Isn't all of the global art marketplace, a swindle to begin with? It's a money laundering industry in its entirely with almost barely any money actually reaching the original artist. It could have easily been him selling something he drew up in 2 days, make up a bullshit backstory, sell it for 50 million and he'd actually not have to disappear
I repeatedly see a cynicism around art on HN and other tech blogs, does no-one here see the inherent value in art or culture?
Jackson Pollock's art pieces get a lot of flack for basically having no publicly presented interpretive structure, the artist came up with a technique for doing 'plastic depth' that was a novel innovation. Irvine Kershner who directed Empire Strikes Back and met Pollock made fun of him at the time for his work appearing to be off the rails, and later came to appreciate it.
Taking out the market manipulation of fine art still leaves it with an intrinsic value whether it is technique or the meaning imbued in having a piece of work produced by an artist. Is that worth millions? Who knows, if I give you any old guitar, and a guitar that Elvis played on I know the second will be valued higher.
My read on this has always been that most of the negative commentary around 'art' falls into one of two categories. Neither of which is utterly dismissive of the value of art and/or culture. However, I'm not sure they are made all that explicitly.
1) Criticism of the art industry and it's role in the commoditization and market making you mention around art. That isn't criticism of art or it's value...it's criticism that such value is often interfered with for, among other things, money laundering.
2) Criticism of specific pieces of art that an individual doesn't 'get' (and by golly I fall into this trap). By get, it really is about they don't see the artistic or cultural value of that piece but typically is done in reference, which implies that they do see some art as having value.
Without listening to this podcast, I must say I loved everything about the banana: the piece, the context, the actual banana and tape (which somehow managed be even worse than expected), but most of all the slew of criticism, which, if you ask me, is what really makes this piece. It's been a while since I've heard this many people everywhere discuss art, its boundaries, and try to define it. For that alone, I would say it's the most successful work of art in a long time.
I think most people don’t like “statement” art because they inherently understand that it’s much easier to be outrageous than it is to create something of enduring beauty.
I think there is also a segment of people (which I would include myself in) who feel that artwork is the output of a practiced craft person - ie the work should be difficult-to-impossible for the lay person to recreate.
I understand the art world itself does not have this perspective, but I think that is the basis for a lot of the scoffing we see.
And what I’m saying is that most people understand that “more than just something beautiful” is the refuge of people who aren’t capable of making something which is merely beautiful.
Not gonna bother with yet another unedited podcast. But I get the banana. The title of the piece is "Comedian", and I'm an amateur comedian. Part of it is that when you make a joke, you have to throw it at the wall to see what sticks. And as for art, sometimes the joke's on you.
I empathize with the 2nd category in particular, there are many attempts at creating an interpretive structure for art that doesn't hit the mark so someone not getting it is half or more caused by the presenting artist.
I saw Pollock's drip work in a gallery for the first time a few days ago, and it's the first and only art that really resonated with me. It looks like how a lot of music I enjoy sounds, if that makes sense.
It's baffling to me that someone could think his work is just random noise. (A lot of other abstract art in the same gallery, some clearly inspired by his, seemed much closer to that.)
Forgeries can be programmatically identified because authentic Pollock drip paintings contain ratios and fractal patterns often found in nature: https://www.discovermagazine.com/the-sciences/pollocks-fract.... (It's likely he wasn't trying to do anything like that intentionally; he just intuitively made what he felt would look good.)
I guess, if you look at it from the wrong angle it looks just like a dude with
his feet planted apart, like he's about to take a shit. But, look closely and
you see that he's in full motion. His right leg is twisting behind his body.
The heel is raised and the toes are pushing down hard to put the full strength
of his body behind the throw. His left leg is pivoting on its heel. The toes
are pulled back as he turns his torso. He is leaning back, slightly to add his
weight to the power of his muscles. His left hand is extended in front of him,
so that he can swing it around like a pendulum, and add momentum to the throw.
He is throwing a weapon- and dancing at the same time.
This is a bronze statue so it was made to stand on its own two legs, without
any props to keep it upright. That is the biggest shock of all. A living,
breathing man would keep himself upright in the middle of this whirling move
by pulling on his mucles to maintain balance. And yet, here's a lifeless chunk
of bronze that has caught this man in the middle of all this pulling and
twisting and pushing, and dancing- and it's standing upright, balanced an
unfalling.
The artists who created this piece must have spent hours upon hours, days upon
days, studying the human form. They must have sat at the palaistra (the
public gym) observing the young men of Athens competing in javelin-throwing
for ages. Until they learned how the human body comes together, how it moves,
how it balances itself; how it _works_. Then they went off and transferred
this knowledge into bronze. And now, thousands of years later, any human can
look at the bronze and see what they learned.
This is what makes humans, human. To be able to look at the world and know,
and learn, and then put this knowledge into a form that can reach through time
and speak to other humans, and communicate this knowledge. To touch another
human's heart and mind through time and space, even after you're long gone. To
leave something behind that says "I lived, I learned, I created".
So, yeah, I see the value in art.
But modern art, like Jackson Pollock, that's a steaming hot pile of shit that
means nothing. There is no skill in it. There is no knowledge. No study. No
insight. There is no thought or emotion. There is just the cold hard glint of
gold in the eye of the so-called artist and those who sell his garbage on as
art to people who only understand the value of money, and have no other value
in life than money.
>But modern art, like Jackson Pollock, that's a steaming hot pile of shit that means nothing. There is no skill in it. There is no knowledge. No study. No insight. There is no thought or emotion. There is just the cold hard glint of gold in the eye of the so-called artist and those who sell his garbage on as art to people who only understand the value of money, and have no other value in life than money.
This hot take is relatively common right now but it's not particularly true. Modern art explores a whole host of ideas that classical art cannot and does not. The strong masculine lines and flat surfaces overlay an exploration in novel geometries you just can't get in endless refinement of an existing form. The classics are forever stuff making a hierarchy of forms that are the same thing from top to bottom. A human hand is part of a human torso which is a part of a human body. A modern art piece can have forms that are alien, materials that are foreign, ideas that are new, in a form that thrusts out into the world as it's own being.
JP was broke most of his life and had a drinking problem, he created the perception of space through the application of paint layers, rather than perspective or all the traditional tools. That wasn't done before.
Modern art is needed now more than ever because that's the one place we can bring an world of disparate ideas into an order that shapes the country, the future and humankind. Classical art relies heavily upon a reception of the infinite quantity of existing forms, like endlessly spirally plant leaves and filigree. Those things already existed, the classics just received and refined it. A classical perspectives' best chance at creating something new, is not to set out to create something new, but instead to be the one that got it working first, as they always have done. The derided modernist is frequently the true innovator.
Having said all that there's a lot of shit modern art that was built for the artist's flight of fancy that wasn't apart of a greater meaning or order that can be tossed, requires to be removed!
I find Pollock's drip paintings exponentially more aesthetic, thoughtful, valuable, and beautiful than that statue, personally.
That statue is a set piece in a movie of that society's history and mythology; it's historically interesting and valuable, but has little pure artistic or aesthetic value, in my opinion. But all art taste is extremely subjective, so both of our views are completely valid.
I see Pollock-like depth visuals every time I am incredibly hungover. So given the context I had always associated them with this deep, wisely accepted sadness which comes after realising your own mortality and limitations.
It's such an engineer's opinion, that life somehow owes you a clearly-defined meaning and forms.
Before I studied computer science, in another life as they say, I studied art. I took history of art courses and I was taught the official explanation for Pollock's work, that it's really a study of human motion.
I bring up the Artemission bronze partly as a counterpoint. _That_ is a study of human motion. Not what Pollock did.
There is real knowledge and understanding of the world that we can acquire. Obviously not for everything. Obviously the world doesn't "owe" us anything. But we can study, and work, and learn what there is to learn. Pollock did none of that. He just moved his arms around and pretended to do it, like a magician without magic, like a conductor without an orchestra.
Edit: it is Pollock's work that is cynical (referring to what the GP said). Its premise is that nothing is really worth it. That you don't get anything out of working hard to try and understand. So embrace your limitations and wallow in the cheap and effortless, because you can never do better than that.
Well, that's -sorry for the easy point but- bollocks. You can do much better than that. People have done much better than that for thousands of years.
>> So embrace your limitations and wallow in the cheap and effortless, because you can never do better than that.
That’s not what I said. I said this is what kind of feelings it makes me remember.
It doesn’t mean I think that life has to be cheap and effortless per se. Yet I would appreciate art that reminds me of these feelings?
You are your typical art academician who having studied art now thinks they know better than others. I don’t think you do.
Did you go for computer science because it pays better? So who’s truly cynical here now? I went for computer science because I was good at it since the age of 11. It’s my passion and I have a sense of respect for people who earned their name in other industries, even if they did so not exactly through the most straightforward methods.
You may say it’s bullshit. But so is Steve Jobs? After all, he died because he didn’t do chemo at the right time, instead going for yoga.
To clarify, the sentence you quote referred to my interpretation of Pollock's outlook, not to something you said.
I'm guessing you misunderstood my comment as a personal attack on you and you chose to escalate? Otherwise I can't explain the sudden personal tone of your comment. Did I cause confusion by using "you" and "yours" in the general sense?
I think the theory is that Bob secretly gives an accomplice a bunch of dirty cash. That accomplice then buys art from Bob, but they get to keep some portion of the money for their trouble. There needn't be an artist involved.
Though it seems the accomplice would come under scrutiny unless they have some plausible explanation as to how they got the money to pay for the thing. I don't know if "the art market is fueled by money laundering" theory is actually supported by evidence, but it's a fun idea.
It's based on fear, copying the last person, vanity, greed, fraud and elitism. Money laundering is possible but a transaction like that with art will trigger an audit in best of times and the government will demand proof of worth. Easy to give with a Warhol harder to do with an unknown painter.
> I think the reason he felt safe in taking part in the documentary is because he is in a country where he is beyond the reach of U.S. law enforcement.
>And yet he doesn't have money ... so there's no point in anyone coming after him because a civil suit wouldn't get them any money at all, and the FBI can't get him because he's out of their reach.
Title conflicts with the statements in the article. Though IMO, there's probably good reason to wonder if this claim is true.
> There is a certain point in the film where there's a little flicker of remorse, but more than anything he feels that his actions were in some way justifiable.
One of my relatives is like that. :(
She'll lie, cheat, steal and generally screw over people. But pretend innocence to the outside world, and come up with truly bizarre reasons to justify things when asked by people who've realised what she's doing.
Taiwan and North Korea are the only two countries I've found that seem to have no extradition and no (formal) interface to law enforcement abroad through Interpol.
Palau, Tuvalu and Micronesia in the Pacific are not members of Interpol, but they do have extradition treaties with the US, and then there are a host of countries in Interpol that have no US extradition.
After watching the doc - I wouldn’t want to spoil it, so I’d just say these guesses were not correct. I was thinking Cuba or Venezuela too at first though.
Venezuela makes the most sense since he could simply walk over the border from Brazil. Guyana might be another possibility as well which would have the added advantage of English being the national language. John McAfee famously lived in Guyana.
