is now a very important piece of pop culture.

barrysteve 4y ago

Art is that deep, and moreso in some areas than others. Star Wars and centuries of faith based paintings have rich meaning imbued into the end product. All the star wars clones that dropped the meaningful parts didn't succeed. There's a whole class of landscape and still life paintings which have mundane subjects that express geometry in deep, layered technique. The clues in how it was constructed and are there if you look for them. The appreciation of which can change a painting you thought was 10% interesting on first glance into 110% interesting with a deeper insight. I agree though, painting what you see is a great way to suceed now.

swat535 4y ago

On of the reasons we like art, is that it gives humans a window to transcendence. Admittingly, not all art forms will have this effect on everyone but a specific painting, or sculpture or a melody might suddenly give you a tiny glimpse of this. Perhaps it was the way the colors melded together, or the symmetry in the picture or an obnoxious pattern that garbed your imagination; this is why people travel thousands of miles across the world to visit galleries, touristic sights and music events. Ever noticed how your wall looks completely dry and uninteresting until you hang a painting or a beautiful image on it? Try removing music, images, paintings and movies from your existence and see if you can bear it for more than a few seconds. Without art, life is mundane because art is the outpouring of human imagination.