One thing to consider is that being a case of the emperor's new clothes is intentional. Consider The Fountain again:

The artist had the audacity to put a urinal in a gallery. It's not so much that this was a particularly lovely piece of ceramic (though some may think so). The point is the meta-awareness that urinals don't belong here.

The rule-breaking is the art. The fact the emperor has no clothes is the exact reason people were talking about it. It's not that no one has ever seen a naked person before! But the emperor?! That's not supposed to happen!

Art is the production of veblen goods. Duchamp, in his genius, realized that though the ability to buy something painfully handcrafted does signal wealth, buying literal garbage is a much better display of wealth. Someone who can afford to buy a meticulously painted portrait, well, one may be will willing to make sacrifices for beauty. Someone able to spend millions on literal garbage - now that is a rich man.

Another aspect is photography allowed normal people access to create cheap reproductions of beautiful art. High-class people used to be able to distinguish themselves from the mob with beautiful things the mob couldn't afford.

But this does not work with cheap reproductions allowing one to signal the same taste.

In this way, there became an incentive for high-class people to acquire and inculcate a taste for art that is actively repulsive to distinguish themselves from those normal people who desire beautiful things.

Mostly this doesn't matter. They are only hurting themselves. But the effect of these incentives on public architecture has been pretty horrifying.

> Duchamp, in his genius, realized that though the ability to buy something painfully handcrafted does signal wealth, buying literal garbage is a much better display of wealth. Someone who can afford to buy a meticulously painted portrait, well, one may be will willing to make sacrifices for beauty. Someone able to spend millions on literal garbage - now that is a rich man.

> Mostly this doesn't matter. They are only hurting themselves. But the effect of these incentives on public architecture has been pretty horrifying.

This is a very good analysis summary.

Nowadays, rule-breaking is no longer provocative. It's derivative. We all got the memo: there's no set definition of art, it doesn't need to be skillfully made, it doesn't need to be beautiful, it can be offensive, blah blah blah. It's not clever any more.

I respect Duchamp. He made his point so eloquently that none of the imitators are adding anything to the conversation.

See Banksy's "Love is in the Bin". People are still excited when artists break convention, even if it gets harder and harder to do something unexpected.

"it gets harder and harder to do something unexpected."

I just found something!

https://designyoutrust.com/2016/07/guy-paints-over-shit-graf...

But at what point does daring rule-breaking degenerate into mere gimmickry. I guess I can understand why piece generated so much interest in it's time, but since then we've been subjected to a relentless parade of urinals, cow corpses, faeces, signed brillo boxes etc. At this point we've seen the emperor naked ad nauseum

Sure, if it's played out, you have to do something different. It's the logic of publicity: whatever gets people's attention works, until it doesn't.

I think this is an interesting way to approach art, actually: you can walk through a museum admiring artists for how they were able to get away with something different.

Although, in this age of memes, maybe it's more interesting to see what holds lasting attention?

The _second_ time it's done! The way I see it, the first person to hang an all white canvas in an art gallery is a genius. The second, third, and fourth, not so much.

Eventually it becomes interesting again, though. The guy who does nothing but white canvases gets a degree of notoriety after a while. And the three thousand, two hundredth guy who does nothing but white canvases blows up because now it's funny that people are still doing that.

'First!', 'Frist!!!', 'FIRST!!!1111lol!' and other web comment poop is born of the same impulse.

At that point it becomes a meme. Are memes art?

Memes are absolutely art. Why not?

That's actually the thesis behind my startup, Memes On Canvas: https://www.memesoncanvas.com

Amazing, good luck with your lawsuits. /s

I think it's easier to appreciate the skill involved in making a piece of art than it is to appreciate the art piece itself. Some people (myself included), may even prefer appreciating the skill in and of itself, independent of the art.

Further, I think it's easier to comprehend how difficult it must be to produce a realistic sculpture or painting or what have you, compared to an abstract piece. As the piece becomes more abstract, appreciating it requires, I think, a lot more contextual information that the viewer may simply not have.

Of course, some art may just be crap. Who's to say?

Modernism in the arts has a bit of a path-dependency problem that tends to intentionally obscure the "artistic value" of the bleeding edge from the uninitiated, but which can make the art more meaningful to those who are familiar with the context.

I'll use jazz as an example, since I'm most familiar with that history. You can start with something as approachable, if disorganized as "Jelly Roll Blues"[0], and polish the genre into "Take the A Train" [1] as it became more generally popular. After that, though, the bleeding edge of the genre self-protects itself away from the common ear by growing increasingly obscure, with bop [2], modal jazz [3], free jazz [4??] becoming progressively less approachable to the uninitiated ear, to the point that the the unfamiliar ear can hear the latter and find itself unable to recognize even as "music", while someone familiar with the genre can see the path and appreciate the work in context.

[0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zt203us6TME

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cb2w2m1JmCY

[2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z2tvlp7RnlM

[3] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hwmRQ0PBtXU

[4] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ll3CMgiUPuU

Oh man, some of the stuff my friends are listening to these days is amazing music, they've got the algorithms to prove it! Something about listening to the notes that aren't played or some such. Music that should be heard, but not listened to.

Check out some of the stuff Mike Gao is putting out with the use of his Polyplayground app.

> Anyone with no skill can do random things with random items and call it art.

Others have mentioned this, but I think the key here is that the "skill" you are referring to is what art theorists would call "craft." There is a degree of technical skill that goes into a work of art (e.g. sculpting realistic bodies in marble or being able to draw consistent shapes or human anatomy, etc), but theorists would say that the truth of the art is about what emotions and ideas it expresses in the viewer. In this way, since contemporary art often eschews craft, it can (in one sense of the term), be considered the most pure kind of art.

> How can you judge a category of art for which there are no rules?

Keeping the above in mind, art isn't about rules or judgement, but about the personal message it sends to the viewer. Because, after all, what are the "rules" you are ascribing to The David? Realism? If so, then what would you say about impressionist works by, say, Claude Monet?

I say this also as a humble engineer (even if I come off as standoffish, which I hope I'm not), who happened to take a few art theory courses at school, which by no means makes me an expert: so this is just my own experience and perspective.

The most powerful experience I've had with a work of art was with one of Mark Rothko's paintings. Sure, you can look at it as a plain wall of one or two colors in a plain square shape, but when I really got a good look at it for a prolonged period of time, I began to get lost in the colors and appreciated the nuances of the brushstrokes (it also helped that I had read John Logan's play "Red," which is a psychological profile about Rothko's method, which I recommend highly)

All of this to say that, yes, anyone with no skill can do random things with random items and call it art. Because the skill, the things, and the items are not the true characteristics of what art is. I don't think that "Fountain" should necessarily be marked as a masterpiece or objectively hailed as brilliant or anything, but I think to label it as "not art" misses the point (the point that it's trying to make a statement about art as a whole). Art is not about skill/craft, but about communication between the artist and viewer.

That's my perspective on it at least!

>How can you judge a category of art for which there are no rules?

Why are you assuming that modern art is arbitrary, random and has no rules?

For that matter, why do you seem to assume the purpose of art is to be "judged" according to some objective set of rules?

Have you tried to study any modern artistic movements, or artists, and what those movements or artists were actually trying to express? It seems like you're mistaking complexity and technical skill for meaning, or assuming that only realistic depictions of nature have any artistic credibility.

>But a sideways urinal with some marker on it? Anyone with no skill can do random things with random items and call it art.

Don't assume that because something appears simple or obvious, that there is no meaning behind it. Maybe sometimes there isn't. Maybe the art at your campus was literally just there to look cool. Maybe some modern artists are taking the piss, like Duchamp, who was trolling the art society he was a part of with that[0].

Yes, you could assume Jackson Pollock was just throwing paint against a canvas and that can't be art because anyone could throw paint against a canvas, but like Marcel Duchamp and a lot of other modern artists, he was trying to say something[1], and that's what makes it art, not its reproducibility or realism.

Artists like Picasso and Mondrian were capable of creating traditional artwork in the classical style, but they became famous for their abstract work. I think it would be a stretch to say these people lacked talent or understanding of what art was, rather, they were trying to express their ideas in as minimalist a style as possible.

>"Any sufficiently advanced art is indistinguishable from garbage"

And any sufficiently advanced criticism is indistinguishable from ignorance.

[0]https://www.tate.org.uk/art/artworks/duchamp-fountain-t07573

[1]https://www.quora.com/What-do-Jackson-Pollocks-paintings-rea...

> Why are you assuming that modern art is arbitrary, random and has no rules?

More like inference than assumption, based on occurrences like Pierre Brassau's art.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pierre_Brassau

That seems more like a criticism of art critics and the subjectivity of art valuation than modern art as a category, given that most modern art isn't done by chimpanzees.

Although, ironically, the hoax itself makes it a valid form of performance art anyway.

>Although, ironically, the hoax itself makes it a valid form of performance art anyway.

This is the bullshit that makes people weary of modern art. If you disagree, you fail to realize that this post, and indeed hacker news itself, is postmodern performance/interactivity art. Your opinion is wrong and invalid if you disagree.

>If you disagree, you fail to realize that this post, and indeed hacker news itself, is postmodern performance/interactivity art. Your opinion is wrong and invalid if you disagree.

No one is actually saying that, though. The only people trying to invalidate anyone's arguments and opinions are the ones who disagree that modern art has any value. And no one mentioned anything about hacker news itself.

What I am trying to imply is that there is more than one valid interpretation of this particular event. That, even if paintings by chimpanzees weren't art,and the hoax wasn't intended as art, the effect of the hoax still serves the purpose of art.

Please stop being defensive and please appreciate that context is sometimes relevant to a discussion.

>No one is actually saying that, though. The only people trying to invalidate anyone's arguments and opinions are the ones who disagree that modern art has any value. And no one mentioned anything about hacker news itself.

I was intentionally being standoffish in a manner so as to imitate modern art fanatics. See, you just don't understand the _performance art_ that is contained within a HN discussion (this is facetious).

I would agree that "ones who disagree that modern art has any value." are misinformed. And on the flip side, I would argue that those who believe _all_ modern art _has value_ and is _worthwhile_ are incorrect. There is a lot of shitty modern art out there that can and should be dismissed (I realize beauty is in the eye of the beholder) and by not doing so, you only hurt the worthwhile modern art.

I once saw a coca-cola bottle filled to the brim with cigarettes, placed into a red circle, in the SF MOMA. That isn't art; that's every weekend outside my apartment in college.

This is the bullshit that makes modern art more interesting than painters trying to represent reality on canvas.

Yeah when the neighborhood kids teepee your house that's modern art too.

Nobody does that anymore.

That's literally untrue, but ok.

Anybody could do it, but they didn't and you didn't either. It's really easy to bag on any art with that line of reasoning, but the fact of the matter is that art lives in time and space, and at the time that piece was made nobody else did it, and readymade had a colossal influence on every other aspect of modern art (and even design) that came after that. It's easy to dismiss it as a urinal with marker when you ignore the context in which it was created and presented and the influence it had on other art, much of which is universally regarded as beautiful.

I'm generally pretty fond of taking a devil's advocate position when it comes to modern art. But regarding your specific example of "The David", let me ask you: which aspect of the sculpture is the art?

I would argue that replicating lifelike veins in marble is not the artistic part of David. That the craft - and surely many of Michaelangelo's contemporaries (and indeed many sculptors today) were also capable craftsmen when it came to sculpting. The art is the body language, expression, and overall "feel" of the piece.

This comes into sharp relief when you examine the work of someone like Robert Mapplethorpe[1] - who wanted to be a sculptor, but realized he could often achieve the same artistic goals with models and photography. He wanted to capture beauty and emotion through the human form - and the medium was just a means to an end.

All of this is to say that contemporary art is capable of communicating the same feelings as more classical artistic styles - and those feelings are really the point. The comparison between David and some college piece is also unfair. It has always been true 99% of everything is crap. What is the best contemporary art will only be apparent in retrospect. Stuff you see around a college campus is likely not even the best of contemporary art at the time it's created (that's why it's on a campus). Comparing that to art that has had 300+ years of societal filtering doesn't really make sense.

One of my favourite pieces of contemporary art is "Fuck Death" by Leon Golub[2]. I like its straightforward starkness and the way it seems hastily done - as if the painter was in a hurry because death is, indeed, coming. The technical aspects of this piece are, honestly, not very impressive. It's a very simple watercolour. But it speaks to me in a way that classical depictions of death, with all their craft and realism, really don't. That ability to communicate feeling is the art. The choice of medium or style is just aesthetic preference.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Mapplethorpe

[2] http://interrum.tumblr.com/post/59580566966/bidartanalysis-f...

Edit: I am also a humble engineer, so I'm probably just re-inventing art theory 101 here. But I don't think contemporary art is as worthless as many seem to think.

I too find myself in constant awe when in the presence of renaissance masters. I can't stop returning because italy is dripping with it every where you turn, constantly full of awe-inspiring surprises. In terms of workmanship, there is nothing since which compares to even the 10th-best basilica in rome.

But I don't appreciate those nearly as much as I do no-named postmodern pieces, even procedurally-generated ones. There are so many curious layers of questions that arise when staring into the abstract and being left to your own perception to pull out appreciable components. So much to wonder about the artist, his intentions, and his chaotic vision or process. It is far deeper than masterful material work.

Considering how absolutely we are able to control materials these days, particularly now that atomic-level artificial composition is within our power, I find the questions of what? why? why not? or even lol wtf? far more appetizing to modern curiosity.

With invention of photography artists realized that there is no reason to depict reality anymore. But they also realized that there is much more happening than watching image. It is whole experience of contexts, mood of place and the way how the art is shown and all kinds of subtle things.

It is not about what anyone can physically do nor if it's easy or hard. It is about the ideas and navigating culture and finding interesting connections. It is opposite of random.

It's like saying "But this textfile with some wierd file extension? Anyone with no skill can write random characters on keyboard and call it programming"

Don't get me wrong i hate contemporary art but there are many interesting and important ideas coming out of it.

It's just not made for general public anymore. And people in that bubble don't care. That type of art was replaced by tattoos, illustrators, photographers and even popular movies/games etc.

If you pursue art academically, you are expected to push the form. Much like a CS PhD is expected to do novel research, an MFA is trying to make something nobody has ever seen before. In both cases, there are many practitioners that fail at this. But in both situations, their work is inaccessible to laymen by its very nature, produced after ingesting massive quantities of the prior art in their respective fields.

Not criticising any art or artists; but don't believe in the camera argument. Paintings do not look like photographs at all; they are often images of things that do not and never have existed. Many of them could only be created using human imagination; and reflect some complex human culture and society at a point in time.

Art is a form of communication. The skill with which works are crafted is often part of how they are able to communicate so well, but it isn't strictly necessary. If you find yourself looking at highly regarded art and not understanding why, it is possible its just that you don't have the right context to understand what it is saying.

Of course it is also possible it s all just so much wankery and garbage, but you can't just assume that.