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posted by Fnord666 on Saturday November 04 2017, @02:07AM   Printer-friendly
from the sufficiently-broad-definitions dept.

D'oh!

To me, it looked like a child's crude attempt at a mosaic. About a dozen small square tiles of different colours. Glued to the wall in a geometric design vaguely resembling a face with two square eyes.

It stood out in the otherwise empty and dingy Paris flat. Once my home, I was moving back in, after nearly 20 years away. My tenants, three young single men, were showing me round before they left.

"What's that?" I asked, pointing at the cluster of tiles.

"That's by Invader," my tenant replied. "He's a street artist. He's like a French Banksy."

I quite liked Banksy, but the young man must have seen that I didn't appear overly impressed by his French counterpart.

"You must leave this," he said earnestly. "One day it will be worth a lot of money."

Being British, I nodded politely - but inwardly I chortled at the notion that a few tiles stuck on a bedroom wall could ever be considered a work of art.

[...] It was bigger, but otherwise similar to the one I'd unceremoniously stripped out of my flat.

Invader was a global phenomenon, famous in New York, Hong Kong, London, and of course Paris.

Then came the real blow. To my horror, I learned that one of his works had sold for more than €200,000 (£178,000; $233,000).

So, I had this guy named Claude staying in my place who painted a picture on the wall...what was his name, dear? Oh, right, Monet. But I wanted the room painted fuchsia so I told the painters to get rid of it.


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  • (Score: 3, Informative) by Arik on Saturday November 04 2017, @02:21AM (20 children)

    by Arik (4543) on Saturday November 04 2017, @02:21AM (#592012) Journal
    Modern art has been shown to be a fraud many times.  Again and again people fool so-called 'expert' with works done by novices, toddlers, or even chimpanzees. The Baltic in Newcastle is a fine gallery, Unfortunately, they very seldom find anything to put in it worth looking at, let alone journeying any distance to see.

    People appreciate effort, skill, and an attempt to please or at least be understood.  Works of art that clearly have taken no skill, time, effort, or care to create are an insult to the gallery viewer.

    Clearly, I am not saying that ALL modern (or 'contemporary' if you prefer) art is insulting.  I am just explaining why much of it is.  Great art in the past was not all understood by everybody, but it didn't insult those who didn't understand it.

    Similarly, I am not saying that any art that took ages to make is good.  Boris Vallejo is an amazing draughtsman, but his works are not good art.

    Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sN9iJCZ5Il8
    Worth making a VM to access, even though youtube is utter trash.
    --
    If laughter is the best medicine, who are the best doctors?
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  • (Score: 5, Insightful) by Whoever on Saturday November 04 2017, @02:32AM (3 children)

    by Whoever (4524) on Saturday November 04 2017, @02:32AM (#592026) Journal

    If only it were just modern art.

    Why is it that the value of a painting that might have been painted by an old master depends very heavily on whether it is genuine or not? From an pure artistic point of view who created the art should be much less important than the quality of the art.

    • (Score: 4, Informative) by Arik on Saturday November 04 2017, @02:51AM (2 children)

      by Arik (4543) on Saturday November 04 2017, @02:51AM (#592034) Journal
      As art, you're right. So clearly most of the value in these objects is not as art.

      They're 'collectors items' instead, which means that their value depends more on historical significance. Or I should say perceived historical significance.

      "Cary Grant was once told, "Every time I see you on the screen, I think, 'I wish I was Cary Grant.'" He replied, "That's just what I think!""

      ...

      "An art dealer once went to Pablo Picasso and said, "I have a bunch of 'Picasso' canvasses that I was thinking of buying. Would you look them over and tell me which are real and which are forgeries?" Picasso obligingly began sorting the paintings into two piles. Then, as the Great Man added one particular picture to the fake pile, the dealer cried, "Wait a minute, Pablo. That's no forgery. I was visiting you the weekend you painted it." Picasso replied imperturbably, "No matter. I can fake a Picasso as well as any thief in Europe.""

      Source: http://www.rawilson.com/ishtar.html
      --
      If laughter is the best medicine, who are the best doctors?
      • (Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday November 04 2017, @08:36AM (1 child)

        by Anonymous Coward on Saturday November 04 2017, @08:36AM (#592108)

        They're 'collectors items' instead, which means that their value depends more on historical significance

        Or as a tax dodge: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NSdbASDdwU4 [youtube.com]

        The journalists do propaganda, the teachers do brainwashing and the comedians do education :).

        • (Score: 1) by khallow on Saturday November 04 2017, @02:57PM

          by khallow (3766) Subscriber Badge on Saturday November 04 2017, @02:57PM (#592178) Journal
          But "Two Swipes With a Hot Dog and Bun" is sheer passion and brilliance. Why do you hate art so?
  • (Score: 3, Insightful) by KiloByte on Saturday November 04 2017, @02:36AM (8 children)

    by KiloByte (375) on Saturday November 04 2017, @02:36AM (#592030)

    If an 'expert' in the field can't tell "real" stuff from a toddler's scribbling, that field as a whole is worthless.

    This applies to basically the whole of Postmodernism. Including:
    • theatre where a play consist of guys mostly sitting for an hour, with content limited to a shout "Art! Poetry!" in the middle
    • ALL modern/postmodern "art" (_not_ contemporary — actual art is widespread today — I mean the movement so named)
    • so-called "science" (Sokal affair, etc)
    • especially "gender studies" (“The Conceptual Penis as a Social Construct”) — serious taxpayer money goes there
    • paying taxpayer money for scams like a soup can, a toilet seat, an unmade bed or a pile of bricks (with explicit orders for those moving the "artwork" that the order or shape doesn't matter)

    If someone is willing to pay his own money, you're free to! Anything else would be censorship. But please don't force this crap onto kids, especially not for my taxes.

    --
    Ceterum censeo systemd esse delendam.
    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday November 04 2017, @06:42AM (6 children)

      by Anonymous Coward on Saturday November 04 2017, @06:42AM (#592096)

      especially "gender studies" (“The Conceptual Penis as a Social Construct”) — serious taxpayer money goes there

      It will never cease to amaze me that people pay navel-gazers and call it gender "studies" when they could be doing real science with brain imaging studies. Nobody is interested in replicating several interesting brain imaging studies that may show the physiological basis for the brain as a gendered organ with larger and more credible sample sizes. Instead, "gender studies" as it exists today is an exercise in throwing every person unfortunate enough to be born with mismatched brain and reproductive gender under a big fucking bus.

      We could have science, but instead we get cynical identity politics. Hopefully our resident ancient astronomer at least understands how frustrating it is when some idiots decide that intellectual constructs are more real than observable reality, which they hold as unworthy of study next to their geometrically perfect castles in the sky, and everybody goes along with it.

      • (Score: 4, Insightful) by lx on Saturday November 04 2017, @08:40AM (5 children)

        by lx (1915) on Saturday November 04 2017, @08:40AM (#592109)

        ...when they could be doing real science with brain imaging studies...

        Ah the magical neuroscience sauce that turns everything into "real science" Sadly Brain imaging is often as scientific as Kirlian photography.

        Brain imaging in action [scientificamerican.com]

        Neurobollocks [wordpress.com] The name is self-explanatory.

        • (Score: 3, Insightful) by maxwell demon on Saturday November 04 2017, @01:03PM (3 children)

          by maxwell demon (1608) on Saturday November 04 2017, @01:03PM (#592144) Journal

          From your first link:

          Some people like to use the salmon study as proof that fMRI is woo, but this isn't the case, it's actually a study to show the importance of correcting your stats.

          --
          The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
          • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday November 04 2017, @07:08PM (1 child)

            by Anonymous Coward on Saturday November 04 2017, @07:08PM (#592261)

            Did they ever "correct their stats"? http://www.pnas.org/content/113/28/7900.abstract [pnas.org]

            Have the standards changed so that they have corrected the model criticized in that paper? I bet somehow it "didn't matter anyway" and they just continue pumping out the statistical significance.

            • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday November 04 2017, @07:15PM

              by Anonymous Coward on Saturday November 04 2017, @07:15PM (#592265)

              Thank you. At least somebody here is interested in science instead of authoritarian follower (both SJW and alt-right) navel-gazing. We cannot have science without criticism, because harsh criticism is what enables us to find the truth.

          • (Score: 3, Funny) by patrick on Sunday November 05 2017, @05:13AM

            by patrick (3990) on Sunday November 05 2017, @05:13AM (#592384)
        • (Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday November 04 2017, @07:12PM

          by Anonymous Coward on Saturday November 04 2017, @07:12PM (#592262)

          GP here. You've linked an IgNobel prize:

          The results were set aside and not looked at for a good while, until one of the other authors of the study was running a seminar on how to properly analyze fMRI data. They wanted to do some improper analysis on something improbably, and remembered that they had the salmon data on the computer. And a study was born.

          and a criticism of some Neuro"Business" thing--I assume a conference for the gaslighting asshole managers who are the source of sexual harassment in STEM--that didn't invite a single neuroscientist:

          Anyway, I’ve no idea if the conference was a roaring success or not, since, as a neuroscientist, I wasn’t invited. What I do know is that it turned into an utter debacle on Twitter. Conference attendees started tweeting nonsensical things like:

          “Hack your brains dopamine to become addicted to success!”

          or

          “Men’s brains fire back to front, women’s fire side to side. That’s why women multi task well”

          …and the neuroscientists on Twitter quickly and gleefully piled on with sarcasm, jokes and general rubbishing.

          And that is an astounding example of what the science does not say are the potential differences between male and female brains.

          Why do you people think that gender is a social construct? Don't you remember that gender differences present themselves in the crib?!

    • (Score: 3, Informative) by hendrikboom on Sunday November 05 2017, @01:41AM

      by hendrikboom (1125) Subscriber Badge on Sunday November 05 2017, @01:41AM (#592338) Homepage Journal

      But the conceptual penis is a social construct. It's the physical penis that isn't.

      I wish that the people parodying postmodernism wouldn't pick the few random postmodern items that actually have a slight grain of truth in them. It makes the parody look stupid.

  • (Score: 3, Interesting) by jmorris on Saturday November 04 2017, @02:53AM

    by jmorris (4844) on Saturday November 04 2017, @02:53AM (#592035)

    Boris Vallejo is an amazing draughtsman, but his works are not good art.

    Perhaps, perhaps not. I do know I'd much prefer one of Vallejo's mediocre works on my wall than anything I have seen in a museum of "modern" or "contemporary" art.

    I am starting to get the sneaking suspicion a good part of the "art world" is just a money laundering operation anyway. Explains why they don't actually care about what they pay insane amount of cash for.

  • (Score: 2) by maxwell demon on Saturday November 04 2017, @04:52AM (4 children)

    by maxwell demon (1608) on Saturday November 04 2017, @04:52AM (#592074) Journal

    Modern art has been shown to be a fraud many times.

    But a good fraud is an art! :-)

    --
    The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
    • (Score: 2, Funny) by Ethanol-fueled on Saturday November 04 2017, @05:06AM (3 children)

      by Ethanol-fueled (2792) on Saturday November 04 2017, @05:06AM (#592079) Homepage

      The summary reads like a faggot's prelude to a homsexual orgy.

      • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday November 04 2017, @02:06PM

        by Anonymous Coward on Saturday November 04 2017, @02:06PM (#592157)

        of course. you'd be so aware of such things.

      • (Score: 2) by Phoenix666 on Saturday November 04 2017, @11:08PM (1 child)

        by Phoenix666 (552) on Saturday November 04 2017, @11:08PM (#592305) Journal

        I know when I saw the article I said to myself,"you know would really love this? Ethanol-fueled, that's who!"

        --
        Washington DC delenda est.
        • (Score: 2, Funny) by dwilson on Sunday November 05 2017, @01:45AM

          by dwilson (2599) Subscriber Badge on Sunday November 05 2017, @01:45AM (#592341) Journal

          It took longer than I care to admit, but once I realized "Ethanol-fueled" could be literally taken as a euphemism for a drunken rant, everything I've ever read from him snapped in to a completely new context and started making a lot more sense.

          --
          - D
  • (Score: 3, Interesting) by terryk30 on Saturday November 04 2017, @10:16AM

    by terryk30 (1753) on Saturday November 04 2017, @10:16AM (#592127)

    Rudolph Guiliani said it best: "If I can do it, it's not art..."

    (re. the portrait of the Virgin Mary stained with elephant dung [nytimes.com].)