'this Post Is Art'

[papaya]

René Magritte would be proud.

Just hours before the end of the potato salad Kickstarter last night, an eBay auction purporting to sell a framed screenshot from the message board 4chan finished with a winning bid of $90,900. The screenshot is, fittingly, of a post questioning the value of art.

“Art used to be something to cherish,” the original anonymous 4chan poster wrote on Wednesday. “Now literally anything could be art. This post is art.”

Bidding for “Artwork by Anonymous” started at $500 and, 36 hours later, had surpassed $10,000. A combination of human and automatic bids steadily pushed the price higher and higher on Friday to nearly $100,000.

A slap in the face to more laborious artworks? Probably not. Commenters in this Reddit thread seem pretty convinced that the bids are “fake,” saying that bidders can elect after the end of the auction to just not pay, or the seller can call off the auction by not shipping the framed artwork.

At the time of this writing, an even more meta eBay auction of a framed screenshot of the original screenshot auction is going for $2.75.

what do you think? Is that art?

[ThatOneFox]

I think art should have meaning behind it, but also take a deal of effort to produce. Putting a dot in the middle of a canvas and selling it for millions is ridiculous.

[papaya]

ok, here's a similar thought - can the value of something as 'art' be judged by how much it sells for? Is the Mona Lisa the ultimate painting?

[ThatOneFox]

What quality art is should be subjective based on the opinion of the viewer.

[papaya]

so then why did you feel the need to clarify that selling a dot in the middle of a canvas for millions is ridiculous, if how much a painting is worth does not affect the quality?

[ThatOneFox]

Because In my opinion that is not good art.

[Phantomboy]

My issue arises for the broad discussion of "Is this art?" is that the term art really has two meanings. At least, two distinctive connotation. Firstly a rigid utility evaluation, ie; they go in a museum, they express. Secondly an emotional aspect, a prestigious formality, you don't see it, you experience it.

These aren't exclusionary terms, for one many things that get grouped in a single definition, or both definitions but are commonly shunned from the definition art. Secondly, there are many things that fit into nether of these things but still are considered art.

So, when someone says "art is loosing its meaning." they aren't posing some clever insightful criticism into the world, they are taking a very broad term and easily slapping a progression onto it. It is akin to stating "fun is loosing its meaning" because you checked online and theme parks aren't pulling in a large profit. It is such pathos evoking flavour-word, that you can't really tack a conclusive argument onto it without choosing a definition and deliberately excluding all others. Which, again will give you skewed results.

There is an answer in Buddhism, known in Japanese as mu or 無. It essentially "unasks" the previous question, because as it is stated it is unanswerable. It is essentially a way of stating, it is a question wrongly asked. I believe that is very applicable here.

It is key to remember humans think very differently to definitions, not to mention definitions change depending on where you go and who you ask.

[Entity]

If someone wants to pay $10,000 for a picture of a 4chan article, I'm not going to judge them for that, but I personally wouldn't. I'd probably just print my own copy at CVS and frame it myself if I really wanted one.

Really art is subjective, and each piece is worth a different amount to different people. I would love to have a black dot on a white canvas hanging on my wall honestly, but I could make it myself for $30 so that's what it's worth to me.

I guess there's also a certain value to a painting being the "original," but I really don't care enough about art to pay millions just to get an original.

[ElectroYoshi]

I'm no expert on art. I'm not one to judge someone who pays thousands of dollars for a only slightly changed canvas, but I'm not sure why anyone would want to. $10,000 is already a huge amount of money on its own, so in no way is a "black dot on a white canvas" worth that kind of money. Like Entity said, you can make it on your own for much much cheaper. Hell, you could just do it on MS paint or Paint.NET or something absolutely free and call it good.

When I went to New York in the summer of 2009 (I think), I visited the Metropolitan Museum of Art and saw this:


(No, I did not photoshop this. This thing really is hanging in that museum)

I think it's questionable that the single biggest art museum in America has something like this hanging up in it. It has virtually nothing to it. Art is supposed to convey a meaning, and something like this really can't convey anything because there's... well, virtually nothing to it. Whether art has a meaning or not doesn't make a difference if there's nothing to get that point across. Something like this is probably only worth about $50, simply because, anyone can buy a blue canvas and cut it into a parallelogram shape.

Again, if you want to pay a ton of money for this sort of thing, fine, but I don't really find overly minimalist stuff like this to be worth much.

[papaya]

I think the point is being missed here, since it's very easy to point and laugh at minimalism as some joke form of art (though I love it). Your point about paint.net reminds me of one my favourite quotes, from Damien Hirst:

Hirst's response to those who said that anyone could have done this artwork was, "But you didn't, did you?"

he was talking about this piece by him


and it raises a point though, if making minimalist art is so easy, why do modern art galleries exist? Anyone can just put a dot on a white background in paint, print it out and slap it up on display in the tate, right?

well, if you thought about it for any length of time, you'd realise that the answer to that question is no. So you have to ask yourself, why do people appreciate this dot more than any other dot? Why can't I get rich by making modern art, since it's so painfully easy? Then look back at the Hirst quote.

but this thread is not about minimalism, it's about things that aren't oil canvas paintings or marble sculptures being art. Minimalism is an extreme case. Is the picture in the OP art?

[Phantomboy]

You know what, thinking back on it, I am going to go with yes. Firstly, because "Art" is a very loose term in which the slightest difference massively excludes or incorporates dozens of works. However, I think it is possible to incorporate the original image not because how much perceived effort it required but because like many great works it carries a meaning and expresses its meaning through the pieces medium. That to me is worth enough.

People are always going to jump on the nearest, "This thing is getting massive contributions, it is loosing its meaning!" debate. Those can't really be seen as legitimate facts that a definition is falling out of favour, or altering its meaning. Even if it is, that isn't really a negative thing.

Plus that, if the argument is that there is too loose of a definition for art and not enough curation, then the resolve should not be for less art but for more curation. Luckily for us, in the age of the internet, unlike museum walls, we essentially have an infinitely big display room in which to view and interpret art.

[papaya]

I can't think of a single part of that post I disagree with phantom.

[Miniike]

[Miniike]

effortless art is my kink