And anyway I feel that putting our unnamed theoretical artist up against one of the all time great artists in history is a bit unfair. Anything recognizable as a Michelangelo will automatically win just because he's Michelangelo. Probably more fair to put him up against a second-rate contemporary of Michelangelo that most people haven't heard of if you want to remove 'name recognition' from the equation.

It wins because it’s good work, not because it’s Michelangelo. A Michelangelo work will win even when the viewer doesn’t know it’s Michelangelo or even who that is.

That the point: people will appreciate it without having to be told “oh this is the high-status guy, you’re supposed to like it”, “only the high-status people can see the emperor’s clothes”, etc.

This seems like a big assumption. Is there a study that tests this idea?

If you're going to demand copious evidence solely of the hypotheses you don't like, you're going to be locked into confirmation bias.

But yes, there are easy tests you could do: get the ratios of "can't identify who made this" to "I like this" for visitors to Michaelangelo (or any still-displayed Renaissance artist, really) vs random high-status super-edgy modern.

> Why is it a big assumption that most people don't need to know "This is by Michelangelo and he is a high status artist" to enjoy the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel (or whatever else)?

This is an entirely different statement than your original comment. Of course, you don't need to know Michelangelo to "enjoy" the Sistine Chapel, nobody argued otherwise. Your claim was that, "A Michelangelo work will win even if the viewer doesn't know it's Michelangelo or even who that is." This implies a measure of comparison to something or someone else, which is far different than enjoying a single piece of art.

Surely, there are people who prefer Bertoldo di Giovanni [1] to Michelangelo.

[1] https://www.artsy.net/article/artsy-editorial-little-known-s...

It is when you don't ask for the same evidence of the opposite, original assertion, and when the test you demand/clarify-the-existence-of is a strangely narrow test that no one would have reason to do in the first place because the core problem is that no one is subjecting the more modern art to that kind of rigor to begin with! (Which would obviate the whole debate.[1])

So yes, when you come in and single out my response as needing a very specific test before you'll consider it plausible, aren't being epistemically fair.

>Of course, you don't need to know Michelangelo to "enjoy" the Sistine Chapel, nobody argued otherwise.

Are we looking at the same thread? From earlier in this same thread:

>>Anything recognizable as a Michelangelo will automatically win just because he's Michelangelo.

The assertion is that the knowledge of Michelangelo and his association with that work is artificially raising the viewer's appreciation of it. My contrary claim was that it's appreciated as good work, more so than the garbage you see in modern art museums, because it's good, not because the average viewer cares about Michelangelo specifically, which dagw was saying that the later art does (apparently) require (knowledge of the artist and other "context").

>Your claim was that, "A Michelangelo work will win even if the viewer doesn't know it's Michelangelo or even who that is." This implies a measure of comparison to something or someone else, which is far different than enjoying a single piece of art.

It implies exactly what it meant in the original comment and thread:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29227817

That is, a comparison against the later super-edgey modern art.

[1] Except maybe the time that troll passed off a monkey's art as prestigious, which made the duped critics double down and say, "well ... maybe that monkey has artistic talent!"

Both of these statements can be true at the same time. As an extreme example, take the Mona Lisa. No matter how much you think it's a good painting, there is no way that people would travel from around the world in their thousands to see that painting if it wasn't for the whole story/mythology/history around that painting and its creator. It's not THAT good a painting. There are dozens of technically more interesting and 'better' painting hanging in the Louvre that those people happily run past just to see the Mona Lisa. Or go to the Galleria dell'Accademia and count how many people who are just interested in the David statue and ignore all the other, equally 'good', statues they have.

Or take an uninteresting commissioned portrait of a minor nobelmans daughter and tell people it's an original Michelangelo. They will all of a sudden find the painting much more interesting than if you told them it was by an unknown contemporary of Michelangelo.

And there is nothing weird about this. A rusty sword that you can prove has been used by a famous general in a great battle will attract more interest and attention than a rusty sword of unknown provenance.

All of this can be true without taking anything away from Michelangelo as one of the greatest artists who has ever lived.

The "acid test" of Renaissance art being more praiseworthy than the exhibits in modern art museums is that people can know nothing about the "goo" of the artists and still go away thinking "damn, that's awesome". The fact that some of the artists have "name currency" is noise in this dynamic, not signal.

If the best you can say about the super edgy, more modern art is that "oh yeah, people flock to see it because they think other people like it who think other people like it" -- well, you either aren't familiar with "The Emperor's New Clothes", or you sorely missed its point.

It seems you felt attacked by my comment, which was not the intent. Apologies if it came off confrontationally. I never asked you to supply “a specific test”, I asked if there was one. Not sure why you took it as a personal attack on your point. I was genuinely interested in if the topic has been studied/tested.

Ask someone, you can have a replica of a piece you've seen, maybe even in person, that has cultural importance to their religion and it is by {famous artist} or you can have a replica of a piece by {some other artist}. I'd guess they'd go with what they know, sight unseen.

But now we are no longer talking about them as art, but as interior design and decoration.

Also, I would not picked any of those for living room. Might pick dot for background screen. And this choice have nothing to do with actual value of either.

But equally, that is not what made Michelangelo a great artist. There where dozens of extremely technically skilled painters that lived around the same time, none of whom most people have heard of. So if you want to argue for Michelangelo as a great artists, you cannot simply say "well he was very good at painting and made pretty pictures". Lots of people did that, so why is Michelangelo famous today and none of them.