> The devaluation of aesthetics in favor of meaning make it unapproachable to those with no context on the subject, and unappealing to even those with context.

This is an incredibly concise and effective summary of the situation. I agree completely. I think aesthetics have really been devalued in the modern world. Even comparing distant lands like Ancient Rome or Ancient China, there are still commonalities in their approach to aesthetics compared to modern culture.

Oh to appreciate the aesthetics of pornography.

It exists, e.g. DOMAI.

> unapproachable to those with no context on the subject,

OTOH, if you do have context on the subject, it can be profound. It's a bit like certain gamer groups who have subreddits and generate tons of content that outsiders don't get (Warhammer, Genshin Impact, Hololive, ApexLegends... these are few groups I do not understand but they seem to generate a ton of their own internal content.)

Aesthetic art is a product of a particular need, and it will always have admirers. IKEA sells tons of pretty art. People will flock to Versailles to see the Mona Lisa. An occasional brave soul will do a long-viewing of Rothko. That kind of art is for the masses, and historically commissioned pieces in public have been just that. And it hasn't gone away: murals, sculptures in parks, installations at large government buildings.

What people are focusing on here is completely different.

It's a bit ignorant to criticize art that is outside your context. I have the right to say "Warhammer memes are childish bullshit," but it is ignorant.

Much like vegan-bashing, people love to rip on "post modern" art without really knowing much about it. Perhaps there is a legitimate claim that some hot new artist is "classically untrained" so they "actually" suck. Is that true if their art resonates with the current culture? I say, "no."

EDIT: I have attempted to study "postmodernism" many times over the last 30+ years (for fun) since I graduated college. I've failed every time. I don't like to use the term anymore because I can't really explain it to any real depth other then banal platitudes like "nothing has meaning."

EDIT2: I find "take the money and run" to be a brilliant piece of contemporary art. It is so on the nose for today's culture: conniving, ironic, duplicitive, a rip off, ... I think it spurs conversation about the monetary value of art that has been brewing for decades. Heck, even the monetary value of what museums should EXPECT from an artist. That's a big one I'd like to talk about. What if EVERY artist did this from now on? How do you prevent it? Should you? How do artists that put in massive physical effort feel about this? Screwed?

> I think it spurs conversation about the monetary value of art that has been brewing for decades

You say it was "brewing", I say this exact same conversation has been "spurred" by one "art" piece after another for all those decades. The only claim to fame of this umpteenth "I could have done that"-elicitor is that it attains novelty over the last "newsworthy" iteration by risking a fraud charge and career-death.

Nobody outside of Warhammer circles pay attention to Warhammer memes. The only reason the general public pays so much (negative) attention to High Art Memes is the money involved. And that's exactly what they want, isn't it? "Provoking discourse" (aka pissing off the plebs by flaunting vain exchanges of wealth, and then scoffing at how uncultured they are for not getting it).

Warhammer memes do not need the plebian masses to be the butt of their circular joke, though. By that measure, Warhammer memes are far more valuable to society than the article's brand of High Art, because Warhammer memes produce net happiness, but High Art deals in misery and negativity and trolling.

I usually classify Post Modern art as deconstructional art post WWII. It was initially fueled by the ennui of two world wars, and then drifted into cries about consumerism. Either way you get a pretty bleak outlook.

Now I hear it used in the context of skepticism of authority, "nothing can be known as true or false" in the current political climate and it scares the bejeebers outta me. I don't understand how that aspect of PM differs from classical fallacies of appeal to authority -- and I probably never will. :( -- but I agree, it feels bleak.

>It was initially fueled by the ennui of two world wars, and then drifted into cries about consumerism.

And also bankrolled by the CIA as a psy-op tool during the Cold war.

https://news.artnet.com/art-world/artcurious-cia-art-excerpt...

That figures... nothing that stupid happens without the govt being involved

Agreed. Post-modern art by itself means nothing to me, but when I learn about the artist and their journey to create a piece of work, I really enjoy it. It's like they say - its not about the destination, it's about the journey.

The classic Duchamp urinal I think is brilliant because it was so goddamn scandalous and just flipped so many assumptions upside-down. Being first matters IMHO. But over many decades it has been so set-upon by bigger thinkers (and GRIFTERS) and creators that it is exactly what the other poster said about "inaccessible". (Although I do love me some Zizek.)

If your art requires context to be understood, then it is broken.

No. Art Criticism and Theory is literally about the interplay of art with its context, and viewing art in different contexts (periods, and cultures). One such example is the 'period eye', where you juxtapose art from one period to another, such as 15th century Italian art in today's realm, and observe how the context has changed w.r.t. dimensions like racism, classism, or sexism. Have you ever taken a class on it? It doesn't sound like it. The term sounds intimidating but I think most 101-level classes try to be accessible from the interactions with educators I've had. Perhaps you are confusing art with the meme about UI design and jokes.

I upvoted both you and the OP, for making good, honest observations.

And for relating stories about thoughtful, controversial engagements with art. Because that's kind of the point of art.

The Mona Lisa isn't "art" anymore; it was once, and now it's a pretty artifact with a lot of historical significance. But that's not art.

Art is the kind of thing that makes educated people say, in public, "that's not art". And, thus, by its existence and the reception to its existence, true art makes our conversations about art richer, more emotional, and (over time) more precise. And once all of the nuances of this conversation are exhausted, we need new art.

Which is why the Mona Lisa isn't art. At least not anymore.

And if you disagree with that, then we need to have a deep conversation about art, and history, over the course of which both of us will have hopefully learned new things about both art and history.

Art is a recursive question, not an engineering problem.

Edit: I should point out that this comment is intentionally recursive.

Honestly this is one of the most ridiculous things I've read on HN, and yes I mean that perfectly literally. Its almost as if this comment is itself a piece of performance art, because the Mona Lisa is (sometimes literally) the standard for all art (at least paintings).

Agreed, it was a ridiculous comment. I did, however, try to design that ridiculousness to make a point.

For those of us who aren't subtle enough, could you state your actual point?

Ok, you know how people thought Cantor was crazy because he proposed that there were both countable and uncountable infinities? In retrospect, those of us who are mathematically inclined can understand the value of Cantor's work, since it gave rise to set theory and many more things that are clearly useful and important.

But they weren't always clearly useful and important. The value of Cantor's work was once so not clear that many serious and influential people dismissed and attacked it.

Would you like to not be one of those people? Then you should probably practice talking about why certain art is bullshit, and certain other art isn't bullshit, because it will strengthen your "is this bullshit" muscles, so you can more expertly apply those muscles to really important questions, like "are self-driving cars feasible within the next few years", or "do covid booster shots make sense".

I like to think that when you dismiss something as being ridiculous, you lose the possibility of integrating it into your body of knowledge. Cheers.

Art doesn't suddenly stop being art. I think what you are saying is if people stop discussing a thing then it stops becoming art. Art doesn't require making conversations about art richer. If that were true, the Mona Lisa would still be at because we still discuss it as art. But art is still art, even if people stop talking about it. And if a learned person days it isn't art, it probably isn't art.

> The Mona Lisa isn't "art" anymore; it was once, and now it's a pretty artifact with a lot of historical significance. But that's not art.

followed closely by

> Art is the kind of thing that makes educated people say, in public, "that's not art".

My point lies very much between the lines.

No one gives a shit about classically trained painters beyond upvoting their work on reddit, and even commercial illustrators struggle to make ends meet. The most stable avenue for working in graphic design is advertising.

It seems everyone has an opinion on what makes good art, but no one wants to fucking pay for it. The top 1% of artists are basically con artists trying to trick the rich into impulse buys.

>impulse buys

Or financial instruments for all kinds of shenanigans, to include tax evasion using freeports to park nearly arbitrarily-priced assets (the best kind!).

> The devaluation of aesthetics in favor of meaning make it unapproachable to those with no context on the subject, and unappealing to even those with context.

Your description of this phenomenon is perfect to me. I find it interesting that nearly the opposite has happened in some areas of music, but you still hear that the lack of “meaning” is what makes modern music terrible.

It's an interesting comparison actually. I think it's more common for people to say they don't like classical music than that they don't like modern music. There is such a huge variety of music being made that there is something for everyone. Whether that's hiphop, death metal or electronic.

But here's the thing, the same thing actually goes for drawing. There are a huge number of people drawing various stuff, such that anyone could find something drawn recently that they would like. Whether that's murals, concept art, manga, street caricatures or memes.

But here's the kicker: Music isn't defined to be the music played by the annointed elite. But art is defined as drawings (/sculptures, etc) made by the annointed elite.

> I think it's more common for people to say they don't like classical music than that they don't like modern music.

By "modern music", do you mean pop, jazz, or classical? Each of these (and many more genres, e.g. country) all have "modern" versions. But the idea of "classical" music is music that was itself popular when it was contemporary but has stood the test of time, so people continue to listen to it and enjoy it 500 years later. The same with visual arts, architecture, etc.

It is the same thing with literature. Some works flash into popularity, but 50 years later very few have heard of them or read them.

And so this is fundamentally a question of whether you are chasing fashion or permanence. There are good and bad aspects of both -- when you chase fashion you will find something unique to your time, but which just a couple of decades later people often laugh at or don't bother with. If you chase permanence, you have to make some concessions to the taste of previous generations but will benefit from hearing only the best of the very best.

It is the exact same situation with art, or anything that can be preserved across time. You have to choose between something disposable but more closely suited to your needs or something permanent but less suited to your specific needs because it is also enjoyed by others who are very different from you.

Classical music was popular with the elites when it was contemporary. But those elites were a tiny minority of the overall population.

No, Classical music was popular period. But the elites consumed most of the professionally performed music as it was expensive, whereas other people had to rely on friends and families who could play an instrument themselves, or go to a place where there was a free or cheap performance, for example Church. But just because the elites consumed most output of professional musicians did not mean that ordinary people did not consume the output of amateur musicians, especially in their own families, where it was not uncommon to perform music after a meal or during family gatherings.

Many families would have at least one member who could play the piano or the violin - more often the violin. Here is a noted British musicologist reporting on his travels through Europe:

"I crossed the whole Kingdom of Bohemia from south to north, and being very assiduous in my enquiries, how the common people learned music. I found out at length that not only in every large town, but in all villages, where there is a reading and writing school, children of both sexes are taught music”[1].

Yes, many of these violins made by local luthiers were cheap but by modern standards they were serviceable. In terms of people who did not own their own instruments, they heard organs and choral pieces in Church -- the Church was the primary provider of public music at the time, and sacred music was until recently the most commonly performed type of music, and indeed the development of Western music began with sacred music (the Byzantine empire was responsible for elaborating on the music of classical greece and giving us much of western music theory).

When public operas began to open they were wildly popular. Mozart wrote for one of these. This is much like the situation with restaurants. Originally the elites had private chefs that cooked for them. Over time, these chefs began to open their own business and cook for the public. Then over time, the food got cheaper with casual dining.

But this is not to say that people didn't eat traditional meals, they just cooked for themselves, as amateur cooks. So with music, they performed for themselves as amateur musicians. It is interesting to note that the first uses of copyright were not recorded music but sheet music, that people would pass around, copy, and perform for themselves.

But "free" public music -- e.g. apart from a wealthy benefactor paying for a public concert or something outside of a Church -- did not become widespread until the advent of the radio.

[1] The Present State of Music in Germany, the Netherlands and United Provinces. London 1775: newly edited by Percy A. Scholes as An 18th Century Musical Tour in Central Europe and Netherlands. London Oxford University Press, 1959) Cf. Chapter X, p. 131,32

This completely ignores folk music, though. Are you seriously claiming that classical music was more popular than folk music among lower classes?

I think they are arguing that if you played Mozart to a peasant, then they would like it despite not being able to afford listening to Mozart every day.

Just like how good food and Porsches are “popular” even with people who can only afford TV dinners and bus tickets.

The difference in usage isn’t a matter of taste or judgment, it’s a consequence of affordability.

  But art is defined as drawings (/sculptures, etc) made by the annointed elite.

This is false. It's worth distinguishing art vs popular art. I know plenty of poor artists that won't be in history books/museums that make very meaningful art, often eventually stolen by privileged artists.

It's true that some art -- and most big-P Postmodern cultural products -- require a lot of prior knowledge of their context in order to get much out of them, and I agree this is hostile to a general audience.

But first, some of it does manage to be engaging and even fun ; and second, I blame the universities and not the Art World per se. There's a lot of very idea-centric work in the museums and in private collections, but the stuff that (probably) makes your eyes roll is not a big part of it. And the business of speaking in a priestly tongue unintelligible to the laity is absolutely a product of our (mostly US) universities in the last 20 years or so. Art critics within that caste do their best to promote artists of the same caste -- and have done for ages -- but it only goes so far.

That said, this:

> Contemporary artists with any skill now work in classical styles, illustrations, or graphic design.

...is obviously and demonstrably false for, I dunno, say >= 90% of all professional artists making a living at it today. Which leaves you with a pretty circular definition of "skill" I guess.

While I don't know anything about art to disagree with you, I'd imagine people say the same thing no matter if it's 100, 500, or 2000 years ago.

I suspect the situation is the same with old appliances- only the Good Stuff survives the test of time.

They definitely said that about Monet and the impressionists in general. Lazy brush strokes and blobs of paint. People find it very pretty though and reproductions hang everywhere.

Still, I could not have painted like Monet or Sisley. I can, however, pick a marker and a canvas and write "I just did that" to reply to the "I could have done that" asshole. Then I'm sure someone will come up and retroactively insert some meaning into that piece of shit "Ah, yes... That is the purpose of that piece. It is to be discussed in a world where meaning itself is to be discussed. You understood it perfectly".

How about someone take a massive literal dump just under that metaphorical crap that says "I could have done that". Technically, someone looking at the two together could say the same thing about both, or mistake the piece of canvas as a label for that actual steaming piece of art.

I think you may have fallen prey to a common misconception about art: Art - not only the modern kind - has and always very much had a "first mover advantage".

It's not about the fact that you couldn't paint coloured squares on canvas Rothko-style. Quite possibly you could. It's that he did it first. There are tons of artists in certain Chinese villages who have perfected the art of pointilism possibly almost as good as Seurat (certainly indistinguishable for an amateur's eye), yet their paintings sell for a couple dollars, not a couple million.

You could also easily extrapolate your argument about scribbling on the canvas to the realm of software development and argue that creating e.g. Facebook or Amazon or Wikipedia is really nothing special. A few lines of code will get you a usable MVP. I'm sure you could have done it (I'm saying this completely unironically). However you didn't. Someone else did it first. There may be dozens or hundreds of copycats but the original idea and/or the successful marketing of said idea is all that counts. The rest is noise (sometimes rightfully, sometimes not).

Nobody would give two shits about me or my painting if I drew colored squares first.

Actually let me propose an experiment: Take two people: One a famous artist, and one an unknown complete amateur. Someone who hasn't held a brush since primary school. Have them both paint 6 pieces each in a unique but low technical skill style. Then randomize which artist signs which piece.

The success of the artworks will be strongly correlated with who is claimed to have drawn it, and uncorrelated with who actually did.

Well yeah, appreciating art and owning art are different things. Owning art is an investment, you want the possibility of selling it to someone else with interest later. Can't do that if it's not famous

How do you measure the success of art? I'd go with eyeballs per year, you've picked sales figures, someone else would probably say a third thing

Sorry for the ninja edit there, I kinda went back and forth, settled on a more neutral success.

Yes. There was that anecdote of someone bringing a painting and being told it was clearly a fake after examination because the real one was exposed in a museum. TL;DR: the one exposed in the museum was the fake, the real one was stolen, and that's the one the person brought.

Double-blind wine experiments where people talk about earthy-mushroomy-fruity tones, then have the label revealed are fun.

Wine's are a little bit different imo, because there is a definitely legit basis there just the border with bullshit and marketing is fuzzy.

My take away from those double-blind experiments isn't that it's all made up, but rather that people need to practice more rigor.

>I think you may have fallen prey to a common misconception about art: Art - not only the modern kind - has and always very much had a "first mover advantage".

There is no first mover advantage in a piece that says "I could have done this". Michael Scott from The Office probably did it first.

>You could also easily extrapolate your argument about scribbling on the canvas to the realm of software development and argue that creating e.g. Facebook or Amazon or Wikipedia is really nothing special.

That would be quite an extrapolation, though.

>A few lines of code will get you a usable MVP.

There was a documentary about Google on a french tv channel (M6) called Capital. The moment the narrator said "Discover how they built a fortune with a few lines of code", I left.

>I'm sure you could have done it (I'm saying this completely unironically). However you didn't. Someone else did it first.

I'll argue to your side: I'm not sure I could have done, but I understand what you're saying and I often say this to people who say "I thought of that idea" when they see something successful. I always retort: "Yes, I thought of Uber as well. Have I built it? No. We all have ideas we don't materialize".

Here's what I just did. Magritte style piping hot finger:

   __________________________________________
  |                                          |
  |    _________________________________     |
  |   |                                 |    |
  |   |                                 |    |
  |   |    I could have done that.      |    |
  |   |                                 |    |
  |   |_________________________________|    |
  |                                          |
  |                                          |
  |        Ceci n'est pas de l'art.          |
  |                                          |
  |__________________________________________|

> It's that he did it first.

By that logic Kim Kardashian is also a great artist. Because she is the first to popularize idea of being famous for being famous. As long as people, who claim Pollock is a great artist, also admit that Kim Kardashian is a great artist, I am good with the argument.

I'm pretty sure that was Paris Hilton?

In fact, from Kim Kardashian's wiki page:

> Kardashian first gained media attention as a friend and stylist of Paris Hilton...

And from Paris' page:

> Credited with influencing the revival of the famous for being famous phenomenon throughout the 2000s,[6] Hilton was, for a number of years, one of the world's most ubiquitous public figures.

The defining character of impressionists, was their ability to paint in the moment. Prior to this period, mixing paints was difficult, and most art was produced in a studio. Industrialization gave readily mixed paints that lasted. This gave people the ability to paint outside, but since they would only have a few hours to capture a scene due to lighting, it encouraged essentially "Speed Paints." From there, its all about being able to capture as much of the subject in the least amount of effort.

Art and technology and extremely linked. We take things like photo realistic paintings for granted, but these are only possible because artists can paint from a color photograph. Vermeers are celebrated because he was able to paint in a photo realistic manner before photos. But he was only able to do that with a complex setup of mirrors to essentially project an image on the canvas (or the eye using a split view setup).

Art has a long history, and aesthetics have changed over time. Techniques like Chiaroscuro and Contrapposto come and go. Highly developed cultures usually have highly developed art and vice versa. Art is usually a balance of ideas and aesthetics. No matter the contemporary techniques, the subject matter has usually been immediately recognizable by a lay viewer, and symbology can be decoded by the specialist. For example: is there a dove flying through a window and Mary is in the picture? That means God is impregnating Mary. But even without knowing that you can still understand the picture is of Mary and is religious in nature.

Post modern art is probably the most extreme example of destruction of aesthetics in the name of pure ideas. Sometimes people say modern art can express feelings that are inexpressible by language. But I argue that either 1) there was no meaning to begin with and its all self-derives and 2) it requires being a specialist to understand the art. Its the ultimate appeal to ego since no interpretation is wrong, since there was nothing really intended.