# Cards against humanity Picasso poll **URL:** \ **Category:** In My Humble Opinion\ **Created:** [December 29, 2015, 11:44pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/cards-against-humanity-picasso-poll/741689 "2015-12-29T23:44:14Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![amarinth](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/3be4f8/32.png) [@amarinth](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/amarinth)\ **Post date:** [December 30, 2015, 5:34pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/cards-against-humanity-picasso-poll/741689/21 "2015-12-30T17:34:17Z")
Those of you voting to save it, why this particular piece of art? What’s special about it or would you feel the same about any work of art? Should everything that someone calls “art” be preserved indefinitely? ---
**Author:** ![minor7flat5](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/minor7flat5/32/258_2.png) [@minor7flat5](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/minor7flat5)\ **Post date:** [December 30, 2015, 6:10pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/cards-against-humanity-picasso-poll/741689/22 "2015-12-30T18:10:53Z")
> [@coremelt](#): > > Cut it up. Its a print and not unique. Picasso would probably approve. I don’t think I would have the heart to cut it up, but I agree with you. This whole stunt sounds like just the kind of thing that an artist’s mind might conjure up. The act of cutting it up and distributing it could be deemed a work of art in itself, no? ---
**Author:** ![DSeid](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/dseid/32/20194_2.png) [@DSeid](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DSeid)\ **Post date:** [December 30, 2015, 6:12pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/cards-against-humanity-picasso-poll/741689/23 "2015-12-30T18:12:48Z")
Indeed I have thrown away some works of art that family members have made but then no one would care to vote to have them intentionally destroyed or saved or want a little unidentifiable wisp of it. A work by an established and deceased recognized great of which there are only so many of, that a museum would accept to display? Definitely on this side of the line. Really though, I’d even find it disturbing to go to a simple community art fair, buy a painting that someone spent many hours painstakingly creating, with the intent to destroy it for the fun of the destructive process. Even if the painting was of no historic or serious artistic value. That is not the same as saying it needs to be preserved indefinitely; it is just not placing a value on its destruction. In this case the choice is to make a donation worth about $15,000 to a museum or to instead go out of your way to destroy that potential donation. It really is in that sense pretty much saying that I have a 150 $100 bills in a pile. Just paper that only has value because we as a society have arbitrarily agreed that this paper has value. Lots of others of them around. Do we cut them up into 1.5 mm strips and distribute them or donate the pile? Is it better for me to have the kicks of causing the money to be shredded and to personally get a small unidentifiable strip or for a societal institution to get the whole value? ---
**Author:** ![scabpicker](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/scabpicker/32/8268_2.png) [@scabpicker](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/scabpicker)\ **Post date:** [December 30, 2015, 7:07pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/cards-against-humanity-picasso-poll/741689/24 "2015-12-30T19:07:02Z")
> [@kopek](#): > > I’m too much a saver to vote cut it up. I can’t believe they took it out of the box. And to all who say “it’s not unique”, as an art major who has done fine arts printmaking, and the husband of someone who concentrated and still works in the same, and owns a press: You don’t seem to really understand what you’re talking about. This type of print is an original, it is not a reproduction of another work. Also, due to the nature of the methods employed, it almost certainly differs in slight ways from the others in it’s edition. It’s a unique member of an edition of 50. So, yeah, you can probably guess how I voted. ETA: And any reputable fine arts printer will destroy the original matrix (in this case, the linoleum block) when the edition is finished. There aren’t any more where that one came from. ---
**Author:** ![Drunky\_Smurf](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/drunky_smurf/32/449_2.png) [@Drunky\_Smurf](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Drunky_Smurf)\ **Post date:** [December 30, 2015, 7:55pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/cards-against-humanity-picasso-poll/741689/25 "2015-12-30T19:55:53Z")
> [@amarinth](#): > > This, more or less. It’s not unique, it’s not even rare - there are 49 others out there that are not significantly different. It’s not priceless (according to the article, it’s only $14,000- as compared to a painting of his that sold for $179Million earlier this year). It doesn’t illuminate anything in particular about art, art history, or Picasso. There doesn’t seem to be any sentimental or emotional attachment to this exact print. And from what I can tell, there seems to be at least one more of the prints already on display in a Chicago gallery that is _literally_ down the street from the Art Institute, so the proposed donation doesn’t open it up to a whole new audience. > > It’s also kind of ugly. This. Cut that piece of shit up. ---
**Author:** ![Kent\_Clark](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/kent_clark/32/105_2.png) [@Kent\_Clark](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kent_Clark)\ **Post date:** [December 30, 2015, 10:32pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/cards-against-humanity-picasso-poll/741689/26 "2015-12-30T22:32:40Z")
> [@kunilou](#): > > Years and years ago there was a fable - probably in _Reader’s Digest_ - about the Commies taking over the U.S.A., where the teachers (who were now godless indoctrinators) got all the flags out of the classrooms by cutting them up and giving each student a piece for their very own. > [@rowrrbazzle](#): > > “The Children’s Story” in _Reader’s Digest_ in 1964, by James Clavell, author of _King Rat_, _Noble House_, _Shōgun_, and other works. > [@rowrrbazzle](#): > > In 1982 Clavell wrote, produced, and directed a film adaptation of the short story that appeared on network TV. I _ **LOVE** _ this Board! ---
**Author:** ![raventhief](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/raventhief/32/4_2.png) [@raventhief](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/raventhief)\ **Post date:** [December 30, 2015, 11:32pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/cards-against-humanity-picasso-poll/741689/27 "2015-12-30T23:32:17Z")
I voted “no.” This thread reminded me that i had to go vote to donate. ---
**Author:** ![wonky](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/wonky/32/393_2.png) [@wonky](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/wonky)\ **Post date:** [December 30, 2015, 11:42pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/cards-against-humanity-picasso-poll/741689/28 "2015-12-30T23:42:54Z")
BTW, Cards Against Humanity had me as a potential customer before this. We were talking about getting a set. That’s not going to happen now. They won’t miss me, of course, but damn. ---
**Author:** ![DSeid](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/dseid/32/20194_2.png) [@DSeid](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DSeid)\ **Post date:** [December 31, 2015, 1:47am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/cards-against-humanity-picasso-poll/741689/29 "2015-12-31T01:47:22Z")
The game is still good. And they are not deciding to cut the artwork up; just letting a certain self-preselected group of people decide. The product is marketed as “for horrible people” after all … being mildly (but not excessively) transgressive is part of the schtick. Giving this as an option is an interesting bit which if nothing else is fodder for conversation about art and marketing. Meanwhile I mentioned this to my visiting adult son, whose undergraduate majors had been in both studio art and psychology and who coincidentally is getting these gifts (the socks he got before coming to visit; the others are at home and he did not know this was one of them) and he is unsure how he will vote. Donating to a museum good … maybe they can sell it and use the money to buy something more exciting … but he sees a precedence in the art world to the “transformation” of one art into another and pointed me to [“The Erased de Kooning Drawing” - artist Robert Rauschenberg](https://www.google.com/webhp?sourceid=chrome-instant&ion=1&espv=2&es_th=1&ie=UTF-8#q=erased%20de%20kooning&es_th=1) [About it:](http://www.tate.org.uk/context-comment/articles/genteel-iconoclasm) > [@](#): > > Robert Rauschenberg was fascinated by Willem de Kooning, and in 1953 asked the artist if he could erase one of his drawings as an act of art. The result has become a cherished and resonant work from that period … The genesis of the project is well-documented: Rauschenberg went over to the master’s studio and said he’d like to erase one of his drawings as an act of art. De Kooning, apparently intrigued, had three groups of drawings. The first comprised those with which he was not satisfied – that wouldn’t work. The next was of drawings he liked, but which were all in pencil – too easy to erase. If de Kooning was going to participate in this neo-Dada performance, he would play his part. He looked in his third group and found a multimedia work on paper that would be quite difficult to eradicate (the media of Erased de Kooning Drawing are “traces of ink and crayon on paper”). It apparently took Rauschenberg one month to get the sheet relatively clear of marks. No photograph exists of the work he erased … It was a performative act – the erasing is the important part of it – resulting in a conceptual work (you have to know that there was an actual de Kooning that was erased, with the artist’s consent, to have full understanding of it) Still that was with the participation and consent of the artist of the original piece. To do so without the explicit consent of the original artist … still feels like a violation to me. And thinking about it the fact that it is Picasso makes me reconsider my stance … the man was a great but was also a shameless commercial machine producing assembly line style … there is some ironic justice to this end to one of his works. ---
**Author:** ![Kent\_Clark](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/kent_clark/32/105_2.png) [@Kent\_Clark](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kent_Clark)\ **Post date:** [December 31, 2015, 3:02am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/cards-against-humanity-picasso-poll/741689/30 "2015-12-31T03:02:02Z")
> [@amarinth](#): > > Those of you voting to save it, why this particular piece of art? What’s special about it or would you feel the same about any work of art? Should everything that someone calls “art” be preserved indefinitely? I, for one, am not in the habit of deliberate destruction, whether it’s called “art” or “that old shirt that I can still wear while doing yardwork.” ---
**Author:** ![foolsguinea](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/foolsguinea/32/14751_2.png) [@foolsguinea](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/foolsguinea)\ **Post date:** [December 31, 2015, 5:14am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/cards-against-humanity-picasso-poll/741689/31 "2015-12-31T05:14:00Z")
Well, it’s only a Picasso, but it seems pretty clear that destroying it doesn’t bring the game-makers nor the recipients of non-descript pieces of the print ahead in any way. ---
**Author:** ![hogarth](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/hogarth/32/1773_2.png) [@hogarth](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/hogarth)\ **Post date:** [December 31, 2015, 5:29am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/cards-against-humanity-picasso-poll/741689/32 "2015-12-31T05:29:09Z")
> [@Bricker](#): > > I wish I had purchased this package so I could vote “no.” It’s a terrible thing to do. I would prefer that they donate the print (assuming the museum has any interest in it), but I don’t think cutting it up it is a terrible thing – just pointless. ---
**Author:** ![Sepiachoice](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/ed8c4c/32.png) [@Sepiachoice](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sepiachoice)\ **Post date:** [December 31, 2015, 7:56am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/cards-against-humanity-picasso-poll/741689/33 "2015-12-31T07:56:00Z")
> [@DSeid](#): > > Meanwhile I mentioned this to my visiting adult son, whose undergraduate majors had been in both studio art and psychology and who coincidentally is getting these gifts…he sees a precedence in the art world to the “transformation” of one art into another and pointed me to [“The Erased de Kooning Drawing” - artist Robert Rauschenberg](https://www.google.com/webhp?sourceid=chrome-instant&ion=1&espv=2&es_th=1&ie=UTF-8#q=erased%20de%20kooning&es_th=1) [About it:](http://www.tate.org.uk/context-comment/articles/genteel-iconoclasm) Adult son reporting in. Yeah so actually I personally come down more on the side of cutting it up, but not for the sheer fun of destroying something meaningful. Personally I think the world is just more interesting, exciting, and though-provoking in a universe where a game company in Chicago put it to a vote which decided to cut up a small picasso print and sent tiny uniform scraps of it out to a community of customers around the world. I mean, isn’t that a great story and doesn’t it raise more interesting questions than the work, itself 1/50 of an unremarkable run-- would do even sitting in permanent collection at the AI? Even though CAH is not doing this outright as an “artistic act,” in my mind this spurrs so many of the same lines of thought that drive modern and contemporary art–why do we value, cherish, or protect certain etched sheets of paper and not others? What exactly imbues them with this value? Would we know or care about this drawing if we didn’t know it was done by a famous person named Picasso and was sold of almost $15k? Who determines this value and what happens to its value if we cut one up? Does the 1.5mm square have any special value by the nature of being a piece of a Picasso, or is it now simply garbage? How do the people who receive these squares feel? What will they do with them? In the timeline where this happens there’s just so much more to think and talk about. In the timeline where CAH never got its hand on the print, let’s be realistic, it would probably languish in storage or some millionaire’s bathroom. Does not this novel alternative fate represent some form of conceptual value-added? As DSeid mentioned above, I also feel there’s great artistic precedent for this type of act. A sense of intentional transgression just for the sake of starting a novel conversation, shifting a paradigm, or turning a sacred cow on its head, is a strong and important driver of modern and contemporary art. Another example I love in is the Italian artist Piero Manzoni who had his own feces industrially canned, labeled as [Artist’s Shit](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Artist%27s_Shit) and sold for its _exact_ weight in gold. Even though CAH are not making themselves out to be motivated themselves by artistic inspiration, they are doing something in much the same vein that I feel many contemporary artists would actually get behind. Lastly, I appreciate the fact that they are not outright deciding what happens to the print but simply setting up the social experiment. On their [official page](https://picasso.eightsensiblegifts.com) for the vote, they just lay out the two options and force the participants to decide. That being said it’s certainly subversive by nature–that’s what CAH exists to do–and I’m fairly confident their customer base is going to vote overwhelmingly to cut the print to shreds. We shall see tomorrow. Truth be told, I would vote to cut it up and make the world more interesting, but I bought the hanukkah gifts for my gf and she decided to use her vote to save it 🙂 ---
**Author:** ![don\_t\_ask](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/e68b1a/32.png) [@don\_t\_ask](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/don_t_ask)\ **Post date:** [December 31, 2015, 8:30am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/cards-against-humanity-picasso-poll/741689/34 "2015-12-31T08:30:39Z")
I think Picasso would have voted to cut it up so me too. I think Picasso is one of the most creative people that has ever lived. If you look at any of his collections the range of work from day to day is staggering. It seems that he would wake up one day and be a painter, then a sculptor, the next day a printer. I love the story of _Les Demoiselles d’Avignon_ the painting credited with starting modern art. Picasso painted it in 1907 but it wasn’t exhibited until 1916 because although Picasso had followed his creative urges he and his confidants didn’t know whether the result was genius or rubbish. With that willingness to push himself I’m sure he’d be interested in the artistic effect of cutting up one piece. ---
**Author:** ![Sepiachoice](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/ed8c4c/32.png) [@Sepiachoice](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sepiachoice)\ **Post date:** [December 31, 2015, 8:41am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/cards-against-humanity-picasso-poll/741689/35 "2015-12-31T08:41:40Z")
Other cases and concepts from the art world for your consideration: Banksy used some Damien Hirst paintings as a canvass, stenciling over them and displaying the result in a museum. This was presumably with Hirst’s blessing (though I don’t know for sure) but what would it mean if it wasn’t? Would it in a sense be more powerful? Would it be art? [http://www.artofthestate.co.uk/Banksy/banksy-versus-bristol-museum-044-hirst-roller-rat.htm](http://www.artofthestate.co.uk/Banksy/banksy-versus-bristol-museum-044-hirst-roller-rat.htm) In 2008, artist Mat Benote snuck his own work without permission into the Guggenheim. In one instance, he used a Robert Morris installation as a canvass for his “added art” piece, Lost Boy Hiding in an Abstract Field > **[Guggenheim Graffiti Artist Says, “Thanks for not pressing charges!” | NYABlog...](http://www.nyartbeat.com/nyablog/2009/08/guggenheim-graffiti-artist-says-thanks-for-not-pressing-charges/)** > > Six questions for Mat Benote, the controversial artist behind the recent clandestine "fine art graffiti" at the Guggenheim Museum. Not saying the CAH stunt is the same, just that they’re tapping into something that is very much out there. Subversive art, outsider art, graffiti. Acts of creativity that are not “sanctioned” by the institution. Does it disgust us? Why? ---
**Author:** ![wonky](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/wonky/32/393_2.png) [@wonky](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/wonky)\ **Post date:** [December 31, 2015, 2:41pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/cards-against-humanity-picasso-poll/741689/36 "2015-12-31T14:41:32Z")
> [@DSeid](#): > > The game is still good. > > And they are not deciding to cut the artwork up; just letting a certain self-preselected group of people decide. Of course they are responsible for it. Even offering the choice is the act. And I don’t care if the game is good. They wanted publicity for their stunt; they’ve got it. And I’ll act accordingly. ---
**Author:** ![scabpicker](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/scabpicker/32/8268_2.png) [@scabpicker](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/scabpicker)\ **Post date:** [December 31, 2015, 4:15pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/cards-against-humanity-picasso-poll/741689/37 "2015-12-31T16:15:09Z")
> [@Sepiachoice](#): > > Not saying the CAH stunt is the same, just that they’re tapping into something that is very much out there. Subversive art, outsider art, graffiti. Acts of creativity that are not “sanctioned” by the institution. Does it disgust us? Why? Well, from my perspective, it’s just boring to do. There’s no intent behind it other than publicity. Since destroying art has been done to death by both the thoughtful and the thoughtless, the only way this act would appeal to me is if it had a novel intent. ---
**Author:** ![Sepiachoice](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/ed8c4c/32.png) [@Sepiachoice](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sepiachoice)\ **Post date:** [January 22, 2016, 2:34am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/cards-against-humanity-picasso-poll/741689/38 "2016-01-22T02:34:03Z")
Update > **['Cards Against Humanity' Makers Won't Destroy a Picasso](https://www.newsweek.com/cards-against-humanity-destroy-picasso-chicago-413167)** > > In December, the people behind the card game Cards Against Humanity had vowed to cut up Pablo Picasso's "Tête de Faune" or donate it, depending on a vote. ---
**Author:** ![DSeid](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/dseid/32/20194_2.png) [@DSeid](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DSeid)\ **Post date:** [January 22, 2016, 1:15pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/cards-against-humanity-picasso-poll/741689/39 "2016-01-22T13:15:23Z")
Thanks for the update, number one son. Interesting that their vote went down pretty much along the same lines that people here voted and that the co-creator of the company considers this the “happy ending.” Although their 71.3 to 29.7 adding up to 101% makes our 79 to 21% look underachieving! :)) ---
**Author:** ![garygnu](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/garygnu/32/2924_2.png) [@garygnu](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/garygnu)\ **Post date:** [January 22, 2016, 5:45pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/cards-against-humanity-picasso-poll/741689/40 "2016-01-22T17:45:43Z")
> [@kunilou](#): > > Years and years ago there was a fable - probably in _Reader’s Digest_ - about the Commies taking over the U.S.A., where the teachers (who were now godless indoctrinators) got all the flags out of the classrooms by cutting them up and giving each student a piece for their very own. > … Incidentally, much of the apparent damage to the famous flag from Ft. McHenry that Francis Scott Key wrote about is actually from people cutting pieces of as souvenirs. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/cards-against-humanity-picasso-poll/741689.md?page=1)