# Art truely is in the eye of the beholder **URL:** \ **Category:** Cafe Society\ **Created:** [November 4, 2011, 6:33pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/art-truely-is-in-the-eye-of-the-beholder/601879 "2011-11-04T18:33:10Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![GuanoLad](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/guanolad/32/42_2.png) [@GuanoLad](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/GuanoLad)\ **Post date:** [November 5, 2011, 1:50am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/art-truely-is-in-the-eye-of-the-beholder/601879/21 "2011-11-05T01:50:18Z")
> [@Knorf](#): > > Every artist I know – and I’m guessing I know a lot more than you do – takes their work _very_ seriously, but are not really making any serious money at it. You may know more artists than I do. Or perhaps you don’t. I’m talking about the “artists” who are like the OP article mentions, just slamming together piles of junk and trying to sell it for ridiculous amounts of money. And those are the only artists I’m talking about. Con artists, if you like. Artists who are demonstrably applying talent, in paint or sculpture or, I don’t know, batik or whatever, and trying to create a pleasing or significant image, do not get my ridicule, even if the result is not my cup of tea. ---
**Author:** ![gwendee](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/35a633/32.png) [@gwendee](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/gwendee)\ **Post date:** [November 5, 2011, 1:59am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/art-truely-is-in-the-eye-of-the-beholder/601879/22 "2011-11-05T01:59:08Z")
In one place in the linked article it said the damage was the cleaner scrubbed away a painted puddle under the trough. The article doesn’t say how long the piece has been on loan, but unless it’s been in place since prior to 1997 the puddle wasn’t painted by the artist. Surely instruction for reproducing it must exist, no? The article also says the patina was damaged - that’s a different matter. ---
**Author:** ![I\_Made\_French\_Toast\_For\_You](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/858c86/32.png) [@I\_Made\_French\_Toast\_For\_You](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/I_Made_French_Toast_For_You)\ **Post date:** [November 5, 2011, 2:12am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/art-truely-is-in-the-eye-of-the-beholder/601879/23 "2011-11-05T02:12:23Z")
> [@gwendee](#): > > In one place in the linked article it said the damage was the cleaner scrubbed away a painted puddle under the trough. > > The article doesn’t say how long the piece has been on loan, but unless it’s been in place since prior to 1997 the puddle wasn’t painted by the artist. Surely instruction for reproducing it must exist, no? > > The article also says the patina was damaged - that’s a different matter. This [link](http://news.sky.com/home/strange-news/article/16103163) says the “painted puddle” was on the trough itself, and presumably painted by the artist. Obviously the damage cannot be repaired to its original state. ---
**Author:** ![beowulff](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/beowulff/32/542_2.png) [@beowulff](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/beowulff)\ **Post date:** [November 5, 2011, 2:20am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/art-truely-is-in-the-eye-of-the-beholder/601879/24 "2011-11-05T02:20:46Z")
> [@GuanoLad](#): > > You may know more artists than I do. Or perhaps you don’t. > > I’m talking about the “artists” who are like the OP article mentions, just slamming together piles of junk and trying to sell it for ridiculous amounts of money. And those are the only artists I’m talking about. Con artists, if you like. > > Artists who are demonstrably applying talent, in paint or sculpture or, I don’t know, batik or whatever, and trying to create a pleasing or significant image, do not get my ridicule, even if the result is not my cup of tea. No one is conning anyone. An object is only worth what someone will pay for it. If I create a piece of art, it may look like a pile of junk to you, but if a buyer appreciates it, I haven’t conned him into buying it. You obviously don’t appreciate modern and conceptual art. That doesn’t mean that the people who do are stupid. On the contrary, it may mean that they have a much broader understanding of what art is - it’s more than pretty pictures signed by Kinkade. ---
**Author:** ![GuanoLad](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/guanolad/32/42_2.png) [@GuanoLad](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/GuanoLad)\ **Post date:** [November 5, 2011, 2:37am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/art-truely-is-in-the-eye-of-the-beholder/601879/25 "2011-11-05T02:37:55Z")
> [@beowulff](#): > > An object is only worth what someone will pay for it. This is my main problem. And it stretches beyond just the Art world. ---
**Author:** ![Miller](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/miller/32/481_2.png) [@Miller](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Miller)\ **Post date:** [November 5, 2011, 2:41am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/art-truely-is-in-the-eye-of-the-beholder/601879/26 "2011-11-05T02:41:19Z")
> [@GuanoLad](#): > > I’m talking about the “artists” who are like the OP article mentions, just slamming together piles of junk and trying to sell it for ridiculous amounts of money. And those are the only artists I’m talking about. Before this thread, had you ever heard the name Martin Kippenberger? ---
**Author:** ![GuanoLad](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/guanolad/32/42_2.png) [@GuanoLad](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/GuanoLad)\ **Post date:** [November 5, 2011, 2:54am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/art-truely-is-in-the-eye-of-the-beholder/601879/27 "2011-11-05T02:54:34Z")
> [@Miller](#): > > Before this thread, had you ever heard the name Martin Kippenberger? No. I try not to pay attention to the modern art world because it irritates me so much. ---
**Author:** ![beowulff](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/beowulff/32/542_2.png) [@beowulff](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/beowulff)\ **Post date:** [November 5, 2011, 3:08am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/art-truely-is-in-the-eye-of-the-beholder/601879/28 "2011-11-05T03:08:40Z")
> [@GuanoLad](#): > > This is my main problem. And it stretches beyond just the Art world. So, we should appoint you the Czar of all prices? Whatever **GuanoLad** doesn’t appreciate is crap, and everything else is good? Maybe you should take a moment and reflect on the huge variety of personalities in the world - it would be a pretty dull place if we all liked the same thing, wouldn’t it? ---
**Author:** ![beowulff](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/beowulff/32/542_2.png) [@beowulff](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/beowulff)\ **Post date:** [November 5, 2011, 3:19am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/art-truely-is-in-the-eye-of-the-beholder/601879/29 "2011-11-05T03:19:22Z")
> [@I\_Made\_French\_Toast\_For\_You](#): > > From what little I know of Kippenberger, I don’t think he would have appreciated the cleaning lady’s fastidiousness, because he was a very fastidious artist himself. Very detailed, despite the “messy” look of a lot of his work. (I love stuff like that Prada project, though!) > > As for the “is it art?” discussion: I’m always shocked when someone questions the validity of a well-known artist’s modern work. It’s 2011. Stuff similar in tone to the artwork in the OP has been around for almost a hundred years now, if not longer. When you say modern art “is not real art,” you’re not being stubborn and old-fashioned. You’re being perverse and _ancient_-fashioned. [BTW, here is a photo I took of Prada Marfa on 6/24/2008.](http://farm7.static.flickr.com/6033/6314077194_e00a926a98_b.jpg) ---
**Author:** ![GuanoLad](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/guanolad/32/42_2.png) [@GuanoLad](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/GuanoLad)\ **Post date:** [November 5, 2011, 3:25am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/art-truely-is-in-the-eye-of-the-beholder/601879/30 "2011-11-05T03:25:14Z")
> [@beowulff](#): > > So, we should appoint you the Czar of all prices? Whatever **GuanoLad** doesn’t appreciate is crap, and everything else is good? > > Maybe you should take a moment and reflect on the huge variety of personalities in the world - it would be a pretty dull place if we all liked the same thing, wouldn’t it? Wow, you seem to be overreacting a little to what is essentially just my own opinion, though I believe it wholeheartedly. I am disappointed that some of the Modern Art world is made up of selfish opportunistic people, with arrogant fools who fall for it. Stop the Presses, what a revelation! ---
**Author:** ![I\_Made\_French\_Toast\_For\_You](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/858c86/32.png) [@I\_Made\_French\_Toast\_For\_You](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/I_Made_French_Toast_For_You)\ **Post date:** [November 5, 2011, 3:31am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/art-truely-is-in-the-eye-of-the-beholder/601879/31 "2011-11-05T03:31:43Z")
> [@beowulff](#): > > [BTW, here is a photo I took of Prada Marfa on 6/24/2008.](http://farm7.static.flickr.com/6033/6314077194_e00a926a98_b.jpg) From [wikipedia](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prada_Marfa): “A few days after Prada Marfa was officially revealed, the installation was vandalized. The building was broken into and all of its contents (six handbags and 14 right footed shoes) were stolen, and the word “Dumb” and the phrase “Dum Dum” were spray painted on the sides of the structure.” Now that’s some art criticism I think we all can appreciate. ---
**Author:** ![Inner\_Stickler](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/inner_stickler/32/318_2.png) [@Inner\_Stickler](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Inner_Stickler)\ **Post date:** [November 5, 2011, 3:33am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/art-truely-is-in-the-eye-of-the-beholder/601879/32 "2011-11-05T03:33:12Z")
Your thesis remains unproven though. You have yet to demonstrate that the artists are selfish or opportunistic and the buyers fools. It looks to me like you are irritated that someone will pay a lot of money for something you don’t like and therefore they must be an idiot and the creator greedy. Real nuanced viewpoint, there. ---
**Author:** ![Chefguy](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/chefguy/32/138_2.png) [@Chefguy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chefguy)\ **Post date:** [November 5, 2011, 3:49am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/art-truely-is-in-the-eye-of-the-beholder/601879/33 "2011-11-05T03:49:55Z")
We had a cleaning lady back in our salad days. Being Lisbon, she was Portuguese. And she spoke no English. I gave her a bottle of lemon oil to use on some wood items and came home to find the stuff dripping off of the TV, the stereo, and every other surface. Perhaps this cleaning woman was also not a native English speaker? ---
**Author:** ![GuanoLad](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/guanolad/32/42_2.png) [@GuanoLad](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/GuanoLad)\ **Post date:** [November 5, 2011, 3:54am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/art-truely-is-in-the-eye-of-the-beholder/601879/34 "2011-11-05T03:54:50Z")
> [@Inner\_Stickler](#): > > Your thesis remains unproven though. It’s hard to prove what artists genuinely think about their own artwork, especially when they’re desperately trying to sell it. I think I will leave this thread, I’ve hijacked it a bit and am not expressing myself very well. ---
**Author:** ![Miller](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/miller/32/481_2.png) [@Miller](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Miller)\ **Post date:** [November 5, 2011, 4:06am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/art-truely-is-in-the-eye-of-the-beholder/601879/35 "2011-11-05T04:06:17Z")
> [@GuanoLad](#): > > I am disappointed that some of the Modern Art world is made up of selfish opportunistic people, with arrogant fools who fall for it. Stop the Presses, what a revelation! You have a remarkable amount of insight into a world that, by your own admission, you don’t pay any attention to. I suppose that’s part of your uncanny ability to detect a fraudulent career based off of one 160 x 160, poorly cropped image of a single work, while people who have been studying and writing about his career, possibly for longer than you’ve been alive, were utterly taken in. Have you considered a career in law enforcement? A man of your talents could go far in that field, I should think. Incidentally, while we have an expert on the subject handy, can you explain exactly _how_ this is a con? The provenance of the work does not appear to be in question - it was, indeed, created by Martin Kippenberger. And I’m not aware that Kippenberger ever lied about the contents of his work. It’s not like he said he was selling a load of gold bullion and precious gems, and then showed up with a trough and some 2x4s. People who bought his sculpture got exactly what he said they were getting: a painted rubber trough and some slats, placed in a particular configuration. As a work of conceptual art, the value is in the idea behind the sculpture, not the sculpture itself, and if Kippenberger came up with a sufficiently convincing justification for his sculpture that people were willing to pay for it… well, I’m hard pressed to understand how that’s a con, even if Kippenberger himself did not believe the justification he gave. He presented an idea to the market, and the market found the idea to have merit. Where’s the dishonesty in that? ---
**Author:** ![Inner\_Stickler](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/inner_stickler/32/318_2.png) [@Inner\_Stickler](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Inner_Stickler)\ **Post date:** [November 5, 2011, 4:25am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/art-truely-is-in-the-eye-of-the-beholder/601879/36 "2011-11-05T04:25:44Z")
> [@GuanoLad](#): > > It’s hard to prove what artists genuinely think about their own artwork, especially when they’re desperately trying to sell it. If I’m an artist who works solely in the medium of arranged dominos and my work sells for thousands of dollars and people wax poetic over my understanding of the state of Man and the dichotomy of Culture and Relevance but personally I think it’s all a bunch of hooey and spend my days dumping dominos pn the ground and naming them esoteric things like Cityscape #7 and The Fall of the Angel Gabriel, if I never tell anyone my true thoughts, and then I die, does it matter what I really thought? No. ---
**Author:** ![Knorf](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/58956e/32.png) [@Knorf](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Knorf)\ **Post date:** [November 5, 2011, 4:43am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/art-truely-is-in-the-eye-of-the-beholder/601879/37 "2011-11-05T04:43:03Z")
Look, if you really want to make a lot of money deceiving people and making them want things that are actually rubbish, there are much better ways of doing that than by making art. ---
**Author:** ![GuanoLad](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/guanolad/32/42_2.png) [@GuanoLad](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/GuanoLad)\ **Post date:** [November 5, 2011, 5:01am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/art-truely-is-in-the-eye-of-the-beholder/601879/38 "2011-11-05T05:01:08Z")
> [@Miller](#): > > People who bought his sculpture got exactly what he said they were getting: a painted rubber trough and some slats, placed in a particular configuration. > > … > > He presented an idea to the market, and the market found the idea to have merit. Where’s the dishonesty in that? “Con” may not be the right term, then. But what you describe is what I don’t like. They buy it believing it has artistic merit, when he made it knowing it did not. (I don’t know if Kippenberger thought that really, but I could certainly believe it of him, and of most other artists in similar situations). > [@Inner\_Stickler](#): > > …does it matter what I really thought? No. I think it should matter. I wrote [a blog post](http://guanolad.blogspot.com/2011/11/arts-crock.html) that sort of half-addresses some of my annoyance at this kind of thing. Maybe that will clarify my stance. ---
**Author:** ![panache45](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/panache45/32/64_2.png) [@panache45](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/panache45)\ **Post date:** [November 5, 2011, 5:16am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/art-truely-is-in-the-eye-of-the-beholder/601879/39 "2011-11-05T05:16:34Z")
> [@GuanoLad](#): > > The artists are laughing at those fools all the way to the bank. I am an artist, and considering how long it takes me to finish one piece, I’m making far below minimum wage. ---
**Author:** ![The\_Hamster\_King](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/8edcca/32.png) [@The\_Hamster\_King](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/The_Hamster_King)\ **Post date:** [November 5, 2011, 5:19am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/art-truely-is-in-the-eye-of-the-beholder/601879/40 "2011-11-05T05:19:04Z")
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