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Why did the Beatles get so many bad reviews? Why did Van Gogh die insane and in poverty? Why did Nietzsche sell just a few hundreds copies of his works during

by p-e-w 4y ago

Why did the Beatles get so many bad reviews? Why did Van Gogh die insane and in poverty? Why did Nietzsche sell just a few hundreds copies of his works during his lifetime? Why was Bach forgotten and then suddenly rediscovered a hundred years later? Why are many works that were regarded as masterpieces a century ago out of print today, and nobody reads them anymore? Because any notion of "quality" applied to cultural products is invariably subjective, and indeed more closely resembles (intellectual) fashion than anything else. In the late 23rd century, people may decide that 1980s dance music was actually timeless genius, and the "classics" of 1960s counterculture were boring political drivel. It won't mean anything, just like today's assessment of the Beatles and Van Gogh doesn't mean anything.

zeroonetwothree 4y ago
I agree with your point but I think you confuse things a bit by mixing up commercial and critical success. While there is some correlation, there are many cases of having one but not the other so I don't think we can say that the same factors explain both.
- p-e-w 4y ago
  My point is essentially that "critical success" is meaningless, because critical opinion doesn't actually say anything about the work itself, and will flip back and forth arbitrarily often given a large enough historical timeframe. Commercial success at least implies that at one point, there were large numbers of people who enjoyed the work. But when critics write about a work, they are really writing about themselves, and there is no reason to value what they say beyond its applicability to a very limited temporal and cultural context.
  - sublinear 4y ago
    > there is no reason to value what they say beyond its applicability to a very limited temporal and cultural context Is this not the most valuable thing to know in order to understand the work?
watwut 4y ago
Van Gogh was insane tho and makes doing business hard to impossible. Sever mental health issue do push people into poverty. He also made the most of oil paintings in two years before his death. It is not like he would had stashes of awesome paintings to sell and ability to participate in business. The post death fame was heavily influenced by his life story being clusterfck - but those people were not the ones who had to deal with Goghs seriously disturbin behavior. They were safe, but Goghs contemporaries were not.

by p-e-w 4y ago

zeroonetwothree 4y ago

I agree with your point but I think you confuse things a bit by mixing up commercial and critical success. While there is some correlation, there are many cases of having one but not the other so I don't think we can say that the same factors explain both.

p-e-w 4y ago
My point is essentially that "critical success" is meaningless, because critical opinion doesn't actually say anything about the work itself, and will flip back and forth arbitrarily often given a large enough historical timeframe. Commercial success at least implies that at one point, there were large numbers of people who enjoyed the work. But when critics write about a work, they are really writing about themselves, and there is no reason to value what they say beyond its applicability to a very limited temporal and cultural context.
- sublinear 4y ago
  > there is no reason to value what they say beyond its applicability to a very limited temporal and cultural context Is this not the most valuable thing to know in order to understand the work?

watwut 4y ago

Van Gogh was insane tho and makes doing business hard to impossible. Sever mental health issue do push people into poverty. He also made the most of oil paintings in two years before his death. It is not like he would had stashes of awesome paintings to sell and ability to participate in business. The post death fame was heavily influenced by his life story being clusterfck - but those people were not the ones who had to deal with Goghs seriously disturbin behavior. They were safe, but Goghs contemporaries were not.