I know we hashed through this debate a couple of years ago, but I just saw something which got me going again. On Yahoo's most emailed photos, I came across the following:
(emphasis mine)
Seriously?!? Over 9.25 MILLION dollars? What did that take to make, like 10 minutes? I'm in the wrong line of work, apparently. I wish I could millions for something a first grader could do.
Unbelievable.
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The prices are about collectability and relate to the entire work and status of the artist. Anyone can scribble on a baseball, but the right scribble by the right person on the right ball might sell for a fair bit. It's not the intrinsic nature of the item that sets the price.
Obviously a first-grader can't develop status like that. If we want to get into a conversation about whether the entire work of Mondrian deserves the kind of status that brings that kind of price, we might have a more intersting discussion - although I find the high-end-art-commercial-art-market nexus to be more abstract and incomprehensible than any of the works sold, so I'm not sure I can contribute. I find it weird that people are willing to shell out such prices, but it makes little difference to me.
Personally, on a purely aesthetic level, I kinda like what I've seen of Mondrian. Neat, simple compositions, playing with what can be done with few elements. Like visual haiku. I've also thought they'd make nice inspirations for web page design. Maybe you'd find it less ludicrous if you thought of some artists as inventors of fresh visual styles rather than as artisans who impress with flamboyant displays of skill.
Well, I don't know if you recall the discussion I referred to in my post, but yes, I sort of understand that there's this name recognition aspect to it as well, plus the whole collection thing. But if you liken it to music, do you still buy an album from your favorite artist even if it's total shit and even you don't really like it? Yes, I know music is different, since with art you can have an original, whereas music can be reproduced to the point where you'd never (necessarily) know the original recording from a copy.
I further realize that there is a matter of taste. I can appreciate simplicity, but to me, this just goes too far. I guess I just expect art to be about talent, and this piece for example, seems to have taken no real talent to create. Get me some paper and a straight edge and I can draw you stuff like that all day.
Back to my music analogy, some pop vocalists these days are truly talented singers. They have been blessed with wonderful voices, but they decide to set their songs to shitty overproduced "music". The show Making the Band disturbed me on a philosophical level. Or it did until I realized that they were taking the term "making" to mean "making them famous by giving them lots of free publicity even if they are otherwise talentless and the music is sampled, overproduced and shitty."
About the piece in question here, I actually like it. I just don't think it's worth even a tiny fraction of a percent of what was paid for it. I'd have to see more Mondrian to get a better appreciation, but I doubt it'll change my opinion on the monetary worth of such works. I guess I have greater appreciation for the sorts of works which are more obviously way above my skill level.
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I guess I just expect art to be about talent, and this piece for example, seems to have taken no real talent to create. Get me some paper and a straight edge and I can draw you stuff like that all day.
The talent in this sort of art lies in designing a pleasing composition, not in the technical ability to draw straight lines.
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The talent in this sort of art lies in constructing and maintaining a marketable name. It's really just another kind of celebrity, I reckon.
Well, no.
Obviously, there's some component of marketability and celebrity in the high end art market. No one is paying $9 million because a particular piece is just that awesome. That does not imply that there is no talent involved in creating the art in the first place, though. Seriously, try it. It's harder than it looks.
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"Trans Am Jesus" is "what hanged me"
I thought he dropped the a when he moved to Paris. IOW, the French. Again.
I agree with fragment on the question of prices. The high end art (and antiquities) market is just nuts. But yeah, just like last time this came up, the issue isn't how much talent is takes to draw a line, but the overall composition itself.
Besides, Mondrian didn't use a ruler. He just painted that shit with a brush like everyone else. I will personally pay you money, Shake, if you can reproduce 'Composition in Black and White, With Double Lines' as Mondrian did it: on a 2' by 2' canvas using only black and white oil paints.
Even by your own "talent = what's hard to do" standards you might find Mondrian is way ahead of where you placed him.
That does not imply that there is no talent involved in creating the art in the first place, though.
Perhaps not, but if there is no way of identifying and measuring the talent involved in such a way that you can predict whose pieces will end up commanding 7 figure prices, then it is insignificant alongside the undoubted talent for celebrity that separates successful from unsuccessful performers.
You have some way to identify and measure the talent for celebrity in such a way that you can predict whose pieces will end up commanding those prices, I assume?
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"Trans Am Jesus" is "what hanged me"
First, not that I posted #11 before you edited your post #10 to reflect a weaker version of your claim. I actually agree that, in the high end market, pricing depends at least as much upon marketability and celebrity as it does on artistic talent.
I actually didn't assume that you'd be able to identify and measure the talent for celebrity accurately enough t make predictions. I was using facetiousness to suggest that your claim that:
"if there is no way of identifying and measuring the [artistic] talent involved in such a way that you can predict whose pieces will end up commanding 7 figure prices, then it is insignificant"
...is equally applicable to your assertion that the real talent lies in celebrity. One might say that if there is no way of identifying and measuring the talent for celbrebrity involved in such a way that you can predict whose pieces will end up commanding 7 figure prices, then it is insignificant.
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"Trans Am Jesus" is "what hanged me"
OMG, we almost killed each other the last time we had this modern art discussion.
Yeah.
Anyway, yeah, that is a ridiculous amount of money to fathom, especially for something non-utilitarian.
But it's all about context. Any kind of art or artifact is just a blob of stuff without context.
So whether someone could convincingly replicate a Mondrian or a Picasso or the Venus of Willendorf is beside the point. What gives it value is not just the thing itself, but its context.
When you look at Mondrian's body of work, the painting takes on more significance, both to the development of Mondrian's work specifically and modern art generally.
You know what the worst part is about reading old threads? When someone posts something that's just asking for a good burn and you have a perfect one ready to go and then you realize that, fuck, that was four years ago, and the statute of limitations on burns is only like 48 hours.
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"Trans Am Jesus" is "what hanged me"
About the piece in question here, I actually like it. I just don't think it's worth even a tiny fraction of a percent of what was paid for it. I'd have to see more Mondrian to get a better appreciation, but I doubt it'll change my opinion on the monetary worth of such works. I guess I have greater appreciation for the sorts of works which are more obviously way above my skill level.
I'm not convinced any piece of art, no matter how skillfully executed, is worth anywhere near that kind of money. To me, anyway, even if I had that kind of dough to throw around. But I'd say the same about any number of other things - sports cars, luxury yachts, high fashion, stealth fighters - and it just amounts to saying I don't have the same priorities as those who are participating in the markets for those goods.
In the meantime I can find artworks to be aesthetically, intellectually or historically interesting without having to own the originals myself. I do wish I could pick up a few quality reproductions a little cheaper, though.
At first glance the doubt over the relative contributions to commercial success made by the talents for art and for self-promotion might seem to have the symmetry you suggest, but it hasn't, for the simple reason that the commercial success is a kind of celebrity—either the kind of celebrity which is arises from artistic talent or the kind which is due to the talent for self-promotion.
If you want to argue that all these artists would have been famous anyway even without a talent for self-promotion, you need to show that their artistic achievement was sufficient in itself. I don't see how you can do that.
Bingo... I'm with fragment. It's the whole "you pay for the name" thang. Branding. Which, of course, encourages replications. And fraud investigations and suits.
And, yeah...I'm still with what I read to be Shake's intent....for me it was seeing some big name artist, Rauschenberg, have a piece in a museum which consisted of a stack of books. That's it. A stack of books about three to four feet high. Since we weren't allowed to touch the "work of art", I could not ascertain whether the books were adhered to each other or not, but I assumed that they were. The titles were any you could have found at a secondhand store. So...how is that 'art'?
It seems to me, that 'art' is what some some group of people decide it is. Who gives them the power to decide that? I'm not sure, but nobody ever asks me. I mean, I work in an 'architectual award winning' building and you could have fooled me...no, wait, they fooled somebody else to select it. I have determined that most of the people who make these kinds of decisions do not share my sense of aesthetics. Fashion is a bitch goddess from all I can tell.
And Art? The last I heard, he was working in a pawn shop in upstate New York. Me? No...I don't know Art. That's just what I heard.
It seems to me, that 'art' is what some some group of people decide it is. Who gives them the power to decide that? I'm not sure, but nobody ever asks me.
I generally find it more interesting to think about what happens if I consider some object as a work of art than to make some decision about whether it is one or not. The former allows me to consider all the same issues as the latter without having to relate them all to a judgement call that doesn't serve much purpose for me.
It would also be interesting to look at it somewhat sociologically, but in that case I'd be using the word "art" in a different way - as a label that's used as a part of social interactions and which changes through time.
Modern art ... again
Seriously?!? Over 9.25 MILLION dollars? What did that take to make, like 10 minutes? I'm in the wrong line of work, apparently. I wish I could millions for something a first grader could do.
the French. Again.
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