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Say Good-Bye to Picasso’s Women of Algiers, Disappearing for $140M
- kenferry 11y ago> there's no doubt in my mind that the prices for all art, masterpieces included but especially contemporary, recent, and new art, are completely out of whack and ridiculously overpriced. I am sorry, but it seems sick to me to see new artists selling art out of their first shows for between $30,000 and $40,000. Something's gotta give. I give this person the benefit of the doubt as having thought about this a lot more than I have, but this surprises me. Why is it bad if new artists are able to make a living?
- bweitzman 11y agoOf course artists should be able to make a living, but spending that much money on unknown and inexperienced artists suggests that the relationship between the monetary value of art and the quality/importance of it is completely out of whack. But it's not as if that's news to anybody.
- trhway 11y ago>spending that much money on unknown and inexperienced artists it is called VC investing in high-tech
- seszett 11y agoWell, maybe this suggests that the relationship between the monetary value of startups and the quality/importance of them is completely out of whack as well.
- optimusclimb 11y agoWhich is exactly why that's a great post.
- paul 11y agoWhat is the correct way to value art?
- cpayne 11y agoThe only answer I can see is - whatever the market is willing to pay. I can't understand the high prices for art, but I can see it for musical instruments [1]. My wife can "hear" a Stradivari. It doesn't make my hearing bad or hers good - it's just different. A violin + played as the Titanic sunk? The story behind the instrument makes it valuable (to me!) As with anything emotional, how do you value the first time you hear your child's giggle, the first time you kissed a lover, the first time someone close to you passed away? For me, articles like this just reaffirm: Am I happy? (right now, in the moment) and if not, what do I need to do to make it so? [1] http://www.cmuse.org/12-most-expensive-violins/ http://www.cmuse.org/12-most-expensive-violins/
- viraptor 11y agoSo why is the artist being known or experienced more important than the quality of the picture? I mean, people will pay crazy amounts for a known name, but if good pieces from newcomers are not expected to be worth much, that's a point where I'd call art prices a sham.
- WalterBright 11y agoI saw a TV show once about a painting that is suspected to be by da Vinci. Various attempts to authenticate it have been made, and so far none have proven it is not a da Vinci. Whether it is or not is a factor of 100 in the amount it is worth. But it's still exactly the same painting either way.
- groby_b 11y agoYour first art show easily represents a year of work. I fail to see how earning $40k for a year of work is "completely out of whack" - unless you were arguing that artists are underpaid?
- deleted 11y ago[deleted]
- solve 11y agoJournalists jealous.
- rquantz 11y agoThat is not it.
- cge 11y ago>Technically speaking, not factoring time on loan to exhibitions, Women of Algiers has only been on public view for the last ten days. What is that supposed to mean? That's essentially saying that, except for a very common method of having art viewable by the public in museums, it wasn't viewable by the public. That seems like a completely pointless observation.
- iaw 11y agoI took it to mean that the author of the article was incapable of researching how frequently the painting was on loan to exhibitions.
- frandroid 11y agoThe point is that works of art by great artists are world heritage artefacts, and shouldn't be held in private hands. Who knows if the new buyer will even loan the painting out?
- aaronbrethorst 11y agoHow would they have ever ended up with that designation unless there was a private market to determine 'proper value,' thereby conferring notability on the artists?
- rquantz 11y agoI hope you're being sarcastic. Therefore I will respond in kind: yes, the only way to determine the value of a work of art is by finding out how much some rich person is willing to pay. That is a very reliable indicator. In case you're not being sarcastic: there are ways that things can be valuable that have nothing to do with capital. Pig.
- dang 11y ago> Pig. Personal attacks are not allowed on Hacker News, even when someone's views appear porcine.
- digikata 11y agoThe discussion of the valuation of art here reminds me of this Planet Money episode http://www.npr.org/blogs/money/2013/10/09/230950901/episode-189-why-a-dead-shark-costs-12-million http://www.npr.org/blogs/money/2013/10/09/230950901/episode-...
- JoeAltmaier 11y agoWay too attached to a bit of paint on paper. It was painted after all, to be sold.
- deleted 11y ago[deleted]
- arfar 11y agoDo you think that art as a commodity is less valuable that "art for arts sake"? Or the fact that an artist (like everyone else in society) needs to get paid to continue to create is a bad thing or cheapens anything they might create?
- tuckerman 11y agoAssuming you are trying to say that artists deserve to get paid for their work, I very much agree. Many people consider themselves to be working in creative professions (many of us on HN do this) and all demand excellent wages for our work. I think a visual artist is deserving of the same!
- JoeAltmaier 11y agoNothing cheap about it at all, any more than an engineer selling their skills. If anything, artists are arrogant in claiming creativity as their prerogative, and assigning it value over anyone else's efforts.
- dogecoinbase 11y agoWay too attached to a bit of paint on paper. Is there a name for the rhetorical device where one tries to devalue something by referring to it in this technically-correct-debasing kind of way? I feel like I'm seeing it more and more often on HN and elsewhere. It's some kind of anti-intellectualism but I feel like it must be more specific.
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- robotresearcher 11y agoThe penultimate line of the article negates the headline. > When I carped about all this art disappearing forever after auction, she said, in a tone that was distinctly silly boy, "A lot of it will be back here next season." Where 'she' is an art expert and employee of the auction house handling the sale.
- lbotos 11y agoRight, but that comment was in jest about the state of Art buying. That's the point of the piece, Art buying is bullshit. Who's buying these pieces? They aren't buying them to add to the greater art narrative but as an investment. Art Critics love to hate the fact that their world couldn't exist without the wealthy supporting as investment. No one buys a 140mm Picasso because that's what it's worth. They buy it because they think they can sell it for more. Hence his tone about it being gone forever and her joking that he knows it will be back.
- robotresearcher 11y agoOK, I didn't get the joke I guess.
- derefr 11y agoI'm going to assume that just taking a high-res scan of the thing and making prints would actually miss something of the original. Maybe there's artistic merit in how the thickened wodges of paint in each brush-stroke glisten as you move around the room; perhaps educational value in the particular refractive indices of the paint in demonstrating how to paint that way. My question is, then: if not a flat 2D scan, what would be enough to capture everything relevant to the structural identity of the work? Could we, say, take a 3D scan of the surface, combine it with a spectrographic analysis of all the relevant oils, mix up some of the same oils in their old styles, and then 3D-print those oils onto canvas to create an exact replica? Would that be enough to alleviate the author's ennui?
- arkem 11y agoJackson Pollock's Alchemy has been subjected to a variety of 3D scans and xrays to try and capture its texture and height. The Guggenheim museum in Venice has a 3d printed monochrome reproduction of it that's pretty impressive. Here's a link to the visualization project: http://vcg.isti.cnr.it/alchemy/ http://vcg.isti.cnr.it/alchemy/
- rodgerd 11y agoFor me, personally, I'd be delighted to have some really good Rembrandt and Goldie forgeries (that is, copies executed in oils), and maybe a few impressionists. The texture of the works is a big part of the experience. But I'd also like the originals to be available as part of our shared cultural history and heritage, rather than locked in a vault to gloat over. That said, the shared culture/history is undermined by the way many galleries and museums behave - my wife is a painter and is moved to fury by the way that sketching and painting is now forbidden by many institutions; the artists being exhibited may well have learned their own trade sitting in a museum copying the revered masters of their own era; that options is denied to modern students.
- derefr 11y agoIndeed, one of the interesting things about a world with "forgery museums" is how much less protected they would need to be. Imagine if the public were actually allowed to touch the (replica) painting. Sounds crazy, doesn't it? If a reproduction was a $30K capital cost for scanning and oil synthesis, followed by a $2K marginal cost for reproduction, though, why not let the public touch it? Just print another one each year. Heck, destroy the reproductions when you would normally rotate them out of display, and then print them again when you want to install them anew. For that matter, imagine if one could study (excellent forgeries of) old masters in their local museum/gallery, instead of having to fly to Europe. In fact, imagine if you could "run off" a replica for group study in art school from the room beside the offset printer!
- caseyf7 11y agoand it sold for $179M http://www.upi.com/Top_News/US/2015/05/11/Picasso-painting-smashes-record-with-179-million-bid/8841431387160/ http://www.upi.com/Top_News/US/2015/05/11/Picasso-painting-s...
- allendoerfer 11y agoI am torn back and forth whether to approve or disapprove art collecting. On the one hand I think you should never buy trash, but save for the very best of something that makes you really happy and buy the minimal amount of it. On the other hand I hate buying things just for the sake of status, especially when it has only idealistic utility. When I am ever in the position to buy a Picasso, I hope nobody reads this comment, because I am going to casually put it on a wall in the hallway along with some prints. The troll fun you would have by your own would totally outweigh the status points you could gain by telling others.
- optimusclimb 11y ago"My stomach turned at the sight of a woman carrying a yapping Yorkshire terrier while heading out of this overcrowded gallery." Does anyone else not view this entire essay as the definition of a first world problem? (and even then, the term doesn't do it justice?) Surely there's a witty comment to be made about THAT turning the author's stomach, while someone in a third world nation starves...however for me it'd just suffice to point out the struggles of the overworked single mother of two to three in the US of A, the NYTimes' piece today about the disappearance of the middle class [1], and then juxtapose that with this article. [1] http://www.nytimes.com/2015/05/12/us/politics/as-middle-class-fades-so-does-use-of-term-on-campaign-trail.html http://www.nytimes.com/2015/05/12/us/politics/as-middle-clas...
- Schiphol 11y agohttp://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/EvilIsCool http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/EvilIsCool