# Is modern art easy money or hard earned cash? **URL:** \ **Category:** Cafe Society\ **Created:** [September 21, 2010, 1:56pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-modern-art-easy-money-or-hard-earned-cash/554535 "2010-09-21T13:56:53Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 8
**Author:** ![CandidGamera](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/candidgamera/32/2878_2.png) [@CandidGamera](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/CandidGamera)\ **Post date:** [September 28, 2010, 1:46pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-modern-art-easy-money-or-hard-earned-cash/554535/141 "2010-09-28T13:46:08Z")
> [@panache45](#): > > Then there’s Jackson Pollack. He eliminated the woman entirely. His work doesn’t “resemble” anything in our experience . . . it is a direct communication between the artist and the viewer, entirely omitting the third element that Da Vinci and Picasso had included. > > So when you say that “you can objectively judge art by how closely it resembles what it purports to depict,” you first have to ask yourself what it purports to depict. Da Vinci and Picasso and Pollack did not “purport to depict” the same thing. Pollack’s paintings communicate between the artist and the viewer in the same manner as a Rorschach Ink Blot. Except, in color. Communication depends on a common frame of reference. The more of that frame of reference you strip away, the less communication you can achieve. ---
**Author:** ![CandidGamera](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/candidgamera/32/2878_2.png) [@CandidGamera](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/CandidGamera)\ **Post date:** [September 28, 2010, 1:47pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-modern-art-easy-money-or-hard-earned-cash/554535/142 "2010-09-28T13:47:59Z")
> [@Ravenman](#): > > > [@CandidGamera](#): > > > > Photographs don’t ‘purport to depict’ something. They are an actual visual record of a thing. > > I’m sorry, but you’re still wrong here. The “actual visual record” is as deceptive as the artist wants it to be, even without fooling around with airbrushes or Photoshop. > > [Proof.](http://thechive.com/2010/09/23/pictures-that-are-not-what-they-seem-24-photos/) This proves two things : Jack, and Shit. Those photographs are actual visual records of things. So they use forced perspective to create optical illusions - they’re still actual visual records. ---
**Author:** ![CandidGamera](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/candidgamera/32/2878_2.png) [@CandidGamera](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/CandidGamera)\ **Post date:** [September 28, 2010, 1:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-modern-art-easy-money-or-hard-earned-cash/554535/143 "2010-09-28T13:54:29Z")
> [@Miller](#): > > And why shouldn’t what you’ve said apply equally to photography? The end result is the same: a visual rendering on a two dimensional plane. Does it matter, from the viewer’s perspective, if that rendering was created in oil paint, water color, or silver halide? The distinction becomes even more arbitrary when you consider that abstract and expressionistic art can be created with a camera as well as a paintbrush. The terms we’re discussing here are ideas, not techniques. They can be expressed in any visual medium. Well, I wasn’t talking about photography, nor did I imply that I was talking about photography, so if you want to take what I said and apply it to photography, or the aesthetic design of whole-wheat crackers, you can, but that’s all on you. > [@](#): > > Lastly, the idea that photographs don’t have any artifice in them is absurd enough that I don’t think I have to specifically rebut it here. Didn’t say that, nor did I imply it. > [@](#): > > Pretending an argument does not exist is not the same as disproving that argument. The inherent superiority of photography is a natural, logical extension of your premise. You can’t get around that by declaring, on your own authority, that photography is outside the context of the discussion. It isn’t an extension of my premise. We’re talking about emulation of reality in art as a criteria - a photographer doesn’t emulate reality. He doesn’t have to have skilled brushstrokes to reproduce an image. His art is in the selection of lighting, framing of shots, et cetera. Utterly and completely different than a painter or sculptor. I’m absolutely baffled as to how anyone could conflate the two. ---
**Author:** ![CandidGamera](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/candidgamera/32/2878_2.png) [@CandidGamera](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/CandidGamera)\ **Post date:** [September 28, 2010, 1:58pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-modern-art-easy-money-or-hard-earned-cash/554535/144 "2010-09-28T13:58:29Z")
> [@suranyi](#): > > I think everybody is misunderstanding him: He’s not saying that there are objective ways to measure the value of art, and these objective ways are the correct ways to value them; he’s saying these objective ways are the INCORRECT ways to value them – the correct ways are the subjective ways that everybody DOES value art. He’s just saying that there can be completely arbitrary, mathematical, objective ways to value art if we really want to do that – but we don’t, and we shouldn’t. Not quite. Almost. I’m \*\*not \*\*saying we should value art subjectively. Valuing art objectively is \*\*not \*\*incorrect. Valuing art subjectively isn’t incorrect either. ---
**Author:** ![WordMan](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/e8c25b/32.png) [@WordMan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/WordMan)\ **Post date:** [September 28, 2010, 2:28pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-modern-art-easy-money-or-hard-earned-cash/554535/145 "2010-09-28T14:28:29Z")
> [@CandidGamera](#): > > > [@suranyi](#): > > > > I think I understant him now: I think he’s saying that there are objective criteria one can use to to judge art, but they are meaningless in the way that people actually do judge art. So nobody actually judges art in any objective way. > > > > In that sense I think he’s probably right. And in fact you are agreeing with him, but don’t know it. > > Thank you. Yes. Exactly. This seems self-evident and, ultimately, a re-statement of “beauty is in the eye of the beholder.” Fine by me. ---
**Author:** ![CandidGamera](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/candidgamera/32/2878_2.png) [@CandidGamera](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/CandidGamera)\ **Post date:** [September 28, 2010, 3:09pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-modern-art-easy-money-or-hard-earned-cash/554535/146 "2010-09-28T15:09:19Z")
> [@WordMan](#): > > > [@CandidGamera](#): > > > > Thank you. Yes. Exactly. > > This seems self-evident and, ultimately, a re-statement of “beauty is in the eye of the beholder.” > > Fine by me. Excellent. Now to tie it back to the reason I was in the thread in the first place - I personally gravitate towards evaluating things objectively. I’m not suggesting that other people are wrong for doing it differently. But because of my deep-seated craving for objective value, I consider non-representational art, in most cases, worthless. Ergo, my answer to the OP’s question is that it’s essentially a ‘con’ - subjective value built up by a combination of hype and good fortune. That’s my opinion on the matter, and the reasoning that has informed that opinion. ---
**Author:** ![WordMan](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/e8c25b/32.png) [@WordMan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/WordMan)\ **Post date:** [September 28, 2010, 3:27pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-modern-art-easy-money-or-hard-earned-cash/554535/147 "2010-09-28T15:27:57Z")
> [@CandidGamera](#): > > > [@WordMan](#): > > > > This seems self-evident and, ultimately, a re-statement of “beauty is in the eye of the beholder.” > > > > Fine by me. > > Excellent. Now to tie it back to the reason I was in the thread in the first place - I personally gravitate towards evaluating things objectively. I’m not suggesting that other people are wrong for doing it differently. But because of my deep-seated craving for objective value, I consider non-representational art, in most cases, worthless. Ergo, my answer to the OP’s question is that it’s essentially a ‘con’ - subjective value built up by a combination of hype and good fortune. > > That’s my opinion on the matter, and the reasoning that has informed that opinion. It sounds like what you are saying is that the traditional criteria that can be used to judge representational art are what you are more comfortable with - even though art is YMMV, at least you can rate the “rendering” of the subject with an objective base. The very challenge that Modern Art embodies is just that - asking a viewer to explicitly realize that \*other criteria matter _when deciding what is Art - and you don’t realize how much you depend on those criteria. While you think you may be evaluating a painting of a vase of flowers on its objective qualities,_ you are also deciding whether it even counts as art \*- which you feel comfortable doing because you “know the rules.” But with a Warhol soup can or Pollack’s drip canvases - they are forcing viewers to realize that they have assumptions about what art is that they (the viewers) may not question. With the case of some Modern Art, getting viewers to realize that they have assumptions and to question them is Mission Accomplished… ---
**Author:** ![CandidGamera](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/candidgamera/32/2878_2.png) [@CandidGamera](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/CandidGamera)\ **Post date:** [September 28, 2010, 5:00pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-modern-art-easy-money-or-hard-earned-cash/554535/148 "2010-09-28T17:00:24Z")
> [@WordMan](#): > > It sounds like what you are saying is that the traditional criteria that can be used to judge representational art are what you are more comfortable with - even though art is YMMV, at least you can rate the “rendering” of the subject with an objective base. > > The very challenge that Modern Art embodies is just that - asking a viewer to explicitly realize that \*other criteria matter _when deciding what is Art - and you don’t realize how much you depend on those criteria. While you think you may be evaluating a painting of a vase of flowers on its objective qualities,_ you are also deciding whether it even counts as art \*- which you feel comfortable doing because you “know the rules.” But with a Warhol soup can or Pollack’s drip canvases - they are forcing viewers to realize that they have assumptions about what art is that they (the viewers) may not question. With the case of some Modern Art, getting viewers to realize that they have assumptions and to question them is Mission Accomplished… Everything is art and nothing is art. I’m not saying Pollock’s work isn’t art. I’m saying I don’t think it’s worth a damn. To expand on that a little : The argument you’re attributing to Modern Art - challenging conceptions of what is and isn’t art - assumes that there is a right answer of what is and isn’t art. That assumption, as far as I can tell, is utterly unjustified - no one has a definition that is satisfactory as to what is and isn’t art. Therefore, the argument modern art tries to make, in your view, is utterly moot from my view. ---
**Author:** ![WordMan](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/e8c25b/32.png) [@WordMan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/WordMan)\ **Post date:** [September 28, 2010, 5:29pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-modern-art-easy-money-or-hard-earned-cash/554535/149 "2010-09-28T17:29:39Z")
> [@CandidGamera](#): > > Everything is art and nothing is art. I’m not saying Pollock’s work isn’t art. I’m saying I don’t think it’s worth a damn. > > To expand on that a little : The argument you’re attributing to Modern Art - challenging conceptions of what is and isn’t art - assumes that there is a right answer of what is and isn’t art. That assumption, as far as I can tell, is utterly unjustified - no one has a definition that is satisfactory as to what is and isn’t art. Therefore, the argument modern art tries to make, in your view, is utterly moot from my view. I get your basic concept and see how it would work in a lab environment, i.e., as a thought experiment. But we live in a context of multiple dimensions - our historical, social, geo-political context; the status of art and art criticism is a context, etc. And so while there can be “no” fixed definition of What is Art, there are \*working \*definitions that exist and overlap and fade, etc. But just like in Economics all fixed costs vary over time, there are active definitions that can be treated as fixed in a timeframe… ---
**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:** [September 28, 2010, 5:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-modern-art-easy-money-or-hard-earned-cash/554535/150 "2010-09-28T17:54:55Z")
> [@CandidGamera](#): > > …no one has a definition that is satisfactory as to what is and isn’t art… That is entirely the point, y’know. ---
**Author:** ![TruCelt](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/trucelt/32/523_2.png) [@TruCelt](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/TruCelt)\ **Post date:** [September 28, 2010, 6:05pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-modern-art-easy-money-or-hard-earned-cash/554535/151 "2010-09-28T18:05:52Z")
Getting back to the OP though, I think judged on the individual piece that sells, it’s probably easy. But the years of practice and hundreds of pieces which didn’t sell, and led up to that, make it hard earned money. ---
**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:** [September 28, 2010, 6:41pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-modern-art-easy-money-or-hard-earned-cash/554535/152 "2010-09-28T18:41:48Z")
> [@CandidGamera](#): > > Pollack’s paintings communicate between the artist and the viewer in the same manner as a Rorschach Ink Blot. Except, in color. Communication depends on a common frame of reference. The more of that frame of reference you strip away, the less communication you can achieve. This assumes that the purpose of art is to communicate: The artist has a message that he wants the viewer to receive. He encodes that message in the work. The viewer decodes the intended transmission. Mission accomplished! This is how art and literature appreciation classes are typically taught. The students are shown how to INTERPRET a work … how to look past the surface attributes and perceive and underlying message or structure. The work is viewed as a conduit for communication. Good works communicate deep and meaningful things. Bad works are indecipherable and meaningless. The flaw in this approach is that it calls into question the purpose of doing art at all. If the whole point is to communicate something, why bother with the encoding and decoding steps? Why not just SAY what you want to say? Instead of writing _Uncle Tom’s Cabin_, why not just hand out cards that say “Slavery is Bad”? Instead of trying to hide some complex metaphor of human existence in some lines and colors on a canvas, why not just send a telegram? The generation of interesting meanings is certainly \*a \*thing for art to do, and many forms of art do it well. But it’s not _the only_ thing for art to do. Ultimately, art is the structuring of an interesting experience for the viewer/reader/listener. Afterward some traces of that experience may linger with us – the recollected ghosts that we call “meaning”. But even if no traces of the experience remain, even if we don’t attach any significance to our engagement with a work, the encounter may still have been beautiful/powerful/moving. This is the realization that brought us abstract art. Abstract art isn’t there to make the didactic point that art doesn’t need to have a meaning. Because making that point is ITSELF a transmission of meaning, and you’d only need one abstract piece to make that point. Abstract art is the offering to the viewer of a meaningless experience, that is nonetheless, beautiful. And if you say that it’s impossible for beauty to arise from meaninglessness, I ask you … what does Pachelbel’s Canon “mean”? Or, as Susan Sontag writes in her essay “Against Interpretation”: \* “Interpretation, based on the highly dubious theory that a work of art is composed of items of content, violates art. It makes art into an article for use, for arrangement into a mental scheme of categories.”\* ---
**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:** [September 28, 2010, 9:11pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-modern-art-easy-money-or-hard-earned-cash/554535/153 "2010-09-28T21:11:58Z")
> [@CandidGamera](#): > > Well, I wasn’t talking about photography, nor did I imply that I was talking about photography, so if you want to take what I said and apply it to photography, or the aesthetic design of whole-wheat crackers, you can, but that’s all on you. > [@](#): > > It isn’t an extension of my premise. We’re talking about emulation of reality in art as a criteria - a photographer doesn’t emulate reality. He doesn’t have to have skilled brushstrokes to reproduce an image. His art is in the selection of lighting, framing of shots, et cetera. Utterly and completely different than a painter or sculptor. Okay, I see where I’ve gotten confused here. When I talk about art, I tend to talk about the product. So, to me, comparing photography and painting is completely natural: they’re just two different ways of rendering an image that I can look at. You’re more interested in the process - when you talk about realism as an objective value, you’re really talking about how hard it is to achieve realism: it’s much more difficult to create a realistic effect with a brush than it is with a camera. I tend to ignore the artist in evaluating a work. I don’t care if he spent five years creating a work, or dashed it off in twenty minutes: it’s how the final whole effects me aesthetically that counts, not the amount of blood and sweat that went into it. ---
**Author:** ![antonio107](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/7ea924/32.png) [@antonio107](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/antonio107)\ **Post date:** [September 28, 2010, 10:59pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-modern-art-easy-money-or-hard-earned-cash/554535/154 "2010-09-28T22:59:29Z")
> [@TruCelt](#): > > Getting back to the OP though, I think judged on the individual piece that sells, it’s probably easy. But the years of practice and hundreds of pieces which didn’t sell, and led up to that, make it hard earned money. This. (I won’t attempt to respond to the last four pages, but at least the OP) I come from a university music department. Everyone can wave at John Cage’s 4’33", and Nam June Paik’s “Into the vagina of a whale,” and say “Ah ha! Anybody could do that!” Well, yes and no. Clearly you don’t need to be a virtuoso pianist to write four and a half minutes of silence. But John Cage thought of it and you didn’t. Someone beat you to it. Part of being a modernist, or an “experimental artist,” or whatever the moniker of the day is, is that you did something that wasn’t done before. It is new. I won’t attempt to be clairvoyant and guess “why” they do what they do, but I think the musician analogy is a good one. I don’t think anyone picks up a guitar and decides that it’s a great career, because look at how much money Esteban makes every year (don’t ask me why that’s the first guitarist that came to mind; I don’t know :D). One need only see how many buskers there are out on the street to say that simply deciding to play guitar is not a sound career model. Just because you don’t see outsider artists begging for change next to their expressionist sculptures on a streetcorner, doesn’t mean that they aren’t starving artists just the same. ---
**Author:** ![CandidGamera](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/candidgamera/32/2878_2.png) [@CandidGamera](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/CandidGamera)\ **Post date:** [September 29, 2010, 1:22pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-modern-art-easy-money-or-hard-earned-cash/554535/155 "2010-09-29T13:22:33Z")
> [@The\_Hamster\_King](#): > > > [@CandidGamera](#): > > > > Pollack’s paintings communicate between the artist and the viewer in the same manner as a Rorschach Ink Blot. Except, in color. Communication depends on a common frame of reference. The more of that frame of reference you strip away, the less communication you can achieve. > > This assumes that the purpose of art is to communicate: The artist has a message that he wants the viewer to receive. He encodes that message in the work. The viewer decodes the intended transmission. Mission accomplished! I didn’t bring up the idea that communication was the purpose; panache45 did. Argue with him/her. ---
**Author:** ![CandidGamera](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/candidgamera/32/2878_2.png) [@CandidGamera](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/CandidGamera)\ **Post date:** [September 29, 2010, 1:25pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-modern-art-easy-money-or-hard-earned-cash/554535/156 "2010-09-29T13:25:54Z")
> [@Miller](#): > > Okay, I see where I’ve gotten confused here. When I talk about art, I tend to talk about the product. So, to me, comparing photography and painting is completely natural: they’re just two different ways of rendering an image that I can look at. You’re more interested in the process - when you talk about realism as an objective value, you’re really talking about how hard it is to achieve realism: it’s much more difficult to create a realistic effect with a brush than it is with a camera. I tend to ignore the artist in evaluating a work. I don’t care if he spent five years creating a work, or dashed it off in twenty minutes: it’s how the final whole effects me aesthetically that counts, not the amount of blood and sweat that went into it. Fair enough. I guess I associate the objective value of a work with the skill required to create it. So a detailed portrait of Tom Cruise that is almost photorealistic requires a lot of skill and effort to pull off; a photograph of Tom Cruise that is photorealistic is pretty easy to pull off if you can get past his Scientologist bodyguards. I’d agree that effort has nothing to do with aesthetic value, but my whole thing is that aesthetic value is so subjective as to be nearly meaningless. ---
**Author:** ![CandidGamera](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/candidgamera/32/2878_2.png) [@CandidGamera](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/CandidGamera)\ **Post date:** [September 29, 2010, 1:28pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-modern-art-easy-money-or-hard-earned-cash/554535/157 "2010-09-29T13:28:40Z")
> [@garygnu](#): > > > [@CandidGamera](#): > > > > …no one has a definition that is satisfactory as to what is and isn’t art… > > That is entirely the point, y’know. Or it’s the entire problem. Depending on your point of view. I offer an objective definition of art : Art is a product shaped, altered, or created by design. You may criticize it as being so broad as to be meaningless; I submit that to narrow it any further would be to exclude something that someone, somewhere, considers art. ---
**Author:** ![pulykamell](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/pulykamell/32/3166_2.png) [@pulykamell](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/pulykamell)\ **Post date:** [September 29, 2010, 3:44pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-modern-art-easy-money-or-hard-earned-cash/554535/158 "2010-09-29T15:44:24Z")
> [@CandidGamera](#): > > Fair enough. I guess I associate the objective value of a work with the skill required to create it. But even that is a subjective judgment in many cases. Is a photorealistic painting that hard to pull off? Not really. Unless you see the artist freehanding it, there are many ways (such as projection, for instance, or taking a photograph, putting it on a grid, enlarging the grid, and then painting it) that make photorealistic painting fairly easy to do. When I see the abstract works of, say, Kandinsky I personally see a lot of painstaking skill in there. I can’t reproduce or make an original work that looks or feels like a Kandinsky, but I can certainly paint a reasonable facsimile of reality from a photograph using one of the techniques from above. ---
**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:** [September 29, 2010, 3:56pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-modern-art-easy-money-or-hard-earned-cash/554535/159 "2010-09-29T15:56:17Z")
> [@CandidGamera](#): > > Art is a product shaped, altered, or created by design. I think defining something by what it does is more helpful than defining it by how it’s produced. Which is the more useful definition of a car? “Something that takes me from here to there.” or “Something made on an assembly line in Detroit.” If something can take me from here to there, I don’t care where or how it was manufactured. Similarly, if a work structures an interesting experience for me, I don’t care how random or accidental its production was. I think that you’re just looking for way to define art you don’t like as non-art. ---
**Author:** ![CandidGamera](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/candidgamera/32/2878_2.png) [@CandidGamera](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/CandidGamera)\ **Post date:** [September 29, 2010, 3:57pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-modern-art-easy-money-or-hard-earned-cash/554535/160 "2010-09-29T15:57:58Z")
> [@pulykamell](#): > > > [@CandidGamera](#): > > > > Fair enough. I guess I associate the objective value of a work with the skill required to create it. > > But even that is a subjective judgment in many cases. Is a photorealistic painting that hard to pull off? Not really. Unless you see the artist freehanding it, there are many ways (such as projection, for instance, or taking a photograph, putting it on a grid, enlarging the grid, and then painting it) that make photorealistic painting fairly easy to do. > > When I see the abstract works of, say, Kandinsky I personally see a lot of painstaking skill in there. I can’t reproduce or make an original work that looks or feels like a Kandinsky, but I can certainly paint a reasonable facsimile of reality from a photograph using one of the techniques from above. Just because you know a creative shortcut to do something doesn’t mean you’re less skilled than someone who takes the long way around. It might mean that, but it’s not necessarily so. And even if it was done while looking at a photograph, an amateur is not going to get the same level of fidelity and detail as a pro. One of my hobbies is painting pewter miniatures for roleplaying games. Since every figured has been sculpted/cast, one could argue it’s just a paint by numbers where one gets to choose one’s own number-color combinations. But there’s a HUGE continuum of skill there. Color choice, layering of paint, mixing paints, washes, and using other application techniques to achieve the proper effect, and painting really teeny-tiny details. I guarantee my stuff would look better than someone who just picked up a brush for the first time, and I’m pretty middle of the road in terms of skill. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-modern-art-easy-money-or-hard-earned-cash/554535.md?page=7) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-modern-art-easy-money-or-hard-earned-cash/554535.md?page=9)