# Somebody explain the artistic merit of this painting to me please **URL:** \ **Category:** Cafe Society\ **Created:** [May 15, 2013, 6:28am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/somebody-explain-the-artistic-merit-of-this-painting-to-me-please/658380 "2013-05-15T06:28:43Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 9
**Author:** ![hajario](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/hajario/32/171_2.png) [@hajario](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/hajario)\ **Post date:** [May 16, 2013, 3:59pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/somebody-explain-the-artistic-merit-of-this-painting-to-me-please/658380/161 "2013-05-16T15:59:59Z")
> [@Magiver](#): > > Let them eat cake? Revolutions have been started over less waste. If the buyer was the sovereign of a country using public funds, you might have a point. This painting has a very real chance of being worth 50% more in ten years. Would you feel the same way if he used those funds to buy stock in a tech company? ---
**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:** [May 16, 2013, 4:01pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/somebody-explain-the-artistic-merit-of-this-painting-to-me-please/658380/162 "2013-05-16T16:01:20Z")
> [@Left\_Hand\_of\_Dorkness](#): > > No, that just made me roll my eyes. Seems odd. How is what **Grumman** posted functionally different from the attitude described by **Prof. Pepperwinkle**? ---
**Author:** ![hajario](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/hajario/32/171_2.png) [@hajario](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/hajario)\ **Post date:** [May 16, 2013, 4:05pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/somebody-explain-the-artistic-merit-of-this-painting-to-me-please/658380/163 "2013-05-16T16:05:59Z")
> [@Ferret\_Herder](#): > > Yeah, because people who buy $44 mil paintings would totally give all that money to feed the hungry or cure cancer if only they realized that non-representational art is bullshit. For all we know, he gave $500 million to charity and used the rest of his pocket change to buy a painting. ---
**Author:** ![Nzinga\_Seated](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/b5ac83/32.png) [@Nzinga\_Seated](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Nzinga_Seated)\ **Post date:** [May 16, 2013, 4:18pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/somebody-explain-the-artistic-merit-of-this-painting-to-me-please/658380/164 "2013-05-16T16:18:05Z")
I wish Sister Wendy was around. She would break it down so sweet, that both the OP and I would be bidding on the damn painting with tears in our eyes by the time she was done speaking. ---
**Author:** ![Exapno\_Mapcase](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/exapno_mapcase/32/1051_2.png) [@Exapno\_Mapcase](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Exapno_Mapcase)\ **Post date:** [May 16, 2013, 4:20pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/somebody-explain-the-artistic-merit-of-this-painting-to-me-please/658380/165 "2013-05-16T16:20:38Z")
Somebody else can do the search, but we’ve had threads in which somebody goes on and on about how The Beatles are absolutely awful and mocks the posters who bother to defend them. That’s a tough position to take, mostly because it’s hard today to find others to stick up for it. (Of course, in the early 60s you could find them everywhere, from Frank Sinatra to William F. Buckley.) The culture changed in the last 50 years. Today, the only position to take when someone calls The Beatles \*objectively \*awful is to say that they’re nuts and end the discussion. Go back in music history, and you find the new and modern trashed over and over. Nobody has riots today when a modern composition is played, but they happened in the early part of the 20th century. Different music was \*objectively \*awful, you see. Art history is full of similar examples. The Impressionists couldn’t even get their pictures shown alongside mainstream artists in the 19th century. The Fauves and Cubists and Surrealists and Dada and Futurists and pretty much every capital letter Movement that came after that were reviled and mocked in exactly these terms, no matter how much they’re revered and worth millions today. It doesn’t matter that some of that stuff really was and is awful. The Beatles may be the group with the best batting average of all time but nobody with ears can deny they put out some clunkers. Some atonal music baffles and repels me, but not half as much as rap. Placing a urinal on display as art was terrifically witty at the time, but you can only do that once and the succeeding ten thousand imitations are halfwitted at best. Some color field art lies there and says nothing. Each piece of art has to be evaluated individually, and it helps to do so in context, which means you have to be knowledgeable to understand that context. Dismissing huge swaths of art as stuff a five-year-old could so is ignorance, no different from starting a physics thread dismissing dark energy because you don’t understand it. You don’t have to know advanced math to think that string theory is really cool, whether it turns out to be right in the end or not, but you don’t get to say that it is \*objectively \*stupid because it makes predictions that are counterintuitive. In both cases, saying “I don’t get it” doesn’t diminish you. But for some reason a large segment of society hates that so much that they swing around to the other side and have to try to take down anyone who does get it. You know what? I don’t get it. ---
**Author:** ![Exapno\_Mapcase](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/exapno_mapcase/32/1051_2.png) [@Exapno\_Mapcase](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Exapno_Mapcase)\ **Post date:** [May 16, 2013, 4:30pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/somebody-explain-the-artistic-merit-of-this-painting-to-me-please/658380/166 "2013-05-16T16:30:57Z")
Just saw this. Ought to blow the minds of everyone on every side of this thread. [Bea Arthur topless painting sells for nearly $2M](http://www.nypost.com/p/news/local/bea_arthur_topless_painting_sells_Ghk83TDzFBO8kHWW0oPdSK) ---
**Author:** ![Kimstu](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/ecd19e/32.png) [@Kimstu](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kimstu)\ **Post date:** [May 16, 2013, 4:31pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/somebody-explain-the-artistic-merit-of-this-painting-to-me-please/658380/167 "2013-05-16T16:31:48Z")
> [@Odesio](#): > > I made my peace with modern art when I realized that I didn’t have the background to appreciate it. In many cases I would not recognize the object as art were it not hanging on the wall of a museum with a little placard nearby telling me it was art. > > Modern art seems to be the only type of art that does this to me. I don’t particularly care for African art but I can recognize it as art and even appreciate the work that went into creating a sculpture or a pattern on clothing. I don’t always understand the symbolism used in paintings from the 14th century but I find many of them aesthetically pleasing, and, again, I can recognize them as art regardless of the context I find them in. This gets back to the issue of traditional “visual vocabularies” of art, and the efforts by some modern painters to make art without relying on those traditions. More-or-less-realistic representation of real or imagined objects or beings is a huge part of art’s traditional vocabulary in pretty much every human culture. So are features like symmetry and repetition in non-representational forms such as textile patterns. That’s why objects as diverse as a 14th-century religious painting, an African carved-wood sculpture and a pattern on clothing fall squarely within our comfort zone of identifying “art”. They’re expressed in a visual “language” whose fundamental aspects we’re very familiar with, even if we miss most of the details in a particular genre or style. Some modern artists wanted to see if they could make art that inspired feelings or ideas in the viewer _without_ relying on that millennia-old visual language. In other words, can you take away all the representational elements that make an artwork “look like” something, and even take away all the spatial elements like repetition and regularity that make a design “look like” a pattern, and still have something that affects the viewer as art? If your personal answer is “No, some form of that traditional visual language is necessary to make a work count as art”, that’s fine. You are not being deliberately kept out of any “exclusive club”: it’s just that some other people are experimenting with using a different language for art that doesn’t happen to speak to you. ---
**Author:** ![Prof.Pepperwinkle](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/prof.pepperwinkle/32/13627_2.png) [@Prof.Pepperwinkle](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Prof.Pepperwinkle)\ **Post date:** [May 16, 2013, 4:34pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/somebody-explain-the-artistic-merit-of-this-painting-to-me-please/658380/168 "2013-05-16T16:34:21Z")
> [@Exapno\_Mapcase](#): > > Just saw this. Ought to blow the minds of everyone on every side of this thread. > > [Bea Arthur topless painting sells for nearly $2M](http://www.nypost.com/p/news/local/bea_arthur_topless_painting_sells_Ghk83TDzFBO8kHWW0oPdSK) Just goes to show how many _Golden Girls_ fans are out there. ---
**Author:** ![Magiver](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/4491bb/32.png) [@Magiver](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Magiver)\ **Post date:** [May 16, 2013, 4:40pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/somebody-explain-the-artistic-merit-of-this-painting-to-me-please/658380/169 "2013-05-16T16:40:00Z")
> [@Kimstu](#): > > Calling the work of an artist who’s been well-known and highly regarded by art historians, museum curators and collectors for nearly a half-century “the emperor’s new clothes” is the essence of reverse snobbery. what’s needed is perspective. Do you remember the person who put fins on cars? He or she was ahead of their time (insert the rest of your sentence here about history and art). > [@Kimstu](#): > > Not content to say “Meh, I don’t like it and I don’t see any particular achievement or value in it”, you’re insisting that because _you_ don’t see anything in it, there can’t be anything in it at all. You’re just bragging about how much smarter you think you are than all those “so-called experts”. The artist in question took the most basic of structure and declared it art. As I illustrated earlier, anybody could do this. All it takes is 2 people with money to bid up the opinion. > [@Kimstu](#): > > Sure, you care about how good it looks _to you_. So do most viewers and collectors of art, even the ones who have different opinions about what looks good than you do. This goes beyond a difference of opinion. I can understand that others like pointillism. generally not my cup of tea but I’m pretty sure I could hang a shit ton of it in my house if I explored it. I acknowledge the artistic creativity behind it. > [@Kimstu](#): > > Well, you appreciate craftsmen who exhibit the kind of craft you personally like, who had vision that you are sympathetic to, and who availed themselves of the kind of artistic license that you personally consider appropriate. > > You evidently don’t have any sympathy or liking for the Abstract Expressionist/Color Field vision, which as I noted above was based on the concept of trying to convey ideas and emotions by combinations of color, size and shape alone, without relying on the traditional artistic vocabulary of realistic representation. I most certainly have some appreciation for it. Not this painting of course. I’ve simply pointed out you can make the same claim about any object lying around. I routinely pick up rocks that have more artistic form than this painting. And I mean this in a serious manner. Granted they don’t project well on a gallery wall but the structure and colors are far more interesting. > [@Kimstu](#): > > Nor do you have any liking or approval for the kind of craft those painters used, which focused on choosing the structure and arrangement of simple forms and working into them subtle details (like the color gradients **Miller** was talking about) that wouldn’t distract from the appearance of simplicity. > > And that’s fine. You don’t have to like Abstract Expressionist or Color Field painting at all, and there’s nothing wrong with that. But when you try to argue that because **you** don’t like it there must simply not be anything in it to like, you’re just indulging in reverse snobbery. I haven’t dismissed any style of painting. I have given my opinion on the value of this one. Granted I didn’t adjust for historical significance. > [@Kimstu](#): > > You don’t make yourself look more knowledgeable or insightful by sneering at “the experts”, any more than a more traditional pretentious art snob looks more knowledgeable or insightful by sneering at “the masses”. Maybe Bill Gates should buy it for $44 billion. ---
**Author:** ![WordMan](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/e8c25b/32.png) [@WordMan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/WordMan)\ **Post date:** [May 16, 2013, 4:41pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/somebody-explain-the-artistic-merit-of-this-painting-to-me-please/658380/170 "2013-05-16T16:41:37Z")
> [@Exapno\_Mapcase](#): > > Just saw this. Ought to blow the minds of everyone on every side of this thread. > > [Bea Arthur topless painting sells for nearly $2M](http://www.nypost.com/p/news/local/bea_arthur_topless_painting_sells_Ghk83TDzFBO8kHWW0oPdSK) ::Trying to decide if this is a discussion of Art as Thing, or Art as Idea?:: 😉 I choose to bleach my brain instead. ---
**Author:** ![Magiver](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/4491bb/32.png) [@Magiver](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Magiver)\ **Post date:** [May 16, 2013, 4:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/somebody-explain-the-artistic-merit-of-this-painting-to-me-please/658380/171 "2013-05-16T16:43:47Z")
> [@Kimstu](#): > > More-or-less-realistic representation of real or imagined objects or beings is a huge part of art’s traditional vocabulary in pretty much every human culture. So are features like symmetry and repetition in non-representational forms such as textile patterns. Lets back this train of thought up a bit. Are you suggesting Incan art is meant to be realistic representation of real or imagined objects? The figurines in many cultures have often been stylized. The Greeks didn’t invent 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:** [May 16, 2013, 4:45pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/somebody-explain-the-artistic-merit-of-this-painting-to-me-please/658380/172 "2013-05-16T16:45:59Z")
> [@Magiver](#): > > I routinely pick up rocks that have more artistic form than this painting. And I mean this in a serious manner. Granted they don’t project well on a gallery wall but the structure and colors are far more interesting. And that’s awesome. And I mean that in a serious manner, too. If you find more meaning and feeling from some rocks that you’ve picked up, that’s great. (And you’re saving yourself a bundle of money. 😉 ) I believe the everyday can be art, too. ---
**Author:** ![tim314](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/tim314/32/3468_2.png) [@tim314](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/tim314)\ **Post date:** [May 16, 2013, 4:52pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/somebody-explain-the-artistic-merit-of-this-painting-to-me-please/658380/173 "2013-05-16T16:52:09Z")
> [@SCAdian](#): > > My kids definitely could have done pictures like this Newman. > > I think this Newman is boring, pointless rubbish. > > Why would I post boring, pointless rubbish, just because my kids made it? To prove your claim that they could do it. Which I don’t believe. My kids have covered hundreds, maybe thousands of pieces of paper with paint. Every one is very recognizably the work of a child, even to an artistic ignoramus like me, whereas that Newman painting clearly is not. Hell, post it along with a few of the more obscure Newmans and Rothkos you find images of on the internet. I give my word not to Google image search before guessing which one your kid did. ---
**Author:** ![Magiver](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/4491bb/32.png) [@Magiver](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Magiver)\ **Post date:** [May 16, 2013, 4:52pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/somebody-explain-the-artistic-merit-of-this-painting-to-me-please/658380/174 "2013-05-16T16:52:31Z")
> [@Exapno\_Mapcase](#): > > Just saw this. Ought to blow the minds of everyone on every side of this thread. > > [Bea Arthur topless painting sells for nearly $2M](http://www.nypost.com/p/news/local/bea_arthur_topless_painting_sells_Ghk83TDzFBO8kHWW0oPdSK) That sums up the discussion nicely: “Some writers even urged art lovers to boycott Currin’s shows in the early 90s. But his work is now widely acclaimed and hangs in museums such as the Whitney.” Instant art, just add [del]water[/del] money. ---
**Author:** ![Magiver](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/4491bb/32.png) [@Magiver](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Magiver)\ **Post date:** [May 16, 2013, 5:02pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/somebody-explain-the-artistic-merit-of-this-painting-to-me-please/658380/175 "2013-05-16T17:02:48Z")
> [@tim314](#): > > To prove your claim that they could do it. Which I don’t believe. What do you think of [this](http://www.thecultureist.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/07/For-real-this-time.jpg)painting? or [this](http://www.ucl.ac.uk/news/news-articles/January2012/Bakhari.jpg)? ---
**Author:** ![tim314](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/tim314/32/3468_2.png) [@tim314](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/tim314)\ **Post date:** [May 16, 2013, 5:03pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/somebody-explain-the-artistic-merit-of-this-painting-to-me-please/658380/176 "2013-05-16T17:03:12Z")
> [@Miller](#): > > Incidentally, getting a nice gradient like that isn’t easy. I’m not saying it’s the hardest thing in the world of painting, but all the people saying that their five year old could paint this? That gradient is the part your kid can’t paint. Thanks for posting this. That’s what makes it immediately obvious that a kid didn’t do it, even to someone like me who really knows nothing about art. ---
**Author:** ![Exapno\_Mapcase](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/exapno_mapcase/32/1051_2.png) [@Exapno\_Mapcase](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Exapno_Mapcase)\ **Post date:** [May 16, 2013, 5:05pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/somebody-explain-the-artistic-merit-of-this-painting-to-me-please/658380/177 "2013-05-16T17:05:40Z")
> [@pulykamell](#): > > And that’s awesome. And I mean that in a serious manner, too. If you find more meaning and feeling from some rocks that you’ve picked up, that’s great. (And you’re saving yourself a bundle of money. 😉 ) I believe the everyday can be art, too. I believe that the everyday can have extraordinary beauty. I believe that “art” is created by people. They are simply not the same thing. Found objects can be used to create art, by placing them into a new context, but slapping a label onto a found object is usually not art - although it can be commentary on art, just as it could also be commentary on culture or beauty or conformity or any number of things. I have an extraordinary perfectly detailed fossil fish that appears to be alive and swimming through the stone it’s embedded in framed and hanging on my wall. Is it art? Does the frame make it so? What about the hyposometric map of the world that’s hanging on the adjacent wall? That’s a created work. It’s quite beautiful. It’s mounted, though technically not framed. Is it art? There are no lines, except the ones we create out of nothingness. ---
**Author:** ![WordMan](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/e8c25b/32.png) [@WordMan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/WordMan)\ **Post date:** [May 16, 2013, 5:06pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/somebody-explain-the-artistic-merit-of-this-painting-to-me-please/658380/178 "2013-05-16T17:06:23Z")
> [@Magiver](#): > > What do you think of [this](http://www.thecultureist.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/07/For-real-this-time.jpg)painting? or [this](http://www.ucl.ac.uk/news/news-articles/January2012/Bakhari.jpg)? I think they were painted by cats. ---
**Author:** ![Kimstu](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/ecd19e/32.png) [@Kimstu](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kimstu)\ **Post date:** [May 16, 2013, 5:11pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/somebody-explain-the-artistic-merit-of-this-painting-to-me-please/658380/179 "2013-05-16T17:11:52Z")
> [@Magiver](#): > > Lets back this train of thought up a bit. Are you suggesting Incan art is meant to be realistic representation of real or imagined objects? The figurines in many cultures have often been stylized. The Greeks didn’t invent art. Incan art typically **does** fall into the category of “more-or-less-realistic representation of real or imagined objects or beings”. It depicts figures that we can recognize as people, monsters, deities, weapons, etc. Yes, it’s **less** realistic than, say, classical naturalism, but it still fits solidly into the traditional visual language of representation of reality in art. “Stylized” does not mean “non-representational”. > [@Magiver](#): > > This goes beyond a difference of opinion. Nope. Unless you just mean, as I noted above, that some modernist painters like Newman deliberately eschewed the traditional visual vocabularies of art and focused instead on constructing carefully chosen shapes, sizes, colors, color gradients, etc., of abstract forms. That part is not a matter of opinion, and AFAICT nobody’s disputing it. Whether Newman’s output, devoid of this traditional visual language, qualifies as being art is absolutely a matter of opinion. > [@Magiver](#): > > “Some writers even urged art lovers to boycott Currin’s shows in the early 90s. But his work is now widely acclaimed and hangs in museums such as the Whitney.” > > Instant art, just add […] money. ? So what’s your beef with Currin? He is most definitely a representational painter in a fairly traditional manner: in fact, he describes himself as a “conservative figure painter”. The level of craft and technical skill at representational realism shown in his works is absolutely not something you or your kid could do. I’m not particularly crazy about them, but I certainly wouldn’t disagree that they’re art. Why would you think that Currin’s work doesn’t count as “art” unless you “add money” to it? ---
**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:** [May 16, 2013, 5:18pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/somebody-explain-the-artistic-merit-of-this-painting-to-me-please/658380/180 "2013-05-16T17:18:34Z")
> [@Magiver](#): > > What do you think of [this](http://www.thecultureist.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/07/For-real-this-time.jpg)painting? or [this](http://www.ucl.ac.uk/news/news-articles/January2012/Bakhari.jpg)? I think the first one is terrible. Straight-out. The second one is kind of interesting to me, but still looks like random smudges. I like the color scheme, but I don’t like the execution. The smudgy top left of the frame looks sloppy to me. The very center of the frame has some interesting bits, but, overall, it just looks like a random smudge to me rather than a composition like a Pollock. Basically, it looks like something I could do, which means, it’s not great. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/somebody-explain-the-artistic-merit-of-this-painting-to-me-please/658380.md?page=8) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/somebody-explain-the-artistic-merit-of-this-painting-to-me-please/658380.md?page=10)