Laypeople look at Rothko and wonder why a guy who made rectangle blobs on canvas is better than all the other guys who thought of making rectangle blobs on canvas. And then you wonder what's the point? The point of art is, depending on your philosophy, variously to improve the mind or the spirit or to provide aesthetic pleasure; it's not to satisfy the intellectual pretentions of art nerds. The obfuscated C contest is a difficult intellectual pursuit and this wouldn't be hard to understand to someone who doesn't know C, but it is hard to explain how Rothko's rectangle blobs or Pollock's scribbles improve the human condition more than anyone else's blobs or scribbles except that these artists happened to fall in the right confluent streams of intellectual nonsense at the right time. The obfuscated C contest is not a thing where you say, "my five-year-old can do that", or that any other Joe could do that should he rub the intellectual establishment the right way. But we live in a world where we take stuff anyone can do and put it in a museum because it has some neat context behind it or something. And so the layperson is completely nonplussed.

If the artist creates something that he would want for himself, for his own living space, even if he knew that nobody else would ever get to see it, I'll accept that it's art, even if I can't stand it. If the artist is working on commission, the rule applies to whoever commissioned it. If it's something he would want for himself for his private island hermitage, okay, it's his art. Different people have different tastes, and this is his. And I'm fine with edge cases such as making things such as children's art under the sincere belief that he would have wanted it for himself if he were a child. I'm not trying for a legalistic definition, just a general principle that, to be real art, it has to satisfy the artist's personal esthetic desires in the complete absence of social payoffs such as statement making, money, being the center of attention in order to feel more significant, trying to build a reputation, etc.

If it would be something he would want for himself--a vibrant blue canvas in a color the artist finds mesmerizing, for example--then I consider it art even if he intends to sell it, get attention, build a reputation, etc.

I doubt most modern art could pass this test. I think most of it is just cynical manipulation of the pathetic and pretentious by the narcissistic and manipulative. If the artist wouldn't have any interest in it in the absence of an audience, it's just a product.

Of course, I can't know for sure what the artist's motivations were for a piece, but that doesn't matter. My definition of fraud doesn't require me to be able to spot it.

When [help me here] "installed" a live donkey "to symbolise his inability to come up with a good idea" that's piss.

That said there is plenty of excellent modern art. If you live in/near a wealthy city, this is easily verified.

I think a lot of the irritating attitude is the support of people who all do the same thing. Same way when your friend makes a new web app you're not going to say it sucks even if it does because (a) they're your friend and (b) you are going to want moral support for your next web app at some point.

I guess you are only applying this rule in a negative way - if people DON'T want what they produce then it's not art to you?

But if it's not something you'd ever want yourself but, for example, you made it as a vehicle to gain notoriety or money, then it's not art, as far as I'm concerned. I don't owe your childish demand for attention or $20,000 "statement about capitalist oppression" any reverence just because you claim it's art.

You entirely undervalue the social context of objects, including objets d'art.

A lot of people might value something because it goes against the grain of social and cultural context. Those things might be more interesting or provoke different thoughts or perspectives.

A lot of artists strive very hard to produce something new which is, at its essence, nearly impossible. The distance you have to go to get somewhere uncharted is vast indeed.

If people think art is easy they should struggle to create some themselves. It will take years to be able to produce something that isn't immediately recognizable as either too unrefined for serious consideration, too obviously derivative, or so done to death it's a cliche.

It captures the essence of the struggling artist, and their perhaps seemingly mediocre output, better than anything else I've ever read before.

Also keep in mind that when people look at art, they're often placing the artist somewhere along this path into the uncharted; appreciating their struggle and being curious about where they will move next.

I think what you are describing is "art I don't really see the merit of". Modern art - as understood by most people - encompasses Van Gough through Matisse, Hockney through Warhol.

Is the work of Dali an "allergic reaction"? How about Roy Lichtenstein? How about Jackson Pollock? How about Tracey Emin? Where do you draw the line here?

If you draw the line at the point where you stop seeing the artistic merit, and if you start defining art from that purely subjective view point, you're surely missing out. What about artists who fall just past the line where you see the artistic merit? Is it possible you just don't understand that work? Will you start to define art as purely mechanical skill? If not, where will you define it?

I leave you with: https://xkcd.com/793/

Because in the many times I have seen this argument, it always seems to go the same way. There is a Philistine sneering at some boring or obscure objects, and there is an angry Defender of Art who treads a fine line between (on one hand) a bland modern schoolteacher's orthodoxy which says nothing can be excluded and (on the other hand) a haughty attitude that the boring object is really better than some other boring objects - you know, to those with REAL discernment - and that the Philistine probably loves airbrush art and Thomas Kinkade and the pre-Raphaelites (hee hee hee). There is a huge dogpile of smug people on the Philistine, whose populist persecution complex is encouraged. The Defender (who often enough is just an undergraduate with a little art history or a 35mm camera), is just fueling the Philistine, and the Philistine is fueling the Defender, and so on forever.

If I am bothered by any specific art, it is the pieces which use yet another random object to draw out this same discussion we have been having for over 50 years.

I don't really object to a totally stoned view of the world where everything is interesting period, and maybe it really is useless to talk about art. That seems to me at least consistent, and not a perpetuation of the same crummy drama used to endlessly propagate the modern orthodoxy. On the other hand, if someone wants to actually try excluding something from art then that also provides a starting point for an actual discussion of some kind.

Did you add the "s" manually, for, I dunno, the sake of art ;) ?

I value aesthetics more than art. It's much better defined. Not everything that looks nice is an art, but in worst case you're left with something that looks nice ;-).

"Aestethics" doesn't really require anything to look good.

Personally, I think LMFAO[1] and Robyn[2] looks absolutely terrible. But that tickles some part of my brain, and I enjoy the aestethics of it, in all it's uglyness.

[1] http://www.starsentertainment.com/media/articles/images/l/m/...

[2] http://plusmen.blogspot.se/2011/06/rye-rye-never-will-be-min...

The whole "my five year old can do that" argument is a bit tired. That's similar to the arguments that music using electronics is not art, etc… By itself, why should the amount of efforts necessary to produce something matter at all ? Besides, a lots of people engaging in "garbage looking art" were actually very skilled from a traditional POV, but went a way where they would not use it conventionally. Note also that similar issues arise for older art forms: it is fair to say that most people are put off by classic zen gardens (e.g. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ryōan-ji). There is much less social proof at work there, and yet, couldn't you make the same argument about them ? Would you dismiss them as easily ?

Regarding Rothko or Klein, some people really like his art, without claiming to be particularly knowledgeable about art. Don't forget also that the famous stuff is generally a limited period of an artist production. Rothko did not just pain rectangles, Pollock dripping period was relatively short, etc...

Except Rothko was a lousy artist before he hit on the black on black rectangle thing. A study of his development as an artist shows somebody who is almost talent free.

I think the point is that much of modern art is so self referential that it has become almost devoid of any sort of external meaning. This is easy to observe. Sit for a few hours in the modern art wing of your local free public museum and observe as the man on the street barely holds back snickers and gafaws at the absurdity of some of the work.

I'm reminded of a tour through the Vatican art collection, perhaps one of the finest in the world. The crowds were bunched around some of the great statuary and paintings (even ones they didn't formerly know). Near the end of the tour, the viewer is thrust into the modern art collection. The crowds suddenly stop bunching and most people can't wait to get through it.

This seems on its face backwards. What should be more relevant to the modern viewer, statues of a dead religion in a language nobody natively speaks or religious art made by their peers and contemporaries?

I accept that you think he was almost talentless, but he wasn't. I think he was a great talent long before he became well known for the typical rothko stuff, and it wasn't just talent in the modern sense but also in the craft sense, when he was a figurative painter especially of new york scenes (try googling his painting of the new york subway).

Your anecdote about the vatican collection is a good one. But it doesn't mean that modern art is worthless, or even suggest that it is.

There's a lot of subtlety in rothko's brushwork that most people don't pick up on. Really they're large, complex pictures but on a different level from most painting. I saw about 20 of his paintings in the turner/rothko exhibition in London about three years ago, and seeing them in a space that suits them brings out their impressive quality, and it became hard to see them as "just rectangles" or however you want to put it.

First off, there is some truly great modern art being produced these days. I really think it has to do with the maturing of modern art as a field (see #2 below). Some of the recent Russian surrealists are producing astonishing stuff and there is some absolutely wonderful, delicate, sculpture art coming out of Japan in the last 20 years.

Something I've tried to do when helping my friends to try and appreciate modern art is to explain it in two ways:

1) It's important to understand a work of art as part of a continuum of the artist's individual work. I usually use Picasso as a frame of reference. He started off with a fairly traditional style, some really great stuff, and at a young age. He had a genuine interest and talent for the field. Ciencia y Caridad and even La Salchichona are quite good stuff. So when you look at Picasso through his career, and the transition into his later forms, you can generally see the progression and how he arrived where he did.

2) It's important to understand a work of art given the confluence of history and the actions/reactions of artists. Major shifts in art styles are quite often a reaction to a perceived dead-end to an older form. An older form may have evolved to the point that there simply is nothing more that can be said with this form...it's become an intolerable box of so many arbitrary rules that everybody's work ends up like everybody else's work. To jump out of the box might mean inventing a new form or new direction. Often works of art that are near the beginning of an immature style seem simple, silly or even childish. But those produced as the style matures can end up as quite wonderful. I find the music world provides several great examples of this happening, Classical music (e.g. Mozart) was as much a response to the cruft that had built up around Baroque (e.g. Bach) as anything. A more modern take might be minimalism. One of my favorite composers in the style is Steve Reich. His early stuff I can take or leave, endless experiments with phase and looped recordings blah blah. But some of his later stuff is sublime. Minimalism had matured sufficiently during his own lifetime that it went from screwing around with the interesting rhythms that appear when two pianos play the same phrase slightly out of phase...to intense, layered tapestries of sound that can fill a concert hall.

Try as I might, I can't seem to apply either of these very successfully to Rothko without ending up cynical. If I go with approach #1, I can't seem to come up with a narrative that shows a steady progression. Instead it seems like he simply bounced around from fad to fad, selecting whatever was fashionable at the time that seemed both impenetrable to the layman and required as little effort as possible on his part to paint. His responses to criticisms are usually layers of indecipherable Yoda-like nonsense. He didn't start as an artist very young, and after he did decide to take it up (in his 20s I think!) he didn't really seem to make a serious go at it. He did the equivalent of taking a couple of correspondence classes and hanging around with the currently fashionable crowd. When fashion changed (e.g. Salvador Dali's triumphant shows), Rothko simply switched to a hack tale on whatever was drawing the crowds. It doesn't seem to be a man driven by an insatiable passion to find his own voice. There just doesn't seem to be any sort of recognizable innovation in his work arguably until he starts painting big monotone rectangles. But that's like saying framing a paint sample the last time I painted my living room is "innovative".

Applying #2 is almost as bad. He seemed to be more of a hanger-on to the fashionable club of the day. In startup-ese, he seemed to pivot to the best selling, least effort fad of the year. "What's fashionable this year? Moderne or Abstract Expressionism? Which is easier? Abstract Expressionism it is! I can crank out like 20-30 of these puppies a day!" There's no real progression from his subway figure paintings to his surrealist period to his abstract expressionist period. He just bounces from one to the other. Art appreciation commentators and textbooks try and retrofit this into a narrative of him "stripping away the unnecessary" or "simplifying his work" but it seems like he just came full circle, from somebody who wasn't ever particularly interested in art, and didn't want to put much effort into it, into somebody who just couldn't be bothered in the end. He doesn't seem to fit in as part of the evolution of art since he bounces around between movements (but with the same hamfisted lack of polish or style) and doesn't evolve with them and he definitely doesn't appear to set a direction for the art world to follow in it's next evolving step.

Other than volume (why bother naming them, I'll do colors, then numbers for a while, but then I'll get bored and just not bother) there just doesn't seem to be any skill or point to his work. And there's nothing wrong with that, but we call those kinds of folks "house painters" not "artists". The East wall in my dining room doesn't need a title either.

(full disclosure, I've seen Rothko's work at the National Gallery in the specially constructed Tower exhibit, at the Leeum's small but really well curated modern art collection (though I don't think they displayed his works as well as they could have), the MoMA (of course), the Guggenheim in NYC and Venice, and I think the Musee D'art Moderne in Paris and have really tried to get with it w/r to his body of work including reading a biography about him at some point and watching a documentary about his life)

Sure, art is subject to personal taste, and I'm not saying that anybody is wrong in liking his stuff, it's just that I end up decidedly not enjoying his work and always leave with a cynical taste in my mouth no matter how open minded I go in. But as always with art, it's up to the individual to interpret and enjoy the art. Here's somebody who obviously does http://fuckyeahmarkrothko.tumblr.com/

That's the perspective from which I think it's totally legitimate to say: this is shitty art. Not the initial, "I don't get it so it must be crap" reaction. But trying to see so deeply into it that you can see the fraud or the idiocy.

That is why I really love Banksy in general, and especially Exit Through the Gift Shop. He has such a keen nose for fraud and pretense.

I generally like Banksy too. At first glance I like the aesthetic, and then when pondering a work, I enjoy the satire, symbolism, the cultural references and imagery.

And even if the final work is made in a few moments, I know that he spent time, perhaps hundreds of hours building out the stencil set, planning the piece, choosing a subject, etc. for the final image.

Here's an example: http://forum.deviantart.com/devart/suggestions/1745568/

I'm sure 99% of HN knows about J/K navigation and appreciates when websites implement it. But it's unknown outside the world of software development.

There's a bubble at ConceptArt.org, CGSociety, and every other place where people gather to talk about something. Art bubbles and tech bubbles have a similar problem: convincing people in other bubbles that what you value has value. The art in the article makes more sense when you see it as the product of a bubble. You would need to peer inside the bubble with a guidebook to know what you're looking at.

If you go to a general-interest science museum, they mainly cover science's greatest hist of yesteryear.

Not saying "some five year olds can do that" or even that the argument is ever meaningful. Just a cute video.

Too bad she'll either die of the chemicals or spend the rest of her life hiding from the fame of the past while trying to define herself, or worst, spend the rest of her life trying to retrieve the joy and vision of her former self.

If you don't know the story behind obfuscated C, but only look at the code listing as art, then many people would say "my five-year-old can do that", since it just looks like a bunch of random characters.

It is totally fine not to like art, and not wanting to invest time in understanding it. But there is a difference between not understanding something and proclaiming it "humbug" because you dont understand it.

Hence, art.

Literature is art, but literature isn't just a bucket of statements. Indeed, plenty of interesting literature makes use of things that aren't plain statements. If Upon a Winter's Night a Traveller, for example. Its title alone isn't a proper statement, and the book plays with that kind of incompleteness throughout.

The statement version of the book might be something like, "Incomplete statements can be interesting." But that's not art.

I am not nitpicking. I honestly don’t think any sense can be made from leot’s statement. If I am wrong, I invite you to refine it in a way that makes sense. Your earlier refinement (text is not the best medium for every message) makes sense, but the point is that art is not defined as “mediums other than text”, and therefore it isn’t relevant to the previous discussion about art.

"P1: There exists X in the set of (ideas, notions, feelings, etc.) s.t. X cannot be expressed as a combination of statements.

Humans get around P1 by using more than mere statements to express themselves. The consequences of their doing so might be called 'art'."

The word "statement", as opposed to "phrase" or "sentence", was used to draw a distinction between mere statements about facts-of-the-matter and literature. The implication was that "statements" are things like "the sky is blue" or "war is bad", from which semantics can be derived through syntax and the grounding of referents. In other words, I'm implying, here, that "literature" is not a simple collection of statements.

But regardless of the status of literature, i.e., even if literature were a mere collection of statements, are you claiming that every feeling, notion, idea (etc.) that can be expressed† can, in fact, be expressed via text/words/phrases? In other words, are you claiming that (a) language can express everything felt, thought, experienced? Or, alternatively, are you claiming (b) that no non-linguistic medium of expression can express that which is inexpressible by language?

†I'd use "communicated", but I fear someone might take the position that "communicate" only has a technical information-theoretic definition.

Tracey Emin, on the other hand, is nothing more than a name, as demonstrated by this masterpiece: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sir_Nicholas_Serota_Makes_an_Ac...

If it needs a long sermon to proclaim it's art, it's probably bullshit [1]

Modern Art - A Skeptical View [2]

[1] http://www3.sympatico.ca/manideli/Artsp.htm

[2] http://www3.sympatico.ca/manideli/

Consider books of Stanisław Lem and Gene Wolfe. You could say both are difficult to read science-fiction. Both use sophisticated language and long, intricate sentences. After reading several books by each author, I came to this conclusion: - Lem's books are difficult, but you're getting something out of them. They are thought-provoking, make you see the world or things they refer to in a different light, or contain things no one thought(or described in a book) before. - Gene Wolfe's "Book of the New Sun"((I read all of it and it wasn't my first Wolfe's book) is difficult for the sake of being difficult. They are references you are not going to get if you are not an euridite. The book is designed for erudites. It's still enjoyable to a point and the vision of the world is interesting. Yet I can't help but notice that almost all references in that book are hollow. They don't serve any purpose. Many characters in the book are named after saints. So what ? Nothing. Some stories characters tell to each other resemble other stories, from Greek myths and whatnot. So what ? Nothing. It's just a reference. The world is thousands years old, and it may be a distorted story from the past. Or maybe not. A quote from wikipedia: "for example, a backyard full of morning glories is an intentional foreshadowing of events in Free Live Free, but is only apparent to a reader with a horticultural background".

Having a feeling that I didn't catch everything I went to several message boards dedicated to Gene Wolfe's books. Surely they can explain what's so great about these books. But they fail to convince me. They keep blabbering about how Severian is an unreliable narrator (there are a few instances of this, but they're not easy to spot). So what ? Nothing. It doesn't change anything in the book, at best it adds another "what if". Severian is a slimy character willing to lie if it benefits him. Move on.

Gene Wolfe's books are huge collections of references which make reader feel warm and fuzzy inside for getting them. If you meet someone who likes his books, it's because they make him feel special and superior. Not because of a great story, action, thought provoking ideas or very memorable characters. Additionally, the books are a big wildcard. They are deliberately kept very vague and appeal to conspiracy theorists. They could be interpreted in any way you wish.

So there you have it - background knowledge. It can be very easily used - and often is - to woo the public because it makes them feel special and superior. When you explain it away, does it make the work more interesting (like Obfuscated C) or you don't care (like Gene Wolfe's morning glories) ?

I'm not going to tell you you're wrong not to like Wolfe. His is a very particular style, and I know people whose literary judgement is at least as good as mine who do not like it.

For my taste, though, taking an intriguing setting, telling a vivid story in it, and not spelling out all the answers is about as thought-provoking as literature comes. I won't pretend I can tell you exactly what happens at the end of the Wizard Knight or the Soldier series, but I can tell you that I've deeply enjoyed rereading them, and plan to continue doing so every few years for the rest of my life, and the mysteries make it more appealing to me, not less.

But the writing is really dry, some parts longer than they need to be, and majority of characters not memorable. I liked Jonas and the encounter with the mad autarch.

Overall, I would rate it 3.5-4 out of 5. It would be a great read if it was a bit more condensed.

As for the boards, they reminded me of the hunt for the fifth replicant among Blade Runner fans. The script was changed and the scene with one replicant was removed, but dialogue still mentioned 5 replicants. The speculations were batshit insane, until Ridley Scott simply said it was an error in the script.

Wolfe does have interesting ideas sometimes. The first book about Latro was fun in a perverse way. A character who completely forgets what he saw yesterday - yet he always found something new to say about his companions. They are shown in different light as they travel. It sure beats Terry Pratchett introducing the Librarian in exactly the same way for the 20th time. At one point the necromancer (in the classical sense) casts a spell and permanently changes to a woman. Aside from a journal entry for one day, Latro never notices. And how could he ?

In fact, in one sense your explanation is painfully ironic, as you seem to consider yourself morally superior to those readers who -- you claim -- read Wolfe for entirely superficial reasons. Are we really stooping so low now as to criticize people for their reading tastes or to second-guess their reasons for reading what they do?

Personally I derive as much pleasure from reading Wolfe as I do from Lem, although I would never compare them. And the key word is "pleasure": I, like I suppose most people, read books to enjoy them. I enjoy Wolfe for many reasons, but "moreal superiority" is not one of them. And I am wary of terms such as "literary significance" to guide my tastes; that's a term for scholars and academics to worry about, as a reader I am concerned with books and stories that affect me emotionally and stimulate me intellectually.

I see your point about Wolfe's complexity being more of a device and less about genuine depth. Despite this, I do enjoy the richness it imparts on the narrative. Wolfe's template is Borges, who uses similar devices and whose stories often have a sort of insular quality where the narrative only exists to create a clever gadget whose cleverness can be admired, but cannot be applied to anything outside itself. For example, Borges has a neat story, The House of Asterion, about a lonely person who roams a large house with many corridors; at the end of the story is killed, and we realize that he's the minotaur in the myth about Theseus.

As for The New Sun, I think that Severian's unreliability is more a ruse (or at best evidence of a flawed character) than an important plot point -- compare this to his Latro trilogy, set in ancient Greece, where the main character, having suffered brain damage, is unable to form new memories, and is therefore genuinely unreliable. The Short Sun also has a character who loses his sense of identity when his mind is merged with another's, and his lack of reliability comes from an inability or refusal to recognize who he actually is.

(Incidentally, while I admire The New Sun greatly, I found its two loose sequels, The Long Sun and The Short Sun, to be much more emotionally stimulating. It helps that the main characters are not borderline sociopaths. They are also less prone to the kind of cryptic connections that are evident in the first book.)

You must admit, it's not a crazy idea that they are being intentionally opaque because the decision of what art is "great" and what is "crap" is not being chosen out of merit, but by the whims of an insider few. Is it really so hard to believe that the artists who are considered "hot" right now are just better at working over these insiders who pick the winners and losers?

Remember I'm responding to the person above who was saying there was a very straight-forward explanation and way to understand art based on X, Y, Z, A & B. If that explanation is so straight-forward, they can probably fit it in a couple of paragraphs.

Regardless, I think saying "well its reeeeally complicated, so we're just not going to explain ourselves at all" is pretty indefensible.

Also, for most contemporary art, there is not even a critical consensus about the work. Most artists hate to describe what their work is about. They might say what experience inspired them to make the piece, or the feeling they had when they were making it, if you're lucky and caught an unguarded moment. And there would be as many reactions to the piece as critics who wrote about it. It's a losing game.

It's OK to want it, I'm just mentioning some of the barriers to it ever happening.

Yes. Yes that's exactly what I want to do. I want to spend a day at the museum, and read, i.e. learn, why some things are important and great art, and others aren't.

> for most contemporary art, there is not even a critical consensus about the work.

What? Then how is any decision made as to what art is featured in these exhibits, and what isn't? Remember, for every piece in one of these exhibits, there are 10 artists getting behind on rent who didn't make it in. Someone decides. Who? How?

If you're trying to counter my current argument, which is that this is all arbitrary and picked by some insiders at their whim, you should be aware that you're actually kind of helping my case here...

About "no critical consensus": Saying there's not consensus about meaning, doesn't mean curators don't know if there's value in the work.

Lots of times people know work is good, they just don't agree on why. It takes time to figure out whether it's a dead end or not, or to see where the artist goes with a line of work.

Here's another one: there's lots of work that is loved by even sophisticated collectors, but unliked by artists. (E.g.: large-scale paintings that "look like art" but are not new.) There's lots of work that is liked by curators, but not by many artists or collectors (e.g., work grounded in complex theories).

"arbitrary and picked by some insiders at their whim":

The artistic community operates outside your judgement and scorn. Go in expecting to learn something, and maybe you will.

Two examples here. The first was a plaque describing half a painting as being painted black for whatever reason. Sure, given the painting, if you stood back about 20 meters, it looked black. But from only a few meters, it was clearly a mottled purple and black. How can I trust the interpretation of the curator if they can't even get the colour correct?

The other example was another artist who took a number of photos of beachgoers, in such a way that most of them had a single person and a vast expanse of sand or water. The blurbs said 'exploring the loneliness blah blah'. Only problem was, the people in the photos were clearly enjoying themselves (one photo of a group of people 'looking off behind as if in fear' had the four folks looking back laughing). Add in to this that in my country, having a beach to yourself is bliss. In this case, the curator wasn't wrong - the plaques were describing what the photographer meant to capture. The context was that the photos were taken just after the 9/11 attacks and it was what he was feeling - isolation and loneliness. But I couldn't make those photos match that context.

So, lesson learned: experience art for yourself, then see if the artist or curator has anything which might add to the experience.

That might not be a bad thing if the response is: "That's garbage", which is my response to most "art".

Fair enough.

> Further, the "intention of the artist" is completely lost if there is no explanation, and the work is shown in a gallery without context.

However, some of the strongest form of art today (prehistoric cave painting) have lost all of their context and hope of being understood. I think we can manage without any explanation most of the time.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mBCa9WPHlWI

"Before the Fall, when they wrote it on the wall, and there wasn't even any Hollywood..."

If you're expecting that it should also be in your top 10%, well, then you have created yourself an expectation. If eventually that stops being fun, there are other things you can do.

If you want to understand it, go take an art history class. Then you'll have the attention of somebody whose job it is to explain basic art concepts to you. That's not the job of anybody at a typical gallery or art opening.

Give me a break.

I at no point said, "Gosh, you can understand all art easily after 3 sentences of explanation". Which you should have gotten by analogy; a layman can't get one of the IOCCC entries after a short explanation, and a non-gamer won't really appreciate Upgrade Complete if it's the first game they've ever played. They can get that there's something to get, but they can't possibly fully understand a work in context until they understand the context.

Either your friend's explanation improved your experience at that museum/gallery, in which case I say "Put it on a plaque", or it didn't because our understanding of art can't be improved by any kind of brief explanation and really you need to "take an art history class" as you directed us to do. So which is it?

My conclusion is this: if including any kind of explanation --short, long, anything-- can improve the average person's experience at a museum or gallery, then they should do so. The fact that they don't makes a lot of people skeptical about the entire thing, which is a shame.

Also, I didn't say that a plaque-sized bite of text can't improve things. What I'm saying is that you won't necessarily get a work after reading one. Try it yourself. Take one of the IOCCC works and try writing a short paragraph that will explain it to the general-audience viewer.

And I didn't tell everybody to take an art history class. I told you to take one. Because then your arrogant, entitled-to-be-spoon-fed attitude might possibly be appropriate when you're actually paying somebody to educate you.

Modern art museums are not somehow legally obligated to make you happy. (Neither, for that matter, am I.) If you don't like the way museums are run, you have a problem. If you want to understand the art, you can go put in the time like everybody else did.

* This entry is an entire flight simulator/3d demo/fractal generator/graphical chess program in like a quarter of a page! Wow!

There, I've already covered most of the entries in a very easy explanation. Oh, and a lot of them put the source code into a cutesy shape or substitute out normal "C" words to confuse the reader. It's easy to point out features like that too.

* The C language lets you list word replacements to apply to your program before turning it into machine code. For example you can turn every "NEXT" into "start_printer(); feed_page(); shutdown_printer();". It's a great timesaver. You can also use it to say 'dump this entire file here' and centralize code that's used a lot. This entry has hundreds of replacements and does that entire-file-inclusion over and over. It uses tricky methods with all this replacement to pre-calculate the answer to a math problem before it's even turned into machine code. So the actual machine code ends up doing zero computation before outputting the answer.

* This program was being cute. Normally it's tricky to write a program that prints its own source code, because it's like making a sentence that contains itself. But turns out that some compilers will turn a blank file into machine code that does nothing. And doing nothing means you get a blank file for output. They changed the rules after that.

The last example is like a good example about modern art. It makes a point and pokes fun at the rules but you can only make so many clever observations about any particular thing. Almost every winning IOCCC entry has a legitimate purpose. And you can explain the purpose. Even though explaining the joke will never be as funny as natively understanding it. In art, explaining the purpose (even if it's something simplistic like capturing a scene) can expose those pieces of 'art' that have nothing to them (like the ones made by people with too much superglue and a desire to be 'shocking').

Also upgrade complete lays bare its jokey demeanor in the first couple seconds of menu, before you even reach any references or old-school graphics. You may not fully 'appreciate' the game but you can certainly understand and enjoy it without being a gamer.

However, starship was upset that the plaques weren't sufficient to make him get the artwork as a novice. I think you'd agree that explaining each work fully is impractical; there's just too much context that's relevant.

However, that's sort of like going to a natural history museum and expecting to see the whole ursine evolutionary history and ecology explained next to every bear. There will be a little plaque with the basics, but the typical viewer knows a lot of the basics and is a repeat visitor, so they are expected to learn these things over time.

These days I'm perfectly happy to bring up Wikipedia when at a museum.

In fact, as I recall, there was such a plaque next to almost every exhibit in the entire museum.

You go back to the novel and reread all relevant passages. You decide that not only is facet=X an internally consistent interpretation within the canonical text, but that facet=Y would lead to a contradiction. (Hey, authors are fallible and don't necessarily imagine non-contradictory worlds.)

So what is the "ontological" status of the interpretation where facet=X and the interpretation where facet=Y? Throw in that possibly either the author's intention isn't easily described in extant words, or that the author had no specific intention regarding `facet`, or otherwise multiple conflicting interpretations can still claim validity. Maybe the authors, artists, musicians are smartest to let audience members enjoy the work for their own personal reasons, without ruining a perfectly fine interpretation some individual takes.

Ahem. 'Scuse me, while I kiss this guy.

If someone tries, he can inject enough meaning to any artform using historical context, including this http://www.viceland.com/wp/wp-content/uploads/2011/05/img_85...

But the point is that art should not be confused with history.

Artists grow up seeing art. They learn the techniques of the previous generation. But then they strike out on their own, doing something new. They spend decades exploring, growing, and changing.

I do seriously think that there are a lot of video games that are totally unapproachable unless you've played a lot of other video games. Try it sometime: take somebody who doesn't play games and sit them down with some top games. The amount you have to explain is incredible. To somebody here I can say "tower defense with shooter elements and a complicated skill tree". For a non-gamer, that's a ton to figure out; without coaching they'll just poke at it for a bit and walk away. But that's ok, because the audience isn't the non-gamer.

And then there are the games that are full of cultural references or in jokes. Upgrade Complete may be mildly enjoyable on its own, but the reason it gets such a high rating is the brilliant play with the many tropes and ideas of modern video games.

That's art. And contemporary art is generally like that but more so. Video games have to function as games, but art can be what it wants.

Taking your Obfuscated C contests as an example, even if the source files look like gibberish to your average citizen (or average programmer), you could at least explain why it's special. And it wouldn't be that hard to see, for anyone, why creating a winning entry takes a lot of technical skill and creativity and that not just anyone could do it.

Having said that, the best way to learn to appreciate visual art is to learn to sketch. You don't have to become Leonardo, but simple observational drawing is a great way to train your eye and brain to see better and as a side benefit you will understand a lot of the language of art better.

Not the only way by any means. Reading art history, looking at paintings from different periods, reading articles on art theory can get you going too. Talk to other people about the stuff they like; especially the stuff that puzzles you. Don't automatically assume that they are "faking it" or "being pretentious", though they may; people are people. But if a lot of people are interested in something, there's often something worthwhile there.

If none of that appeals to you, and you just want a simple, visual experience, look at art, admire the stuff you like and ignore the stuff that leaves you cold. Looking at art is a lot like listening to music. It can be a deep, technical experience, or a simple, enjoyable way to pass time.

Is that really true? Because there seems to be an implicit hierarchy of art. It isn't all subjective, otherwise art critics would be out of work.

>Having said that, the best way to learn to appreciate visual art is to learn to sketch.

I'm not knocking visual art, in general. I'm a terrible painter, so I can certainly appreciate the tremendous skill and talent it requires to create a masterpieces. What I'm referring to is art that seems to be art, only because other say it's art. In the article, there's a photograph of a woman sitting in a lawn chair. Why is that art and a random photo of me doing the same thing, not?

My reaction upon seeing something like the lawn chair piece would not be to automatically reject, but instead it would be an increase in curiosity. Why is that woman sitting in the chair? Why is it happening in this venue? Why should I care? An artist is usually trying to evoke a response of some kind. WTF is a perfectly good response to get someone's attention. From most artists point of view, the worst possible reaction is indifference.

If I have any criticism about modern art is that the ideas often really aren't that new anymore; the vein has been mined pretty extensively. Doesn't mean the art isn't any good, or that it has nothing to say, just that the term "modern" has simply become another label for particularly type of movement that doesn't connect with its original meaning.

Languages change too ...

Labels, like "art" are human conventions. They are useful in the sense that they can communicate or convince. If you feel good about not calling a work "art", rejoice. But don't be surprised when other people who dig deeper might occasionally find something of note.

Sculpture professor whose class I modelled for: "Most people are going to completely ignore your work [that you spent weeks on, had your ego destroyed by peer criticism, fixed, put your soul into, etc] -- or look at it for about three seconds before moving on. If you can hold their attention longer -- if you can make them pause for an extra five seconds, and notice, or feel something, then you've succeeded." (He said this to students, not pre-acclaimed people whose work you're supposed to like because it has their name attached.)

Relatedly: If you can enrol in an art class (eg basic figurative drawing) it's a great growth experience. You'll also see what I saw: many levels of skill, an array of typical growth-paths, how artists are trained to conceive of their compositions (or of the human body), how very skilled kids can create something accurate-in-detail but totally uninteresting, and so on.

What's the difference between hearing a bunch of squealing and noise and ugly chords (=jazz) as a kid versus knowing how to play horn and wondering how jazz greats composed the atoms they did? (eg "abrupt, dramatic use of silence" by Thelonious Monk -- "how can you abruptly PAUSE?" you say) -- how a human might develop to the point (other than pure trolling) that they conceive of that composition. Not to mention a lot of technical details like what's easy/hard to do with a brush/chalk/charcoal/yarn/limestone/camera.

Certainly some people play games with an open-minded (=gullible), trusting audience (of potential buyers). http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N0NIs1fOkQg There's still plenty of great, subtle modern art that a 10-year-old would not appreciate but a 40-year-old could.

I think something equivalent could be said for programming (journey from modifying a script that already works to understanding the atoms of the language) and there's some close-enough statement that could be made for painting / visual art. The journey from imitation to atom-by-atom originality.

Other kinds of art are no different. Heck, most interesting things are no different. Try listing criteria to distinguish a good programming language from a bad one and see how many people you can get to agree with you.

Coincidentally I watched two docs recently that touch on the topic of what "modern art". "Exit through the Gift Shop" and "Who the #$&% Is Jackson Pollock?", both were pretty good.

Fast forward to the beginnings of modern art and what we have is people like Monet and Van Gogh who demonstrate that aesthetics are necessarily tied to photo-realism. This leads to an eventual explosion is aesthetic experimentation, much of who's purpose was not any expression of the 'truth' but rather experimentation for experimentation's sake. As time goes on, the art community develops a tight feedback loop which ultimately leaves behind the idea of clarity in favor of novelty and ultimately forgets about accessibility which used to be one of arts most important attributes.

Art as experimentation isn't a bad thing, but it's an attitude that is radically different from that only a century and a half ago. People of a conservative bent often miss the old attitude and you'll notice that when the Right-Wing governments of the 30's took over, the first thing they did was resurrect it. (Ironically, the Soviet Union also did this.)

I don't want to see reactions. I don't want to see an artist grappling with themes. I don't want to see an artist exploring new materials.

I want to see a master displaying his work that exemplifies concrete themes and ideas. In other words, I would like to see defined, finished works as opposed to ambiguous, ill refined quasi-ideas.

Maybe that's just me.

I also like masterworks, but I'm just as interested in the human process that produces the art.

On the other hand, collectors who are rich, dedicated, and informed are a huge component of the total money spent on modern art, and are big players (iconic example: the Guggenheims). They can end up having a tremendous influence on the art world.

Bottom line: don't feel sorry for art collectors. And if you collect art, buy what you like! Not what people tell you you ought to like!

Indeed, I worry less about it with art than most other things. Most art I've seen is produced by people who are sincere about it. Their art may be bad, or at least not my thing, but they're not going to spend a month making something without meaning to them.

I think most of the real scams in the art world are at the very high end. E.g., I think Damien Hirst is a marketing genius and a weak artist. Chihuly too. But if you're going to drop $10k-$10m on a piece of art, I'm just going to have to trust that you know what you're doing.

Their stock in trade is irony piled upon irony forever.

It can perhaps best be summarised by this scene from Nathan Barley, a comedy about a magazine which is basically Vice: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aLAm21GwfXw

Primarily the last bit.

"It is not that the public has failed art; it is art which has failed the public."

If anything, the only problem I see here is the reverse: Laymen are expecting that all those things should be instantly accessible to them with no work.

My point in calling it art is that I think it's art. And that it's a kind of art that readers here are equipped to appreciate because they are steeped in the history and practice of the medium. My hope being that people will then draw the analogy between that and kinds of art they don't have the context for. E.g., cutting-edge contemporary art.

http://underhanded.xcott.com/

As much as I would like to agree with you, but, no, it isn't.

At the end of the film Guetta himself is having this enormous underground art exhibit and famous people like Brad Pitt come! But Guetta is not an artist. It is obvious that he's posing. To say he's emulating his heroes is putting it very nicely. The guy is literally going around an abandoned warehouse throwing strange shit together for the sake of it being strange, calling it art, and then people eat it up going so far as to say he's a genius.

The point is, there was no context. It was strange for strange's sake but it got labelled as art. Everyone is an artist. We all have the ability to be creative and make our own art. That cannot be debated. But what can is how much of it really deserves recognition and what criteria does a work of art have to possess before we can hang it in a gallery and say "that's real art"? For me, real art has a message, it has skill, it is intentional, and the artist puts a genuine piece of themselves into it that you can just really sense. But I digress...

I highly recommend the film, it used to be on Netflix. I think it's a perfect compliment to this article.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exit_Through_the_Gift_Shop

This is exactly right, in my opinion.

There is obviously a continuum from 'bad' to 'good' art. If this is no obvious display of skill, then it is going to be towards the 'bad' end, no matter how much justification you try to slap on to it. A painting of a bowl of fruit, even when done with considerable skill, can also be bad if there is no message.

Can we not accept people having different views than us (and quite reasonable ones at that) without bringing up the BS notion of "trolling"?

Trolling is what 15 year olds do at 4chan, not what a normal, adult, blogger does in an extended post with various examples and arguments.

>That's art. But it's art that most people in the world can't begin to appreciate. You need years of coding experience to really get it. You need context. When hackers sit down and study those works of art, they're not just posing. A lot of modern art is like that.

No. The obfuscated C contest is more akin to traditionalist art. It's not conceptual and it needs serious chops. It's just that the presentation of it is twisted (so, more like Dali, or Archiboldo, etc...).

While I wish I was trolling you right now, I am being serious.

Is an article in Vice magazine. Their raison d'être is cultural trolling. I tend to like a lot of their articles, but you have to remember that they are a free magazine with a shit ton of very expensive advertising that feeds on controversy in an attempt to appear relevant to the rich bright young things that they try to court.

This is the same magazine that ran a review of the drug adderall by mailing some to a Canadian farmer and asking him how much work he managed to get done while high. - http://www.vice.com/read/farmer-v12n4 - They are not the most serious of people.