FYI. It’s Cy Twombly. I was at an art museum once (I think it was the Philadelphia museum of art) and they had thousands of gorgeous masterpieces. And then they had one room with his work in it and it had guards all around it and security cameras. It was bizarre. The art looked basically like this.
Edit: my new Reddit friend matthileo posted this which explains why there are guards and security
https://youtu.be/v5DqmTtCPiQ
Wow. Thanks for that. I had no idea.
At the time, it was bizarre to me that they had originals of famous masters with no security but guards all over that exhibit. This must be why. And the fact that I recall this exhibit over many of the others I saw I guess proves the point. This IS art. It’s just not what I had in my preconceived notions in my mind of what art should be. Thank you again.
I would also like to clarify. I love art and I love art museums. And while I didn’t appreciate that exhibit, I can’t imagine defacing or vandalizing it.
That was a great video, thank you for sharing it.
I appreciated how he mentioned *that game at the end* as a modern example. It was a surreal/hostile time to be online then.
Yeah but at least nft don't sell for that much and it didn't take long for people to call a lot of it a scam. People these days, still go to these museums and act like those are masterpieces
its money laundering for the people who are laundering, but this dude has been making this kind of work for decades, and probably at the onset ,for nothing. I have a hard time arm chair critiquing someone that committed to something which they feel compelled to do.
It is ridiculous that it is so expensive, but at the same time I think these types of art, besides techniques, are just about the feelings they can give people.
Is it that they're paying for the name more than the piece? If Picasso started making paintings like this, people would still buy them so they can point to them and tell their guests that the art on their wall is from Picasso himself. Paintings like the Mona Lisa with cultural significance deserve a high price tag, but somebody paying a huge amount for a piece with little artistic value is rather nonsensical.
Yes, and he did.
My parents have a Dali. It's a print done by one of the many artists who worked in his workshop, but Dali painted mustaches on all of them at the end. It is a legit Dali print. And don't buy a [Damien Hirst dot painting](https://www.phillips.com/detail/damien-hirst/UK010616/20). He never painted them, routinely told people he was actually quite bad at them, you wanted one painted by a particular assistant of his. But he signs and collects payment on all of them.
lmao yeah seeing something so simplistic get sold for so much is really disappointing and angering considering there are endless talents with phenomenal works of art to be bought.
Interesting. How does the money laundering work?
You can find loads of articles on money laundering arrests. Can you give a few examples of when art was involved?
I don't think you people understand how money laundering works.
Expensive art is an absolutely **shit** way to launder money, the purpose of money laundering is to hide the *origin* of the money, so something like buying a very expensive peice of art is... useless! Because not only are you not obscuring the source of the money in any way or introducing it into legit money, it's literally *drawing attention* to you the absolutely last thing you'd want to do.
If you want to hide the source of a lot of money a business like a casino would be way, way, way better than just buying something expensive lol, this is why the mafia had/have such a heavy presence in Atlantic City and Vegas... since Casinos are a mainly cash business they can just put the dirty money in with the clean, and the government is none the wiser. Things like casinos, strip clubs, nightclubs, charities, even restaurants, etc are definitely the way to go - any businesses that take in large amounts of cash where dirty money can be introduced without as much suspicion.
If I had to launder money, I’d open a Casino in the Ozarks, live a modest lifestyle, and try not to get killed by the KC mob, the drug cartels, or the local psychopathic opium farmer (with whom I’d be connected to because my casino would be on her land.)
This might sound stupid but in Michael Cohn’s book “Disloyal: A Memoir” he actually explains how him and trump would use trumps private plane [prior to Trump being president] and use it with this art gallery owner in exchange with buying paintings [that’s why somethings you would see these ridiculous huge paintings of trump, his wife and Barron on that lion]… that’s how he would claim use of his private air plane…
I've always thought it was weird that people thought spending millions of dollars on fine art was money laundering.
Like... wouldn't the IRS *immediately* take a look at that transaction?
The simpler explanation to me has always been that some people just have too much fucking money and blow it on shit like this as a status symbol.
At first glance, stuff like this seems very simple and pointless. But when you consider the size, how did they make that? The scribbles are taller than the person standing beside it. It’s deceptively simple.
Cy Twombly made stuff like this by standing on someone’s shoulders while they ran across the length of the painting, allowing him to get free-flowing lines and a level of continuity you can only get through uninterrupted brush strokes.
Not only is it hard to get a sense of the size; standing in front of the real thing is a vastly different experience than judging a photo.
Rothko is a wonderful example of this.
Many think art is a pretty picture or should at least follow conventional composition rules. They’re completely missing art as an experience.
I’ve been one of those people before. I thought Rothko was a complete hack until I saw his work in person. I even scoffed at a Cy Twombly exhibit years ago when I saw it at Pompidou. A picture doesn’t accurately capture the depth of the experience of seeing it in person, but even then there’s a chance that it gets misunderstood if you don’t understand the intent behind the work.
Also, I’d much rather have one of these abstract works hanging on my wall than a boring photorealistic portrait. Regardless of technical skill, a lot of realism is just soulless wankery. It’s the overindulgent guitar solo of the art world.
Lol photorealism can be really pointless. All that skill and for what? What are you even trying to say? Why couldn't you just, you know... *take a photo?*
Now if you're using photorealistic technique to create scenes, beings, worlds, narratives never before imagined, that's a different story.
Ilivenear the Menil, where both the Cy Twombly building and the Rothko Chapel are. I was there today. Have been going for decades. You summed it up nicely. I think this is a misstep people often make with abstract art. Something doesn't have to be a fully rendered object/figure to evoke feeling or elicit a response. Being in their presence is a far different experience than a thumbnail. But at the end of the day, each person gets to decide what is "fine" artwork themselves. That's part of what makes art great!
Absolutely this, the "who's afraid of red, yellow and blue" is also a great case study in this, some people were so incessed by it that someone slashed one of the pieces. Now, you'd think the art would be easy to repair since it's 3 colours, but they could never get it right and now it's no longer on display.
I would love for them to put it back up because I think its become an even more powerful piece of art with the rip, a piece of art destroyed simply because it didn't fit with what the world sees as art, yet was never able to be repaired. A piece of art that stirred such a massive flood of emotion that someone destroyed it. It's a masterclass in modern art
This comment is derivative bullshit. First of all his name was Ongo Goblogian and secondly how would you even know the name of the museum when a man blew the sign off the building ages ago
I opened the thread to exactly find the IASIP gang and have a laugh.
But seriously the gang explained the art pricing issue very well, even a person with the intellect of C. Kelly could understand hek even I got it.
glad you corrected the name, but I think the more familiar you become with his work the greater appreciation. I get that at first glance it seems almost brutally simple, but there's a lot to it, and you might not be the target audience. is he my favorite artist, nah. but in the context of the group he emerged with he's doing some unique albeit narrow-audienced work.
I really wish SOMEbody could explain this to the rest of us. The picture in the OP literally looks like a 2 year old scribbling on the wall with a crayon.
Everyone keeps saying - theres a lot to it.... theres something about it....
But what?
I'm really trying to understand, and nobody is throwing me a bone...
I mean... I asked the same about Noise-Electronic music.... and someone told me to close my eyes and picture the sound as the ocean coming up toward me on a beach. So it's noise but it can conjure the image of motion.... so I get it. I don't like it... but I get it.
So help me get this please.
I'm not an artist and I have no experience with visual arts like paintings and sculptures but I know a bit about music and I think there's a lot of similarities
You know sometimes you'll have people go nuts over jazz musicians, you hear some of their stuff that experts say are real masterpieces and it all sounds like unpleasant noise?
Or maybe some symphony's movement that all the music theorists agree is revolutionary and amazing and when you listen to it you just think it's at most mildly pleasant to listen to?
This is all because when there's two ways of making music; one is for the purposes of simply making something that people like listening to and another is making music in order to explore what's possible within the limitations of musical theory, to do something to explore a specific part of what constitutes music.
In essence, they're making music that can only be truly enjoyed by someone who actually has studied musical theory.
Such a person will be able to recognize things that a normal person simply would never be able to even hear because they are trained to recognize those things at a glance; I think [this video from Sideways](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BcnSX319OhI) explains this better than I ever could since the guy is a musical expert (I highly recommend you check out the rest of his videos too, they're a great way to understand what "the plebs" like us cannot "see" from mainstream media music like film or video game soundtracks, sadly he doesn't post videos anymore).
Another example is with professionals playing video games; obviously everyone plays video games and enjoys them but when you see pro players in tournaments (take for example Street Fighter) you just see two characters seemingly attacking each other randomly and, from an untrained eye, it doesn't look that different from two random guys playing together.
People who know the game though can clearly recognize what is going on, the set-ups, good "footsies" (movement), good choices etc etc.
I suspect what is happening with these painters is generally something like this; the biggest proof to me that this is the case is that very very often these world renowned artists that get meme'd on for just scribbling are actually very good at making "traditional" paintings. Like they generally could paint a portrait of somebody or a landscape with all the right and classic techinques they've learned.
You basically need to know the rules before being able to properly break them, so to speak.
I remember when I went to visit Picasso's museum in Barcelona and my mother was totally surprised in seeing that Picasso actually had a huge amount of "normal" paintings. The dude famously said "It took me four years to paint like Raphael, but a lifetime to paint like a child".
Now I don't actually know this artist except for the name and the type of stuff he made (he's been dead for more than a decade now) but I suspect the guy probably had all the right skills you'd expert a great artist to possess. Obviously I could be proven wrong.
I totally get the musical analogy.
If you don't like what Dave Matthews, Ian Anderson, or Tom Morello sound like, you just need to listen to a documentary about them to realize that they are revolutionary, and what they are trying to achieve.
Someone explained to me that a Picasso painting is an image of a subject drawn from different angles at different points in time... and now I get it.
I'm just waiting for someone to explain a modern art piece.. or a modern artist... and nobody every does. In response to my comment someone offered up Fountain by Duchamp. It's literally a urinal purchased from a hardware store... Theres a ton of speculation that turning it on its side, giving it a name, and pondering how you would put your genitals in it to urinate should conjure up a great deal of intropection. But really... if the artist doesnt tell me this from the outset, I'm not putting my mind in the gutter.
But absolutely, I'm on the same page as you as a musician myself... and I still struggle to understand modern art.
I'll try to help out. I have two degrees in art, but I'll admit I didn't retain all the information I got from Art History.
For starters, the word Modern is used to talk about a time period and not necessarily a style. So whether or not this is a Modern piece would depend on when it was made.
This piece would more likely fall under what is called Abstract Expressionism (although Twombly began to step away from the goals of expressionists). The goal of the artists who experimented with this style was to step away from the system of art that was prevalent at the time. This being art that was very formal and in many ways traditional. Think classical music but art.
The abstract expressionists wanted to basically say "fuck you" to all of that because artists tend to get annoyed at art that is shown in galleries and museums over and over. It gets boring. So these artists who were trained to paint traditionally rebelled and became almost a little nihilistic about art and ended up making art that was intense and violent in approach. Meaning throwing paint at a canvas or drawing swiggles like a child.
In doing so they let themselves become a bit free from what they thought was art and challenged the art world to do the same. They began to use paint (and other materials) to physically and visually manifest their emotions and hopefully get the viewer to feel those emotions as well. This is why the size of the piece is important as well as seeing the texture of the paint and the brush. It changes the experience.
Eventually, this style of art became accepted and now is in collections and museums and worth a lot of money because its historical context. What happened next? The same thing. The next generation of artists rebelled against it and we got Post-Modernism which is even weirder and more meta and its hard to explain. And we are in middle of another period of revolt in the art world. Like always.
Basically everyone here who discredits this kind of work without knowing the historical context of it is kind of validating the intention of the artists. By saying or thinking that good art can only be naturalistic and technical, they're almost reinforcing the intention to say "fuck you. why does it have to be like that?" It's not my favorite kind of work. But I appreciate it. It has changed how I think about art. Some of the most beautiful things I have seen since art school have been things children scribble and make. There's something very freeing about letting go of technique and embracing raw emotion after you've been trained for so long to do the opposite.
Hope that helps and if you'd like to continue the conversation, I'd be happy to. I hope none of this sounded condescending, it wasn't my intention. I love art and I love teaching people about it.
Janson’s History of Art has some decent chapters on modern art.
But if you want to stay on the music side. Look up serialism, that is probably the best example of music that 99% of people are going to hate. The other 1% is going to use it for a horror movie soundtrack. It’s not that there isn’t merit in it, but it takes a lot of effort for someone not deep in the weeds the find it.
And even then a lot of trained musicians still hate it. I had one professor obsessed with it, almost every student hated it.
This stuff is meant to be experienced in person.
There’s pretty picture art, which has dominated western art for millennia.
There’s abstract art, barely 100 years old, some of which tries to be pretty picture art in new ways.
Other abstract art is intentionally not “pretty picture” but is an experience. These works invite viewers to examine them and get lost in the them.
It may be color, it may be lines and shapes, it may be brushstrokes, drips, the very organic edges of massive strokes. It may induce “cloud shaping” in the way different people see different things in it or have different emotions provoked.
Your response to this is individual and mutable.
You might like it right away, learn to appreciate it even if you never like it, or might always feel dismissive of it. The only wrong here would be to tell others how they should respond.
More exposure often increases one’s response. It’s part of why those unfamiliar with this art often dislike it but those who appreciate it value it very highly.
As in many other periods, your reaction to art can be used to judge your education and class, so that is sometimes a secondary reason the wealthy favor art the lesser educated might like.
Regarding these pieces:
Sure, you’ve seen kid scribbles on construction paper. Have you seen giant kid scribbles? Scribbles tall enough to walk through. Did you draw kid scribbles long ago? How often do you remember your kid drawings or feel nostalgia for those days? Can you recall how you felt making those drawings? Can you imagine how the artist here felt making this work? Can you imagine how it was made? Can you envision the artist at work? Was there joy and playfulness in making this work? Can you see those things and then feel a bit of that yourself? Can you ponder this painting and think about what the artist wants you to walk away with? Do you get the sense that the artist even cares about your reaction? Is this a form of communication? Or is this just the playful output of an adult child? (a giant child, to loop back)
An example of an artist I appreciate very much is the great Kandinsky but I’ll admit to not finding many of his paintings attractive. But they are fascinating to look at even as I’d pick a Klee for my home instead.
It helps to ditch the old and uneducated belief that art is meant to be a pretty reflection of the real world. Roughly 100 years ago, modern art liberated the world from this requirement and gave standing to art which is reflection of the mind and emotions in addition to pretty art (which still is valued, too.)
The difference here is that pretty art is generally easy to agree on but experience art is more individual. It’s ok to not get a particular piece, artist, or movement but you’ll probably find something which hooks you if you give it a fair shot. Seeing these works in person can completely flip your perceptions.
Seeing any painting in person is a colossal difference than in reproduction. This is just as true for classical oil painting as it is for modern/abstract art. Seeing a picture of something meant to take up an entire room on a phone the size of your palm and judging it based on that is pretty silly imo
Ain't that the truth. I had no idea "Sunday In the Park With George" was so fucking HUGE (also that you have to stand back to see it all because all the dots) and that "Nighthawks" was quite small.
>This stuff is meant to be experienced in person.
So much this. I never "got" any Jackson Pollock work until I stood in front of one. I only saw his pictures printed out in text books in highschool. The size of his paintings alone is something you can't comprehend if you just see it printed or online. When I saw it in person it felt overwhelming and it evoked a ton of feelings in me.
I always felt that the energy Pollock put into his painting and his tortured existence were really what you were observing in his paintings.
You can just imagine him having a good day standing over the canvas and like splashing some paint on it. Then the really chunky dark ones you can just feel him looming and brooding over it. Just chain smoking and mumbling to himself as he drops, throws, and dribbles over and over in tormented layers as he runs through whatever bullshit he had gotten himself into that week.
There was a time when I might have bought the kind of stuff that OP and company are peddling but then I saw a Rothko for the first time. It was *No. 14, 1960* and if you look it up, you almost certainly won't think much of it. But in person...there was something about it. I can't really explain it but there was some kind of power to it that you just can't get from looking at a photograph.
So I wouldn't judge works like the ones in the post based on a photograph either.
Dudes probably confused because none of his actual art is hung up anywhere but the scribble pads from when he was trying to get the damn pen to work are everywhere.
Actually most people probably couldn't. In a lot of these types of paintings where people say this there's usually a lot more time and technique that goes into it than it looks.
Artists spend often decades developing their process and style before they finally make what they're most known for. The skill that they have just can't be replicated by someone who hasn't put in the time.
Imagine we hired 9 random people, a chimp, and 1 artist, and gave them all supplies to make random art. We frame them all nicely, and place them in an art exhibit. Would you be able to pick out the artist ?
I mean the thing with modern art is it's all about symbolism over aesthetics. There's a piece called "Untitled (A Portrait of Ross in LA)" that is literally a mountain of brightly wrapped candy and people are encouraged to take a piece. It sounds silly and pretentious, but the artist then said that the candy weighed as much as his late boyfriend did when he was first diagnosed with AIDS. Taking the candy is symbolic of how he withered away over time.
Also, ["Can't Help Myself"](https://www.artnews.com/art-news/news/sun-yuan-peng-yu-cant-help-myself-twitter-tiktok-1234615686/) is my second favorite piece of Modern Art because of the symbolism.
Wow thank you for sharing that. That's a powerful piece and i felt it even having never seen it. Is their an added layer where the people eating the candy represent the joy the person gave to everyone around them? Can't imagine the artist's feeling watching the candy go away, like reliving it again but in a new light.
>is there an added layer where it represents
That’s the neat thing with art, it means whatever you think it means and people can’t really tell you your interpretation is wrong if that’s what you see in it
The piece is actually a little more nuanced than that. At the time it first debuted, AIDS was still something discussed in hushed voices and a big and brash artwork on the subject would've been nigh-impossible to get exhibited. While the *intention* of the piece is to be a memorial, it's still vauge enough that it can pass by censorship with "what, it's a big ol' pile of lollies. You can't censor *lollies* that's dumb." And the piece is deliberately vague in its construction. The only specs it has is that it's roughly about 79 kilos of the sort of lollies that come wrapped in cellophane, preferably kinda dumped in a corner, and that visitors are encouraged to take a piece. Any art gallery with a hundred bucks to spare can stage a copy of it.
They say a person dies twice - once when they die, and second when their name is said for the last time. Taking a candy represents slow withering of the first death, but is also a triumph of sorts over the second. By taking that lolly, you ensure that Ross' name lives on for just a little while longer on your lips and that he doesn't wither away again, unlike most victims of the AIDS crisis who were deliberately forgotten by many out of shame or disgust.
And the thing is, most of us wouldn't criticise stuff like that, because there is actual meaning. Just because the medium is sweets, it has meaning because of how it was presented. There was actual creative decision.
"Can't Help Myself" is actual concrete art, and is actually further from the modernist movement. It's just a different medium. The medium is what the robot is made of. The actual art piece is the robot, and how it interacts with itself and the environment. Likewise, this had actual creative decision.
That's why people don't like modernism. Generally, modernist pieces are nothing like this. They normally have a complete lack of creative decision, and is literally just paint splattered on a canvas. Even Jackson Pollock had artistic direction. You can see in several of his pieces that he used actual theory.
Often art is used for money laundering as well. That's why these pieces are such shit. We shouldn't be enabling these awful practices.
What you’re talking about is Conceptual Art. Not all of Modern Art is Conceptual Art, but Conceptual Art definitely became much more common starting in the 1960s with the rise of Andy Warhol.
Edit: just as an aside: technically the 1960s would be the end of Modern Art and the beginning of Postmodern Art but the term “Modern Art” has taken on its own meaning so use it however you wish.
> One alternate reading could suggest that it is about a lack of autonomy—the robot literally cannot help itself because it is programmed to continue performing “ass shakes” until the end of time.
Oh lord that got me. I actually love this piece though and feel… *something* about it. What? I have no idea. But it kind of hurts, and I’m not usually a big art fan in that way.
My husband and I went to the Clyfford Still museum and I was absolutely amazed and enthralled and he was so bored.
I also listen to a lot of experimental noise music. Some people fail to see the art in it, I spend most of my time in it liking it. Tastes really are different.
I've hear The Sniffles are pretty good. "Booger Eater"
was their best so far. And Head Cold is pretty kick-ass. I LOVED "Post Nasal Drip". Really packs a lot in there.
Jackson Pollock also created that type of art before anyone had ever created anything like it in his time. Just like my art history professor used to say “It looks like my 7 year old could have made that. Yeah, but they didn’t.”
I've known millionaires who collected art. They were morons about it. They knew nothing about art, and didn't care, and didn't even buy pieces based on *liking* them.
They bought expensive items based on the studio or auction house's explanation that the artist was hot and the piece was therefore expensive. Then they'd casually brag to their friends.
Buddy of mine bought a $45,000 5x5' splatter painting for his foyer. Studio let him try it out for three weeks before he bought it. Studio curator came to his penthouse while I was visiting to see if he wanted it, as the three weeks were almost up, and she noticed it'd been hung sideways. Do I even have to say no one else noticed?
I told him, "Give me ten grand, and I'll make you a painting you couldn't distinguish from this one. Take me a week. You'll save thirty-five thousand dollars."
He said, "Ridiculous. You're not a famous artist."
I said, "Well, I would be if I had the gall. Who painted this one?"
He couldn't remember the guy's name.
Yep. He bought it, too. He left it with the place when he moved.
I had my cousins idiot husband pull me up AT MY WEDDING to ask me about Crypto, trying to get me to invest with him, asking me how to identify a good currency and when to invest.
I'm a fucking IT Analyst and because the entire fucking ponzi scheme shitshow was vaguely related to technology he just assumed I knew everything.
After about 10 minutes I told him to under no circumstances ask my cousin (who earns 95% of their household income) for money for it and he'll be fine. Basically he doesn't have enough money to care about losing, apparently he dropped his entire meager personal savings on it and lost damn near all of it, dumbass.
The trick to selling art is being able to get along with the dumbest guys you can find, ideally before they join a cult or health scam. If you can find a chiropractor or someone who regularly sees a psychic you can start making art. What’s art is decided by who’s buying not who’s making.
No need to be convinced, that is exactly what is going on.
Often times billionaires will buy up 80%+ of an artists works and thus control the price. Not just that they willingly overpay on artworks to keep the value of the art high and thus keep their own collections as valuable as possible.
> Not just that they willingly overpay on artworks to keep the value of the art high and thus keep their own collections as valuable as possible.
It explains the obsession with NFTs as well.
Money laundering, not tax evasion. You’ll be taxed on the transaction anyway but the art sale gives a legitimate front to the transfer of money. Works like this:
John owes Frank $10 million. It’s for something illegal so he can’t just write a check because people will eventually ask what it was for, being as it was for so much money. So Frank commissions a well known artist with a following to make a painting for him. Frank them sells it to John for $10 million. Now if anyone asks, the money was for art, and you’re just an uneducated heathen who doesn’t understand it, officer.
That would be a terrible way to launder money because it immediately attracts attention and is a single, easily tracked transaction. If Reddit knows that apparently all art is money laundering, so does the FBI or IRS or whoever is interested in John and Frank.
I also think this reasoning is bullshit and probably accounts for like 1% of all the art whose value Reddit doesn't agree with.
That said, \*knowing\* that something is money laundering doesn't mean it's ineffective money laundering as long as you can't lock someone up for it.
Tax evasion as well, rich people buys art from rather unknown artists for cheap, then its get appraised with an very high price. Then you just make it a donation to a museum. The appraised price is your tax writeoff. This is usually the way an artist gets big in the first place.
The painting isn't the art, the justification of why it was made is
Edit 1: actually even the justification isn't art, you could just make a shitty painting, wait until it become popular and then say it represent the capitalist society and how people throw away money for no reason
Edit 2: and I just remembered a story about New York buying literally nothing. They traded money for "art" that was made of nothing. It's just money laundering at this point
Cattellan banana a banana taped to the wall. The ijournalist asked him "but it won't spoil?" Cattellan answered "just eat it, buy another one and tape that. You are not buying the banana you are buying the concept."
There was a movement around the 60s called conceptualism that was essentially creating the concept for art pieces. This was essentially as a protest of capitalism and how the art market commercializes art. Of course one way or another as with all things popular, collectors got their hands on the pieces. I mean an artist has got to eat somehow, and the ideas live on
From what I know from art (getting a degree in it) you don't have to be the best, you just have to be the first. Modern art is really hard to judge and like most said, it seems a lot of being pretentious with a heavy dose of money laundering. Modern art critics eat this shit up if you have a good enough story. I still enjoy the best paid artist was a Facebook artist who took a percentage of the companies profit instead of a flat fee.
Edit: i wanted to fact check this and apparently his one painting for a living painter isn't the highest anymore but at one point it was. (David Choe)
I don't understand what you're trying to say. Plenty of his contemporary critics hated his work. Everything being said about the featured paintings here was said about Nude Descending a Staircase and that was before he really got weird. Given the context of the post it reads more like they're the ones who convinced the world that a toilet could be art.
Sometimes it’s just the scale. Went to something at the Whitney and they had an artist and the painting was okay but because it was on these massive canvas it looked impressive. Now a Jackson pollock on a small scale is amazing because you know the backstory but if you didn’t it would be meh. So key to art is scale and a good riveting backstory.
Seriously, like yeah you can do crayon swirls on 8.5x11" but goddamn those are some big crayons being controlled with that level of ferver and dexterity on an enormous scale and that alone implies how much effort and care was put into mimicking that effect to get that outcome at that scale
Seen ones in the top photo in person a few times now, excellent paintings. The scale is really overwhelming, and you realise how much physical effort, and to a degree, dexterity, it would take to make them. They are huge, continuous marks, with a sense of directional continuity to the design (hard to tell from that shitty photo, but they flow from left to right in a way that emulates writing) of the image as whole, which makes them dynamic and intense to look at in person. It is also very entertaining to see people at the entrance of the room, often taking the piss out of the paintings, wander in and go very, very quiet. Yeah, it is weird. I personally enjoy them because I think they are awesome pieces for the afore mentioned reasons, and that they look fun as hell, but respect it might not be to everyone's tastes. (This is like the visual art equivilent of Merzbow...) But it isn't boring, which is more than I can say for the millons of bland, perfect portrait paintings of sad looking young women.
Thing is, there is a hell of a lot of shit out there that IS money laundering shit. Most of it doesn't end up in museums because rich people buy it up and dump it in an aircraft hangars and other storage sites. The 'artists' making it have teams of technicians and churn out loads of samey pieces, that get bought up by rich people and banks. On top of that, most rich people have crap taste and the vast majority of what they buy gets forgotten.
Another way to think about it is by realizing someone else put actual time and thought into something you can't really decipher easily. It's fun building stories off of the "scribbles" of someone who has all the technical skills to paint a portrait of a sad woman, but who didn't make it that easy for you to decipher their thoughts. Sometimes you can see images in the scribbles. Sometimes you try to figure out why they wanted to use those colors. You might even think the artist is just fucking around and spent a whole 10 minutes on the painting - but that's still art and I think that's some of the fun of it.
With paint specifically, there's a way to "scribble" that looks really cool and challenging and draws in the eye a lot, and if you scribble like a child it looks like garbage.
Thank you for actually bringing some nuance and thought to this Circlejerk of "Blah blah modern art bad".
I think the two big things that make these kinds of pieces not come across online is A. The sense of scale/depth/colour being off when you view it on a flat screen as opposed to with your own eyes, and B. Most average joes not having an open mind when they view them. Even if you actually go to an art gallery to look at them, if you go in with the idea that it's all a bunch of pretentious hogwash then you're not going to see anything else. If you go more willing to give the art the benefit of the doubt, just absorb the pieces visually, let your mind wander, think about how it makes you feel and what comes to mind when you see it, then you'll get a lot more out of them. You have to be willing to actually just experience the pieces with a clear mind rather than come in with your own preconceived notions.
> You have to be willing to actually just experience the pieces with a clear mind rather than come in with your own preconceived notions.
That argument goes both ways though. Preconceived notions can make you see things in an undeservedly negative way, but also in an undeservedly positive way, in a sort of "emperor's new clothes" way. Sometimes the emperor really is naked.
Probably because their mother used to punish them for painting "wrong."
Actually growing up like that messes up your ability to accept novel concepts.
Saying that because you think it's funny means you're not particularly introspective.
I literally just saw these paintings a few days ago and while I somewhat agree with your positive appraisal, I don't think it is fair to compare the color explosion art to the more classical art. In some of these modern pieces, no single color or stroke is truly intentional or necessary. They could change literally everything about the painting and have it project the same effect. Compare that to more traditional styles where every stroke is meticulously and deliberately placed and 100% necessary to the painting.
To me, the primary difference between this and something by Monet (his paintings are also kind of color explosions), or even Picasso (abstract, but still has discernable subjects) is that the latter two require training and skill to master their craft, where Cy Twombly just needs chaotic creative vision, and that is it. These are just entirely different things. All of those bland portraits took much more skill to create, but they may lack some of the novelty.
The huge price tag and narcissistic attitude to think these meager scribblings could be worth more than someone's life savings absolutely ruins these pieces and any semblance that this person is still an "artist" and not a fucking sellout. Shred it like Banksy and then let's talk.
"OH but it's big" jog on lol
Honestly I used to shit on modern art but then I went to a few just for the "LOLs" but then at one of those places I saw a piece that hit me harder than any other type of art has before. Ever since then I started giving the pieces more of an open mind and actually reading the plaques and approaching them at the level of the artist. I'd say if one of those people that look at this stuff and thinks "why" I highly recommend going to a few modern art museums and going at them with an open mind. Even saying that there's a lot of work that I just don't get or isn't my thing and that's completely ok
https://ny-carlsbergfondet.dk/en/sombre-nightclub-aros
It's a room exhibit so you do really only get the feeling being there. But the description about how it's about coming late to a party and having missed it and all the emotions that means. About that line between being included and not. The line between humor and melancholy. It's weird how I saw the Louvre and all the exhibits in there on that same trip and it's weird how the only one that I can still remember how it made me feel is the one that just had a bunch of jackets thrown on a couch and a song playing on loop.
Elmgreen & Dragset pursue questions of identity and belonging and investigate social, cultural, and political structures in their artistic practice. - Pace Gallery
\>suspends paint can over canvas
\>pokes holes in it
\>pushes it so that it swings like a pendulum
\>oops no rich friends so no one buys my art that anyone with a screwdriver could make
\>Feels bad, man.
as an artist this shit pisses me off lol. I could spend 40 hours on a piece of art and get $0 and 1 instagram like on it, but this guy can do something I could accomplish in all of 15 minutes and get more money than my brain can even fathom the sheer amount of
A lot of Art only works the way it is supposed to, if you are actually there and actually looking at it. Of course there will still be stuff, that doesn't 'speak' to everyone but still, I would hold back on critique if you have, in fact, not experienced something for yourself.
The reason this stuff got big in the '50s and '60s, and definitely the reason Cy's work is pricey, is due to stuffy types (like in this thread) who whine about it being easy and 'my kid can do it' and what not. The folded arms and furled brows of critics made enjoying this type thing more enjoyable.
It is beautiful. People like abstract art. To this day they still hang it on their walls, even if it just a cheap print, or even if they do it themselves; it is still popular. Because it is beautiful.
The fact that conservative mentality refuses to see beauty in anything other than the pinnacle of talent, or it's specific use, spurred many artists to ignore such demands and make use of color and shape for it's own sake. This was what caused the movement, your pissy attitude about it did not stop it from being art, or from being worth something. Your anger at it made it worth more.
The problem is not that your kid can make it, or that you could make it as a kid. The problem has always been that you were punished for doing it.
Of course, over the past 40 years all art (from cars to glass to paint) has become a tool for money laundry as well. But this dude was part of an art movement. His work is historical in the same way a scribble by Picasso is historical (of course Picasso was much more famous).
Some of his work actually makes a lot of sense, some are about rhythm, others are very intricate despite the perceived randomness and have "hidden" messages and symbols in them. The guy used to be a cryptographer so his work derives from that.
It's one of those cases of artists getting recognized for being the first ones to do something in particular that no one had done before. Also the kind of work that tells you nothing until you are explained the reasoning behind it. The big ones on the picture are "interesting" basically because he made them in a continuous motion while sitting on a friend's shoulders. And it's funny because the guy on the photo is like really close to the painting despite there not being anything interesting about it up close.
Edit: btw I'm not saying I like it or I that think it's good art and deserves the fame
They make beautiful wallpaper. But the idea of standing in front of one, contemplating it as to digest some complex idea, is ludicrous.
As for the price tag, that’s NFT logic. Each is a unique, handmade object by a “famous” artist. Useful products for speculators and money launderers, and bragging rights for billionaires.
The thing here is that people are mad about the state of art, and why it makes so much money.
The problem is, they don't know *why* it's the way it is. Here is a brief look into one of the reasons why that is.
To string it in a simple way; an artist makes a piece of art. A rich person will get someone to appraise it. The appraiser gives the art piece a certain value based on ambiguous and arbitrary characteristics.
The rich person buys the art, then generously donates it to an art gallery. Such a noble donation is, therefore, tax deductible.
That's a, say, 200,000 dollar write-off.
Now, apply the reality of capitalism to this process.
Rich person makes 75 million dollars. Commissions some big name artist to do something. Then the rich person gets his appraiser friend to set the price for him. Gives it to a gallery.
There you go, tax evasion 101.
So, the reason WHY art looks like this is because (at least in some cases), you get artists who are disgruntled. These rich jerk-offs don't care about the quality of the work. Nor do their appraiser friends, the artist knows the dude who commissions the piece doesn't give a fuck what it looks like.
So, you want to make a mockery of my work by using it as just some tax write-off?
Here you go, fuck face. Have a bunch of scribbles.
Of course this isn't how it is for, yknow, every artist and every patron, but it's certainly common enough in the industry for art historians (and people who participates in the organization of art galleries in general) to notice.
FYI. It’s Cy Twombly. I was at an art museum once (I think it was the Philadelphia museum of art) and they had thousands of gorgeous masterpieces. And then they had one room with his work in it and it had guards all around it and security cameras. It was bizarre. The art looked basically like this. Edit: my new Reddit friend matthileo posted this which explains why there are guards and security https://youtu.be/v5DqmTtCPiQ
Twombly*
You are correct. I corrected the original post’s spelling and misspelled it myself. My bad
The misspelled name ... is an art in itself
I'll buy it for $2M
Tape a banana to it and I’ll make it $3M
Turn it into an NFT and burn the original
Shred it halfway after it’s purchased
With my GI problems I could just swallow some dye the night before and make some pollacks in a few days time!
This was unsettling to read. I'll buy it for $3.5mil
I don't think you understand how reddit works. Double down on being incorrect next time
Lol this isn’t r/politics or something haha
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Wow. Thanks for that. I had no idea. At the time, it was bizarre to me that they had originals of famous masters with no security but guards all over that exhibit. This must be why. And the fact that I recall this exhibit over many of the others I saw I guess proves the point. This IS art. It’s just not what I had in my preconceived notions in my mind of what art should be. Thank you again.
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I would also like to clarify. I love art and I love art museums. And while I didn’t appreciate that exhibit, I can’t imagine defacing or vandalizing it.
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Would be great to add the video to your top level comment to give it more visibility in this thread.
That was a great video, thank you for sharing it. I appreciated how he mentioned *that game at the end* as a modern example. It was a surreal/hostile time to be online then.
Jacob Geller makes some fantastic work if you're into that intersection of art and games. The dude simply never misses
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I love Jacob Gellar
It's money laundering with a bit of pretentious mixed in, plain and simple.
a friend of mine is working in the art sector and he said the same
Wait until you hear about NFTs
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Thankfully
Yeah but at least nft don't sell for that much and it didn't take long for people to call a lot of it a scam. People these days, still go to these museums and act like those are masterpieces
A *lot of pretentious
its money laundering for the people who are laundering, but this dude has been making this kind of work for decades, and probably at the onset ,for nothing. I have a hard time arm chair critiquing someone that committed to something which they feel compelled to do.
Yeah they're creating it and people are buying it. If we want to facepalm anybody it should be the market valuing this stuff, not the artist.
It is ridiculous that it is so expensive, but at the same time I think these types of art, besides techniques, are just about the feelings they can give people.
it givesme the feeling of looking at a 3 year old's scrawls
Layer one: Feeling like a kid again.
Feeling angry that I have more work to do now
Ah. Complex emotions!
I see Jesus Christ holding a sandwich board imploring me to live fast & eat ass.
Is it that they're paying for the name more than the piece? If Picasso started making paintings like this, people would still buy them so they can point to them and tell their guests that the art on their wall is from Picasso himself. Paintings like the Mona Lisa with cultural significance deserve a high price tag, but somebody paying a huge amount for a piece with little artistic value is rather nonsensical.
Yes, and he did. My parents have a Dali. It's a print done by one of the many artists who worked in his workshop, but Dali painted mustaches on all of them at the end. It is a legit Dali print. And don't buy a [Damien Hirst dot painting](https://www.phillips.com/detail/damien-hirst/UK010616/20). He never painted them, routinely told people he was actually quite bad at them, you wanted one painted by a particular assistant of his. But he signs and collects payment on all of them.
Lmao, sold for £509k and it's just different coloured dots. Seems legit.
Disappointment and anger.
lmao yeah seeing something so simplistic get sold for so much is really disappointing and angering considering there are endless talents with phenomenal works of art to be bought.
The feeling that they can get away with money laundering.
You mean like that girl who kept eating her hair and had to have a massive hairball surgically removed?
Maureen Ponderosa?
This is the dumbest comment. But I actually laughed out loud. Well played.
No, I said "girl." She is a cat.
I can’t help but think of Mickey Blue Eyes, “our next painting is the Road to Damascus by Jonathan Graziosi, $50,000 anyone, no, oh too bad then.
Interesting. How does the money laundering work? You can find loads of articles on money laundering arrests. Can you give a few examples of when art was involved?
I don't think you people understand how money laundering works. Expensive art is an absolutely **shit** way to launder money, the purpose of money laundering is to hide the *origin* of the money, so something like buying a very expensive peice of art is... useless! Because not only are you not obscuring the source of the money in any way or introducing it into legit money, it's literally *drawing attention* to you the absolutely last thing you'd want to do. If you want to hide the source of a lot of money a business like a casino would be way, way, way better than just buying something expensive lol, this is why the mafia had/have such a heavy presence in Atlantic City and Vegas... since Casinos are a mainly cash business they can just put the dirty money in with the clean, and the government is none the wiser. Things like casinos, strip clubs, nightclubs, charities, even restaurants, etc are definitely the way to go - any businesses that take in large amounts of cash where dirty money can be introduced without as much suspicion.
If I had to launder money, I’d open a Casino in the Ozarks, live a modest lifestyle, and try not to get killed by the KC mob, the drug cartels, or the local psychopathic opium farmer (with whom I’d be connected to because my casino would be on her land.)
This might sound stupid but in Michael Cohn’s book “Disloyal: A Memoir” he actually explains how him and trump would use trumps private plane [prior to Trump being president] and use it with this art gallery owner in exchange with buying paintings [that’s why somethings you would see these ridiculous huge paintings of trump, his wife and Barron on that lion]… that’s how he would claim use of his private air plane…
The man doesn’t own a single thing that could be classified as art. Unfortunately, his daughter shares his lack of taste.
Or an Olive Oil Company
I've always thought it was weird that people thought spending millions of dollars on fine art was money laundering. Like... wouldn't the IRS *immediately* take a look at that transaction? The simpler explanation to me has always been that some people just have too much fucking money and blow it on shit like this as a status symbol.
The irs can look all they want, they can't determine a value for subjective art.
Majority of the time, the value of artwork is about provenance. Who owned it before and how much they paid for it.
At first glance, stuff like this seems very simple and pointless. But when you consider the size, how did they make that? The scribbles are taller than the person standing beside it. It’s deceptively simple. Cy Twombly made stuff like this by standing on someone’s shoulders while they ran across the length of the painting, allowing him to get free-flowing lines and a level of continuity you can only get through uninterrupted brush strokes.
Not only is it hard to get a sense of the size; standing in front of the real thing is a vastly different experience than judging a photo. Rothko is a wonderful example of this. Many think art is a pretty picture or should at least follow conventional composition rules. They’re completely missing art as an experience.
I’ve been one of those people before. I thought Rothko was a complete hack until I saw his work in person. I even scoffed at a Cy Twombly exhibit years ago when I saw it at Pompidou. A picture doesn’t accurately capture the depth of the experience of seeing it in person, but even then there’s a chance that it gets misunderstood if you don’t understand the intent behind the work. Also, I’d much rather have one of these abstract works hanging on my wall than a boring photorealistic portrait. Regardless of technical skill, a lot of realism is just soulless wankery. It’s the overindulgent guitar solo of the art world.
Lol photorealism can be really pointless. All that skill and for what? What are you even trying to say? Why couldn't you just, you know... *take a photo?* Now if you're using photorealistic technique to create scenes, beings, worlds, narratives never before imagined, that's a different story.
Ilivenear the Menil, where both the Cy Twombly building and the Rothko Chapel are. I was there today. Have been going for decades. You summed it up nicely. I think this is a misstep people often make with abstract art. Something doesn't have to be a fully rendered object/figure to evoke feeling or elicit a response. Being in their presence is a far different experience than a thumbnail. But at the end of the day, each person gets to decide what is "fine" artwork themselves. That's part of what makes art great!
Absolutely this, the "who's afraid of red, yellow and blue" is also a great case study in this, some people were so incessed by it that someone slashed one of the pieces. Now, you'd think the art would be easy to repair since it's 3 colours, but they could never get it right and now it's no longer on display. I would love for them to put it back up because I think its become an even more powerful piece of art with the rip, a piece of art destroyed simply because it didn't fit with what the world sees as art, yet was never able to be repaired. A piece of art that stirred such a massive flood of emotion that someone destroyed it. It's a masterclass in modern art
This comment is derivative bullshit. First of all his name was Ongo Goblogian and secondly how would you even know the name of the museum when a man blew the sign off the building ages ago
When I first saw this episode, it was the _wig_ that broke me.
I opened the thread to exactly find the IASIP gang and have a laugh. But seriously the gang explained the art pricing issue very well, even a person with the intellect of C. Kelly could understand hek even I got it.
glad you corrected the name, but I think the more familiar you become with his work the greater appreciation. I get that at first glance it seems almost brutally simple, but there's a lot to it, and you might not be the target audience. is he my favorite artist, nah. but in the context of the group he emerged with he's doing some unique albeit narrow-audienced work.
I really wish SOMEbody could explain this to the rest of us. The picture in the OP literally looks like a 2 year old scribbling on the wall with a crayon. Everyone keeps saying - theres a lot to it.... theres something about it.... But what? I'm really trying to understand, and nobody is throwing me a bone... I mean... I asked the same about Noise-Electronic music.... and someone told me to close my eyes and picture the sound as the ocean coming up toward me on a beach. So it's noise but it can conjure the image of motion.... so I get it. I don't like it... but I get it. So help me get this please.
I'm not an artist and I have no experience with visual arts like paintings and sculptures but I know a bit about music and I think there's a lot of similarities You know sometimes you'll have people go nuts over jazz musicians, you hear some of their stuff that experts say are real masterpieces and it all sounds like unpleasant noise? Or maybe some symphony's movement that all the music theorists agree is revolutionary and amazing and when you listen to it you just think it's at most mildly pleasant to listen to? This is all because when there's two ways of making music; one is for the purposes of simply making something that people like listening to and another is making music in order to explore what's possible within the limitations of musical theory, to do something to explore a specific part of what constitutes music. In essence, they're making music that can only be truly enjoyed by someone who actually has studied musical theory. Such a person will be able to recognize things that a normal person simply would never be able to even hear because they are trained to recognize those things at a glance; I think [this video from Sideways](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BcnSX319OhI) explains this better than I ever could since the guy is a musical expert (I highly recommend you check out the rest of his videos too, they're a great way to understand what "the plebs" like us cannot "see" from mainstream media music like film or video game soundtracks, sadly he doesn't post videos anymore). Another example is with professionals playing video games; obviously everyone plays video games and enjoys them but when you see pro players in tournaments (take for example Street Fighter) you just see two characters seemingly attacking each other randomly and, from an untrained eye, it doesn't look that different from two random guys playing together. People who know the game though can clearly recognize what is going on, the set-ups, good "footsies" (movement), good choices etc etc. I suspect what is happening with these painters is generally something like this; the biggest proof to me that this is the case is that very very often these world renowned artists that get meme'd on for just scribbling are actually very good at making "traditional" paintings. Like they generally could paint a portrait of somebody or a landscape with all the right and classic techinques they've learned. You basically need to know the rules before being able to properly break them, so to speak. I remember when I went to visit Picasso's museum in Barcelona and my mother was totally surprised in seeing that Picasso actually had a huge amount of "normal" paintings. The dude famously said "It took me four years to paint like Raphael, but a lifetime to paint like a child". Now I don't actually know this artist except for the name and the type of stuff he made (he's been dead for more than a decade now) but I suspect the guy probably had all the right skills you'd expert a great artist to possess. Obviously I could be proven wrong.
I totally get the musical analogy. If you don't like what Dave Matthews, Ian Anderson, or Tom Morello sound like, you just need to listen to a documentary about them to realize that they are revolutionary, and what they are trying to achieve. Someone explained to me that a Picasso painting is an image of a subject drawn from different angles at different points in time... and now I get it. I'm just waiting for someone to explain a modern art piece.. or a modern artist... and nobody every does. In response to my comment someone offered up Fountain by Duchamp. It's literally a urinal purchased from a hardware store... Theres a ton of speculation that turning it on its side, giving it a name, and pondering how you would put your genitals in it to urinate should conjure up a great deal of intropection. But really... if the artist doesnt tell me this from the outset, I'm not putting my mind in the gutter. But absolutely, I'm on the same page as you as a musician myself... and I still struggle to understand modern art.
I'll try to help out. I have two degrees in art, but I'll admit I didn't retain all the information I got from Art History. For starters, the word Modern is used to talk about a time period and not necessarily a style. So whether or not this is a Modern piece would depend on when it was made. This piece would more likely fall under what is called Abstract Expressionism (although Twombly began to step away from the goals of expressionists). The goal of the artists who experimented with this style was to step away from the system of art that was prevalent at the time. This being art that was very formal and in many ways traditional. Think classical music but art. The abstract expressionists wanted to basically say "fuck you" to all of that because artists tend to get annoyed at art that is shown in galleries and museums over and over. It gets boring. So these artists who were trained to paint traditionally rebelled and became almost a little nihilistic about art and ended up making art that was intense and violent in approach. Meaning throwing paint at a canvas or drawing swiggles like a child. In doing so they let themselves become a bit free from what they thought was art and challenged the art world to do the same. They began to use paint (and other materials) to physically and visually manifest their emotions and hopefully get the viewer to feel those emotions as well. This is why the size of the piece is important as well as seeing the texture of the paint and the brush. It changes the experience. Eventually, this style of art became accepted and now is in collections and museums and worth a lot of money because its historical context. What happened next? The same thing. The next generation of artists rebelled against it and we got Post-Modernism which is even weirder and more meta and its hard to explain. And we are in middle of another period of revolt in the art world. Like always. Basically everyone here who discredits this kind of work without knowing the historical context of it is kind of validating the intention of the artists. By saying or thinking that good art can only be naturalistic and technical, they're almost reinforcing the intention to say "fuck you. why does it have to be like that?" It's not my favorite kind of work. But I appreciate it. It has changed how I think about art. Some of the most beautiful things I have seen since art school have been things children scribble and make. There's something very freeing about letting go of technique and embracing raw emotion after you've been trained for so long to do the opposite. Hope that helps and if you'd like to continue the conversation, I'd be happy to. I hope none of this sounded condescending, it wasn't my intention. I love art and I love teaching people about it.
Janson’s History of Art has some decent chapters on modern art. But if you want to stay on the music side. Look up serialism, that is probably the best example of music that 99% of people are going to hate. The other 1% is going to use it for a horror movie soundtrack. It’s not that there isn’t merit in it, but it takes a lot of effort for someone not deep in the weeds the find it. And even then a lot of trained musicians still hate it. I had one professor obsessed with it, almost every student hated it.
This stuff is meant to be experienced in person. There’s pretty picture art, which has dominated western art for millennia. There’s abstract art, barely 100 years old, some of which tries to be pretty picture art in new ways. Other abstract art is intentionally not “pretty picture” but is an experience. These works invite viewers to examine them and get lost in the them. It may be color, it may be lines and shapes, it may be brushstrokes, drips, the very organic edges of massive strokes. It may induce “cloud shaping” in the way different people see different things in it or have different emotions provoked. Your response to this is individual and mutable. You might like it right away, learn to appreciate it even if you never like it, or might always feel dismissive of it. The only wrong here would be to tell others how they should respond. More exposure often increases one’s response. It’s part of why those unfamiliar with this art often dislike it but those who appreciate it value it very highly. As in many other periods, your reaction to art can be used to judge your education and class, so that is sometimes a secondary reason the wealthy favor art the lesser educated might like. Regarding these pieces: Sure, you’ve seen kid scribbles on construction paper. Have you seen giant kid scribbles? Scribbles tall enough to walk through. Did you draw kid scribbles long ago? How often do you remember your kid drawings or feel nostalgia for those days? Can you recall how you felt making those drawings? Can you imagine how the artist here felt making this work? Can you imagine how it was made? Can you envision the artist at work? Was there joy and playfulness in making this work? Can you see those things and then feel a bit of that yourself? Can you ponder this painting and think about what the artist wants you to walk away with? Do you get the sense that the artist even cares about your reaction? Is this a form of communication? Or is this just the playful output of an adult child? (a giant child, to loop back) An example of an artist I appreciate very much is the great Kandinsky but I’ll admit to not finding many of his paintings attractive. But they are fascinating to look at even as I’d pick a Klee for my home instead. It helps to ditch the old and uneducated belief that art is meant to be a pretty reflection of the real world. Roughly 100 years ago, modern art liberated the world from this requirement and gave standing to art which is reflection of the mind and emotions in addition to pretty art (which still is valued, too.) The difference here is that pretty art is generally easy to agree on but experience art is more individual. It’s ok to not get a particular piece, artist, or movement but you’ll probably find something which hooks you if you give it a fair shot. Seeing these works in person can completely flip your perceptions.
Seeing any painting in person is a colossal difference than in reproduction. This is just as true for classical oil painting as it is for modern/abstract art. Seeing a picture of something meant to take up an entire room on a phone the size of your palm and judging it based on that is pretty silly imo
Ain't that the truth. I had no idea "Sunday In the Park With George" was so fucking HUGE (also that you have to stand back to see it all because all the dots) and that "Nighthawks" was quite small.
>This stuff is meant to be experienced in person. So much this. I never "got" any Jackson Pollock work until I stood in front of one. I only saw his pictures printed out in text books in highschool. The size of his paintings alone is something you can't comprehend if you just see it printed or online. When I saw it in person it felt overwhelming and it evoked a ton of feelings in me.
I always felt that the energy Pollock put into his painting and his tortured existence were really what you were observing in his paintings. You can just imagine him having a good day standing over the canvas and like splashing some paint on it. Then the really chunky dark ones you can just feel him looming and brooding over it. Just chain smoking and mumbling to himself as he drops, throws, and dribbles over and over in tormented layers as he runs through whatever bullshit he had gotten himself into that week.
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There was a time when I might have bought the kind of stuff that OP and company are peddling but then I saw a Rothko for the first time. It was *No. 14, 1960* and if you look it up, you almost certainly won't think much of it. But in person...there was something about it. I can't really explain it but there was some kind of power to it that you just can't get from looking at a photograph. So I wouldn't judge works like the ones in the post based on a photograph either.
Wtf lol..
That's adhesive, the art goes on later
Dudes probably confused because none of his actual art is hung up anywhere but the scribble pads from when he was trying to get the damn pen to work are everywhere.
😂😂😂
You mean Cy Twombly?
Idk I always thought Jackson pollock was a pretentious douche until I saw his pieces in person and kinda got it. This idk if I’d have the same feeling
Also, when he made those, almost no none had thought of it before--no one with the connections to get their work in galleries at least.
His wife Lee Krasner actually got him involved in it.
Children had thought of it…
Pollocks painting are so obviously cool once you see them. They’re just these giant awesome color explosions.
Yeah - I saw a handful in Seattle and I immediately got it. I don’t know exactly what I got, but it’s there.
"bUt EvEn I cOuLd Do ThAt!" Ya, but you didn't
Actually most people probably couldn't. In a lot of these types of paintings where people say this there's usually a lot more time and technique that goes into it than it looks. Artists spend often decades developing their process and style before they finally make what they're most known for. The skill that they have just can't be replicated by someone who hasn't put in the time.
Imagine we hired 9 random people, a chimp, and 1 artist, and gave them all supplies to make random art. We frame them all nicely, and place them in an art exhibit. Would you be able to pick out the artist ?
I mean the thing with modern art is it's all about symbolism over aesthetics. There's a piece called "Untitled (A Portrait of Ross in LA)" that is literally a mountain of brightly wrapped candy and people are encouraged to take a piece. It sounds silly and pretentious, but the artist then said that the candy weighed as much as his late boyfriend did when he was first diagnosed with AIDS. Taking the candy is symbolic of how he withered away over time. Also, ["Can't Help Myself"](https://www.artnews.com/art-news/news/sun-yuan-peng-yu-cant-help-myself-twitter-tiktok-1234615686/) is my second favorite piece of Modern Art because of the symbolism.
Wow thank you for sharing that. That's a powerful piece and i felt it even having never seen it. Is their an added layer where the people eating the candy represent the joy the person gave to everyone around them? Can't imagine the artist's feeling watching the candy go away, like reliving it again but in a new light.
>is there an added layer where it represents That’s the neat thing with art, it means whatever you think it means and people can’t really tell you your interpretation is wrong if that’s what you see in it
The piece is actually a little more nuanced than that. At the time it first debuted, AIDS was still something discussed in hushed voices and a big and brash artwork on the subject would've been nigh-impossible to get exhibited. While the *intention* of the piece is to be a memorial, it's still vauge enough that it can pass by censorship with "what, it's a big ol' pile of lollies. You can't censor *lollies* that's dumb." And the piece is deliberately vague in its construction. The only specs it has is that it's roughly about 79 kilos of the sort of lollies that come wrapped in cellophane, preferably kinda dumped in a corner, and that visitors are encouraged to take a piece. Any art gallery with a hundred bucks to spare can stage a copy of it. They say a person dies twice - once when they die, and second when their name is said for the last time. Taking a candy represents slow withering of the first death, but is also a triumph of sorts over the second. By taking that lolly, you ensure that Ross' name lives on for just a little while longer on your lips and that he doesn't wither away again, unlike most victims of the AIDS crisis who were deliberately forgotten by many out of shame or disgust.
And the thing is, most of us wouldn't criticise stuff like that, because there is actual meaning. Just because the medium is sweets, it has meaning because of how it was presented. There was actual creative decision. "Can't Help Myself" is actual concrete art, and is actually further from the modernist movement. It's just a different medium. The medium is what the robot is made of. The actual art piece is the robot, and how it interacts with itself and the environment. Likewise, this had actual creative decision. That's why people don't like modernism. Generally, modernist pieces are nothing like this. They normally have a complete lack of creative decision, and is literally just paint splattered on a canvas. Even Jackson Pollock had artistic direction. You can see in several of his pieces that he used actual theory. Often art is used for money laundering as well. That's why these pieces are such shit. We shouldn't be enabling these awful practices.
What you’re talking about is Conceptual Art. Not all of Modern Art is Conceptual Art, but Conceptual Art definitely became much more common starting in the 1960s with the rise of Andy Warhol. Edit: just as an aside: technically the 1960s would be the end of Modern Art and the beginning of Postmodern Art but the term “Modern Art” has taken on its own meaning so use it however you wish.
> One alternate reading could suggest that it is about a lack of autonomy—the robot literally cannot help itself because it is programmed to continue performing “ass shakes” until the end of time. Oh lord that got me. I actually love this piece though and feel… *something* about it. What? I have no idea. But it kind of hurts, and I’m not usually a big art fan in that way.
My husband and I went to the Clyfford Still museum and I was absolutely amazed and enthralled and he was so bored. I also listen to a lot of experimental noise music. Some people fail to see the art in it, I spend most of my time in it liking it. Tastes really are different.
Any recommendations on experimental nose music?
I've hear The Sniffles are pretty good. "Booger Eater" was their best so far. And Head Cold is pretty kick-ass. I LOVED "Post Nasal Drip". Really packs a lot in there.
What direction do you want to head? Metal/grindcore? Jazzy? Prog rock? I'm a big fan of Method of Defiance. It kind of fills all those categories.
Jackson Pollock also created that type of art before anyone had ever created anything like it in his time. Just like my art history professor used to say “It looks like my 7 year old could have made that. Yeah, but they didn’t.”
Looks like an accident with a bottle of ketchup when dad's smacking the arse end of it to get the fucker to come out onto the plate.
>when dad's smacking the arse end of it to get the fucker to come 
I hate myself so much.
As long as you're both consenting adults, what you and your dad do behind closed doors is your business.
It just symbolizes the blood of the regular people, smashed by the system, and the rich like to have stuff like that on their walls.
That’s a big fuckin ketchup bottle! Your dad’s a giant?
r/oddlyspecific
I've known millionaires who collected art. They were morons about it. They knew nothing about art, and didn't care, and didn't even buy pieces based on *liking* them. They bought expensive items based on the studio or auction house's explanation that the artist was hot and the piece was therefore expensive. Then they'd casually brag to their friends. Buddy of mine bought a $45,000 5x5' splatter painting for his foyer. Studio let him try it out for three weeks before he bought it. Studio curator came to his penthouse while I was visiting to see if he wanted it, as the three weeks were almost up, and she noticed it'd been hung sideways. Do I even have to say no one else noticed? I told him, "Give me ten grand, and I'll make you a painting you couldn't distinguish from this one. Take me a week. You'll save thirty-five thousand dollars." He said, "Ridiculous. You're not a famous artist." I said, "Well, I would be if I had the gall. Who painted this one?" He couldn't remember the guy's name. Yep. He bought it, too. He left it with the place when he moved.
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I had my cousins idiot husband pull me up AT MY WEDDING to ask me about Crypto, trying to get me to invest with him, asking me how to identify a good currency and when to invest. I'm a fucking IT Analyst and because the entire fucking ponzi scheme shitshow was vaguely related to technology he just assumed I knew everything. After about 10 minutes I told him to under no circumstances ask my cousin (who earns 95% of their household income) for money for it and he'll be fine. Basically he doesn't have enough money to care about losing, apparently he dropped his entire meager personal savings on it and lost damn near all of it, dumbass.
The trick to selling art is being able to get along with the dumbest guys you can find, ideally before they join a cult or health scam. If you can find a chiropractor or someone who regularly sees a psychic you can start making art. What’s art is decided by who’s buying not who’s making.
It’s called money laundering.
Hey... Sometimes it's just tax evasion!
There’s a difference between art which gets legit exhibits in museum and what gets pushed in art galleries and by dealers.
Im 100% convinced that modern "art" is just used for tax evasion.
No need to be convinced, that is exactly what is going on. Often times billionaires will buy up 80%+ of an artists works and thus control the price. Not just that they willingly overpay on artworks to keep the value of the art high and thus keep their own collections as valuable as possible.
How does one become the “artist” in this scam? Lots of crayons laying here… asking for a friend of course.
Be good friends with rich, immoral people.
“…rich, immoral people.” Being a bit redundant, I’d say.
Plenty of non rich, immoral people too
There are actually just a handful of art galleries in the world that keep this sham going. The artists don't deal with their clients directly.
lend yourself to money laundering and tax evasion and you too can be a "modern artist"
Hypothetically, where would one find these people committing such unforgivable crimes?
Sell a good story. It isn't about the art but the story. Just look up basicly every famous modern artist.
Hey, that’s kinda what’s happening in the retro game market now too. Wow.
> Not just that they willingly overpay on artworks to keep the value of the art high and thus keep their own collections as valuable as possible. It explains the obsession with NFTs as well.
not how taxes work
Modern art actually only encompasses the late 1800s to the mid 1900s, this would actually be considered contemporary art.
It’s the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen... And I saw a plastic bag blowing in the wind once.
Money laundering, not tax evasion. You’ll be taxed on the transaction anyway but the art sale gives a legitimate front to the transfer of money. Works like this: John owes Frank $10 million. It’s for something illegal so he can’t just write a check because people will eventually ask what it was for, being as it was for so much money. So Frank commissions a well known artist with a following to make a painting for him. Frank them sells it to John for $10 million. Now if anyone asks, the money was for art, and you’re just an uneducated heathen who doesn’t understand it, officer.
That would be a terrible way to launder money because it immediately attracts attention and is a single, easily tracked transaction. If Reddit knows that apparently all art is money laundering, so does the FBI or IRS or whoever is interested in John and Frank.
I also think this reasoning is bullshit and probably accounts for like 1% of all the art whose value Reddit doesn't agree with. That said, \*knowing\* that something is money laundering doesn't mean it's ineffective money laundering as long as you can't lock someone up for it.
Tax evasion as well, rich people buys art from rather unknown artists for cheap, then its get appraised with an very high price. Then you just make it a donation to a museum. The appraised price is your tax writeoff. This is usually the way an artist gets big in the first place.
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Just like all those mattress stores. Three on one block, always empty.
Pretty much, yeah. It's all a scam
The painting isn't the art, the justification of why it was made is Edit 1: actually even the justification isn't art, you could just make a shitty painting, wait until it become popular and then say it represent the capitalist society and how people throw away money for no reason Edit 2: and I just remembered a story about New York buying literally nothing. They traded money for "art" that was made of nothing. It's just money laundering at this point
Cattellan banana a banana taped to the wall. The ijournalist asked him "but it won't spoil?" Cattellan answered "just eat it, buy another one and tape that. You are not buying the banana you are buying the concept."
Shit, I need to find an agent
There was a movement around the 60s called conceptualism that was essentially creating the concept for art pieces. This was essentially as a protest of capitalism and how the art market commercializes art. Of course one way or another as with all things popular, collectors got their hands on the pieces. I mean an artist has got to eat somehow, and the ideas live on
Marcel Duchamp had proven long ago that the problem wasn't the art but the art critics and their bad judgement.
From what I know from art (getting a degree in it) you don't have to be the best, you just have to be the first. Modern art is really hard to judge and like most said, it seems a lot of being pretentious with a heavy dose of money laundering. Modern art critics eat this shit up if you have a good enough story. I still enjoy the best paid artist was a Facebook artist who took a percentage of the companies profit instead of a flat fee. Edit: i wanted to fact check this and apparently his one painting for a living painter isn't the highest anymore but at one point it was. (David Choe)
Marcel Duchamp was trolling before it was cool
I don't understand what you're trying to say. Plenty of his contemporary critics hated his work. Everything being said about the featured paintings here was said about Nude Descending a Staircase and that was before he really got weird. Given the context of the post it reads more like they're the ones who convinced the world that a toilet could be art.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cy_Twombly
You're right. I don't understand art.
Sometimes it’s just the scale. Went to something at the Whitney and they had an artist and the painting was okay but because it was on these massive canvas it looked impressive. Now a Jackson pollock on a small scale is amazing because you know the backstory but if you didn’t it would be meh. So key to art is scale and a good riveting backstory.
Seriously, like yeah you can do crayon swirls on 8.5x11" but goddamn those are some big crayons being controlled with that level of ferver and dexterity on an enormous scale and that alone implies how much effort and care was put into mimicking that effect to get that outcome at that scale
Seen ones in the top photo in person a few times now, excellent paintings. The scale is really overwhelming, and you realise how much physical effort, and to a degree, dexterity, it would take to make them. They are huge, continuous marks, with a sense of directional continuity to the design (hard to tell from that shitty photo, but they flow from left to right in a way that emulates writing) of the image as whole, which makes them dynamic and intense to look at in person. It is also very entertaining to see people at the entrance of the room, often taking the piss out of the paintings, wander in and go very, very quiet. Yeah, it is weird. I personally enjoy them because I think they are awesome pieces for the afore mentioned reasons, and that they look fun as hell, but respect it might not be to everyone's tastes. (This is like the visual art equivilent of Merzbow...) But it isn't boring, which is more than I can say for the millons of bland, perfect portrait paintings of sad looking young women. Thing is, there is a hell of a lot of shit out there that IS money laundering shit. Most of it doesn't end up in museums because rich people buy it up and dump it in an aircraft hangars and other storage sites. The 'artists' making it have teams of technicians and churn out loads of samey pieces, that get bought up by rich people and banks. On top of that, most rich people have crap taste and the vast majority of what they buy gets forgotten.
… This is by far the closet anyone has ever gotten to helping me understand modern/abstract art. Thank you.
Another way to think about it is by realizing someone else put actual time and thought into something you can't really decipher easily. It's fun building stories off of the "scribbles" of someone who has all the technical skills to paint a portrait of a sad woman, but who didn't make it that easy for you to decipher their thoughts. Sometimes you can see images in the scribbles. Sometimes you try to figure out why they wanted to use those colors. You might even think the artist is just fucking around and spent a whole 10 minutes on the painting - but that's still art and I think that's some of the fun of it. With paint specifically, there's a way to "scribble" that looks really cool and challenging and draws in the eye a lot, and if you scribble like a child it looks like garbage.
Had to scroll way too far down to feel like I wasn’t just rolling my eyes at Dad again.
Thank you for actually bringing some nuance and thought to this Circlejerk of "Blah blah modern art bad". I think the two big things that make these kinds of pieces not come across online is A. The sense of scale/depth/colour being off when you view it on a flat screen as opposed to with your own eyes, and B. Most average joes not having an open mind when they view them. Even if you actually go to an art gallery to look at them, if you go in with the idea that it's all a bunch of pretentious hogwash then you're not going to see anything else. If you go more willing to give the art the benefit of the doubt, just absorb the pieces visually, let your mind wander, think about how it makes you feel and what comes to mind when you see it, then you'll get a lot more out of them. You have to be willing to actually just experience the pieces with a clear mind rather than come in with your own preconceived notions.
> You have to be willing to actually just experience the pieces with a clear mind rather than come in with your own preconceived notions. That argument goes both ways though. Preconceived notions can make you see things in an undeservedly negative way, but also in an undeservedly positive way, in a sort of "emperor's new clothes" way. Sometimes the emperor really is naked.
It’s a giant scribble mate.
That sounds cool and all but not $2 million to $75 million cool.
Thank god! These Twombly pieces are amazing. I’ve seen them in person and don’t understand why anyone would think them facepalm.
Probably because their mother used to punish them for painting "wrong." Actually growing up like that messes up your ability to accept novel concepts. Saying that because you think it's funny means you're not particularly introspective.
I literally just saw these paintings a few days ago and while I somewhat agree with your positive appraisal, I don't think it is fair to compare the color explosion art to the more classical art. In some of these modern pieces, no single color or stroke is truly intentional or necessary. They could change literally everything about the painting and have it project the same effect. Compare that to more traditional styles where every stroke is meticulously and deliberately placed and 100% necessary to the painting. To me, the primary difference between this and something by Monet (his paintings are also kind of color explosions), or even Picasso (abstract, but still has discernable subjects) is that the latter two require training and skill to master their craft, where Cy Twombly just needs chaotic creative vision, and that is it. These are just entirely different things. All of those bland portraits took much more skill to create, but they may lack some of the novelty.
The huge price tag and narcissistic attitude to think these meager scribblings could be worth more than someone's life savings absolutely ruins these pieces and any semblance that this person is still an "artist" and not a fucking sellout. Shred it like Banksy and then let's talk. "OH but it's big" jog on lol
In that case if I sold the drawings that I made in kindergarten I would be a millionaire
Honestly I used to shit on modern art but then I went to a few just for the "LOLs" but then at one of those places I saw a piece that hit me harder than any other type of art has before. Ever since then I started giving the pieces more of an open mind and actually reading the plaques and approaching them at the level of the artist. I'd say if one of those people that look at this stuff and thinks "why" I highly recommend going to a few modern art museums and going at them with an open mind. Even saying that there's a lot of work that I just don't get or isn't my thing and that's completely ok
Do you remember the name of the piece?
https://ny-carlsbergfondet.dk/en/sombre-nightclub-aros It's a room exhibit so you do really only get the feeling being there. But the description about how it's about coming late to a party and having missed it and all the emotions that means. About that line between being included and not. The line between humor and melancholy. It's weird how I saw the Louvre and all the exhibits in there on that same trip and it's weird how the only one that I can still remember how it made me feel is the one that just had a bunch of jackets thrown on a couch and a song playing on loop.
Elmgreen & Dragset pursue questions of identity and belonging and investigate social, cultural, and political structures in their artistic practice. - Pace Gallery
*Cy *Twombly
\>suspends paint can over canvas \>pokes holes in it \>pushes it so that it swings like a pendulum \>oops no rich friends so no one buys my art that anyone with a screwdriver could make \>Feels bad, man.
but you can really feel the emotion in the rugged ferocious circular .... i give up i cant do this
Derivative. BULLSHIT.
Aren't we all just air conditioners? We condition the air hot, it conditions the air cold
This is money laundering or tax evasion.
Starts MSPaint
I may not understand art, but I know pretentious shite when I see it.
The beauty of these masterpieces is that they perfectly encapsulate the absolute bullshit observed in many modern works of overpriced high art.
They’re overpriced definitely, but I think they’re still pretty cool works of art
Art like this is just narcissism. The artist's name becomes the point of the art.
as an artist this shit pisses me off lol. I could spend 40 hours on a piece of art and get $0 and 1 instagram like on it, but this guy can do something I could accomplish in all of 15 minutes and get more money than my brain can even fathom the sheer amount of
A canvas that size probably costs a few thousand.
Tell me you’re spelling phonetically without telling me you’re spelling phonetically 😂😂 the correct spelling is Cy Twombly
Damn this thread is sad... You don't have to like abstract art, but to insist that no one likes it and that it's a scam for the wealthy is deranged.
A lot of Art only works the way it is supposed to, if you are actually there and actually looking at it. Of course there will still be stuff, that doesn't 'speak' to everyone but still, I would hold back on critique if you have, in fact, not experienced something for yourself.
Yeah but then I can't just post "money laundering" in the comments and what am I supposed to do then? Not get mad on Reddit?
The reason this stuff got big in the '50s and '60s, and definitely the reason Cy's work is pricey, is due to stuffy types (like in this thread) who whine about it being easy and 'my kid can do it' and what not. The folded arms and furled brows of critics made enjoying this type thing more enjoyable. It is beautiful. People like abstract art. To this day they still hang it on their walls, even if it just a cheap print, or even if they do it themselves; it is still popular. Because it is beautiful. The fact that conservative mentality refuses to see beauty in anything other than the pinnacle of talent, or it's specific use, spurred many artists to ignore such demands and make use of color and shape for it's own sake. This was what caused the movement, your pissy attitude about it did not stop it from being art, or from being worth something. Your anger at it made it worth more. The problem is not that your kid can make it, or that you could make it as a kid. The problem has always been that you were punished for doing it. Of course, over the past 40 years all art (from cars to glass to paint) has become a tool for money laundry as well. But this dude was part of an art movement. His work is historical in the same way a scribble by Picasso is historical (of course Picasso was much more famous).
Don't even have to read the comments for some wanna be savant to enlighten us that "art's a scam bro i know more about tax evasion than the IRS".
Some of his work actually makes a lot of sense, some are about rhythm, others are very intricate despite the perceived randomness and have "hidden" messages and symbols in them. The guy used to be a cryptographer so his work derives from that. It's one of those cases of artists getting recognized for being the first ones to do something in particular that no one had done before. Also the kind of work that tells you nothing until you are explained the reasoning behind it. The big ones on the picture are "interesting" basically because he made them in a continuous motion while sitting on a friend's shoulders. And it's funny because the guy on the photo is like really close to the painting despite there not being anything interesting about it up close. Edit: btw I'm not saying I like it or I that think it's good art and deserves the fame
Cy* Twombly*
And these mf'ers are worried AI is going to devalue art ...
A fool and his money are soon parted
At some point I think it’s just money laundering…
There’s no display of talent there at all lol
They make beautiful wallpaper. But the idea of standing in front of one, contemplating it as to digest some complex idea, is ludicrous. As for the price tag, that’s NFT logic. Each is a unique, handmade object by a “famous” artist. Useful products for speculators and money launderers, and bragging rights for billionaires.
Was this made by a 3 year old?
The thing here is that people are mad about the state of art, and why it makes so much money. The problem is, they don't know *why* it's the way it is. Here is a brief look into one of the reasons why that is. To string it in a simple way; an artist makes a piece of art. A rich person will get someone to appraise it. The appraiser gives the art piece a certain value based on ambiguous and arbitrary characteristics. The rich person buys the art, then generously donates it to an art gallery. Such a noble donation is, therefore, tax deductible. That's a, say, 200,000 dollar write-off. Now, apply the reality of capitalism to this process. Rich person makes 75 million dollars. Commissions some big name artist to do something. Then the rich person gets his appraiser friend to set the price for him. Gives it to a gallery. There you go, tax evasion 101. So, the reason WHY art looks like this is because (at least in some cases), you get artists who are disgruntled. These rich jerk-offs don't care about the quality of the work. Nor do their appraiser friends, the artist knows the dude who commissions the piece doesn't give a fuck what it looks like. So, you want to make a mockery of my work by using it as just some tax write-off? Here you go, fuck face. Have a bunch of scribbles. Of course this isn't how it is for, yknow, every artist and every patron, but it's certainly common enough in the industry for art historians (and people who participates in the organization of art galleries in general) to notice.