# Bad Art (inspired by Truckload)



## MarkW (Feb 16, 2015)

Well, yeah . . . *Most* art is bad.

The artist's mother may like it, but ...

In the same way, most baseball players can't hit a Major League fastball. Most business-people can't be President of G.E. Most physicists won't solve Quantum Gravity.

99% of art (meaning all the arts) won't last -- hang in museums, be played in concerts 50 years from now, be revived on Broadway. That's just the bell curve of human ability/accomplishment. But we _need _the 99% to get the 1%. And we need exposure to at least the most promising of the 99% to be able to winnow it down. And some of the most promising that won't eventually make it will nevertheless please some people, make others think, promote reactions that make their presence on the scene more than just superfluous. Of the estimated 30,000 opera written since Monteverdi, how many do we hear today?

Not liking something is not a valid reason for it not to exist. To complain that a particular swath of art is bad is like shooting fish in a barrel. To argue that thereby art has irretrievably gone down the tubes is like shooting yourself in the foot.

Snarky high horse responses to that Praeger University guy:

-- Quality can be defined and objectively measured. No it can't.

-- Evolution is, or should be progressive. No, evolution is simply change.

-- If your three-year-old can paint as well as Jackson Pollack, why isn't he rich?

-- Not all the pieces you use as examples are "good." But that doesn't mean every piece of contemporary art is bad.

-- Non-representational art is devoid of form, content, and technique. BS.

-- "Classical" standards are the only worthwhile ones to judge art by. So a play that doesn't employ the Dramatic Unities is no good? Goodbye Shakespeare.

-- Seems to me if "the invisible hand of the marketplace" assigns true value to things, why are you complaining if it assigns value you don't agree with to things you don't like?

Just some responses because you struck a nerve.


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## ArtMusic (Jan 5, 2013)

"Classical" makes it classical because it has been consistent over time with a large number of art consumers. This is what makes something classical and not forgotten and not "bad" art.


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## mstar (Aug 14, 2013)

ArtMusic said:


> "Classical" makes it classical because it has been consistent over time with a large number of art consumers. This is what makes something classical and *not forgotten* and not "bad" art.


Hardly. How many people today would pick a new Taylor Swift album over the entirety of classical music?


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## TurnaboutVox (Sep 22, 2013)

One thing which struck me very forcibly about the chap in that video was his focus on the surface 'beauty' of artworks, rather than the emotional truths they may convey. 

One might almost think that he isn't comfortable with, and doesn't want to understand, the messages that artists might be trying to communicate other than surface beauty, some of which might be quite disturbing or disquieting, or even revolutionary in intent.

His own pictures rather backed this thesis up - they seemed devoid of deeper meaning, though technically reasonably 'competent'.


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## arpeggio (Oct 4, 2012)

MarkW said:


> Well, yeah . . . *Most* art is bad.
> 
> The artist's mother may like it, but ...
> 
> ...


Reminds me of Sturgeons Law: 90% of everything is crud.

Many of our members have been trying to make these points for years.


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## ArtMusic (Jan 5, 2013)

mstar said:


> Hardly. How many people today would pick a new Taylor Swift album over the entirety of classical music?


I don't know Taylor Swift's music. But I doubt she has any lasting value in the longer run.


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## mstar (Aug 14, 2013)

ArtMusic said:


> I don't know Taylor Swift's music. But I doubt she has any lasting value in the longer run.


Yes - but I was talking about the general majority. I am sure TC members are exempt from my previous statement, or else we wouldn't be on the forum.


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## Woodduck (Mar 17, 2014)

This thread is both confused and confusing. Part of this is the fault of Robert Florczak, whose video discussion of "bad" art is open to criticism, but too unclear on some of its concepts to make the task easy. The response of the OP here makes too many assumptions about what Florczak means.

That said, one thing that _is_ clear is that "bad" art, as meant by Florczak, is not the same as _mediocre_ art. It's plausible that 99% of art is mediocre - probably more than that, actually. But that isn't what the video was talking about. A huge rock costing $10 million isn't bad because it's mediocre, i.e., undistinguished and forgettable. It's bad because it's an absurd and insulting thing "created" and put forward by people one might hope would have a worthier conception of what art is capable of being and ought to be. It isn't bad because the artist _couldn't_ do anything better. It's bad because he _wouldn't_ - and apparently saw no reason why he should - and because whoever raised the money to purchase and install it had no higher standards than he had.

There are profound aesthetic and moral issues here, not a simple question of competence. We do not need for 99% of what's offered as art to be nonsense like this in order to get 1% that is not. A culture that uses up scarce museum space with this sort of thing in the name of art can only discourage the production of whatever percentage of real art might be contemplated by artists hoping for recognition.

My responses to your "snarky high horse responses":

_"Quality can be defined and objectively measured. No it can't."_ Not entirely. But it can be recognized, described, and analyzed to varying degrees. This is called appreciation and criticism.

_"Evolution is, or should be progressive. No, evolution is simply change."_ The evolution of art is not progress, in the sense of improvement (Florczak is wrong). But it is not mere change. It is cumulative, building on past discoveries, accepting, rejecting, and modifying.

_"If your three-year-old can paint as well as Jackson Pollack, why isn't he rich?"_ Because Peggy Guggenheim never met him?

_"Not all the pieces you use as examples are 'good.' But that doesn't mean every piece of contemporary art is bad."_ No one has asserted this.

_ "Non-representational art is devoid of form, content, and technique. BS."_ Some people probably believe this. Most do not. Florczak doesn't make the claim, though clearly he prefers representational art as dealing with more "objective" ideas and values (which it does).

_"'Classical' standards are the only worthwhile ones to judge art by. So a play that doesn't employ the Dramatic Unities is no good? Goodbye Shakespeare."_ No one has asserted this, at least not in my lifetime.

_"Seems to me if 'the invisible hand of the marketplace' assigns true value to things, why are you complaining if it assigns value you don't agree with to things you don't like?"_ Florczak doesn't discuss the mechanics of the marketplace or evaluate it as an arbiter of taste, except to suggest that people encourage the production of better art by paying for it.

I'm not an apologist for Florczak's views, but if we disagree with him we need at least to attempt to understand what he is and isn't saying.


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## MarkW (Feb 16, 2015)

Hi Woodduck --

I will admit to possibly overreacting, but not to intentionally misstating his points (though perhaps to misremembering them after one viewing). It's just that arguments like his have always struck a nerve. His examples of "good" art were all representational, and of "bad" weren't. And he seemed to think "progress" in art stopped around the turn of the twentieth century. And, without seeing it for more than a few seconds, I didn't react at all badly to that rock and concrete (?) plinth. It may better belong as a piece of landscape art -- but it wasn't awful. All of the 29,500 operas we don't see today cost money to produce, but do we judge it money down the drain? . . .

cheers --


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## Woodduck (Mar 17, 2014)

MarkW said:


> Hi Woodduck --
> 
> I will admit to possibly overreacting, but not to intentionally misstating his points (though perhaps to misremembering them after one viewing). It's just that arguments like his have always struck a nerve. His examples of "good" art were all representational, and of "bad" weren't. And he seemed to think "progress" in art stopped around the turn of the twentieth century. And, without seeing it for more than a few seconds, I didn't react at all badly to that rock and concrete (?) plinth. It may better belong as a piece of landscape art -- but it wasn't awful. All of the 29,500 operas we don't see today cost money to produce, but do we judge it money down the drain? . . .
> 
> cheers --


The amount of money that's gone down the drain for "the arts" is phenomenal, though probably nothing compared to what goes to professional sports. But at least the NFL attracts millions of paying customers who give up their money voluntarily. I don't think people are filling stadiums to see the $10 million rock. Who pays for that? And who's the "artist" who can now play with rocks for the rest of his life, while people engaged in actual occupations that benefit society worry about how to pay the doctor and put food on the table ?


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## DavidA (Dec 14, 2012)

Even in the world of pop music there are far more misses than hits. I can recall a conversation with the successful songwriter who said that he'd had 20 hits. When asked how many songs he's written he said around about 1000. For most people unlessthey are called the Mozart or Schubert there will always be a considerable number of misses.


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## MarkW (Feb 16, 2015)

Well, a college arts administrator I knew well used to address people who derided a piece of modern sculpture on campus made of welded together automobile bumpers. He commented that they were focused too much on the automobile bumpers and not on what they were made into. He posited that if they were led into a room full of automobile bumper sculptures and told to select one they would have to live with for a year, they'd start looking at them in an entirely different way. The "automobile bumperiness would recede" and things like form and aesthetics would increasingly take over their perceptions. It's not the fact of the rock so much as the particular rock and how it was oriented and displayed. (Now, I will admit $10 million to be extreme. )


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## Woodduck (Mar 17, 2014)

MarkW said:


> Well, a college arts administrator I knew well used to address people who derided a piece of modern sculpture on campus made of welded together automobile bumpers. He commented that they were focused too much on the automobile bumpers and not on what they were made into. He posited that if they were led into a room full of automobile bumper sculptures and told to select one they would have to live with for a year, they'd start looking at them in an entirely different way. The "automobile bumperiness would recede" and things like form and aesthetics would increasingly take over their perceptions. It's not the fact of the rock so much as the particular rock and how it was oriented and displayed. (Now, I will admit $10 million to be extreme. )


I suspect you haven't spent time reading modern art criticism, in which pretentious people with multiple degrees who have never picked up a paintbrush or a chisel explain to us in paragraph-long sentences filling many pages the profound metaphysical import of the orientation of randomly chosen rocks and automobile bumpers. If you have a problem with insomnia I recommend them to you.

If I were told I had to live with an old automobile bumper for a year I would indeed look at it in a different way. I would stop looking at it as useless junk and would start looking at it as an instrument of torture. And if I were Bill Gates I would gladly pay some art museum $10 million to get it out of my sight.


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## Guest (Jan 15, 2016)

"A classical music discussion" ?

picky picky picky


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## Adam Weber (Apr 9, 2015)

Woodduck said:


> Who pays for that? And who's the "artist" who can now play with rocks for the rest of his life, while people engaged in actual occupations that benefit society worry about how to pay the doctor and put food on the table ?


http://www.scpr.org/programs/madeleine-brand/2012/03/09/25527/the-worlds-most-expensive-rock/



> The hefty bill is paid for by the LA County Museum of Art. But spokesperson Miranda Carroll says even though they get some tax-payer money, none of that went to the boulder. "Nope. Not a dime. Everything is paid for by private donors."


Amazing what a ten second Google search can do.


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## DavidA (Dec 14, 2012)

Woodduck said:


> I suspect you haven't spent time reading modern art criticism, in which pretentious people with multiple degrees who have never picked up a paintbrush or a chisel explain to us in paragraph-long sentences filling many pages the profound metaphysical import of the orientation of randomly chosen rocks and automobile bumpers. If you have a problem with insomnia I recommend them to you.
> 
> If I were told I had to live with an old automobile bumper for a year I would indeed look at it in a different way. I would stop looking at it as useless junk and would start looking at it as an instrument of torture. And if I were Bill Gates I would gladly pay some art museum $10 million to get it out of my sight.


I remember we were told that the unmade bed at Tate Modern in London was a great work of art. I realised then I was a great artist!


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## Strange Magic (Sep 14, 2015)

In another post, on another thread, I noted that, unlike music, the pictorial arts (excluding cinema) are instantly disposable/consumable. One must commit time to music--valuable, psychologically expensive time. The pictorial arts are dealt with as individual pieces within a few minutes, or not at all. They are commodities that can be bought, sold, forged, regarded as possibly appreciating investments, and especially as tokens or totems of one's superior esthetic sense and or of one's wealth, without any real personal involvement. Hence it is childishly easy for museum directors to take the funds of wealthy, status-conscious patrons, and display anything and call it art. It is easy for posh galleries to slipstream behind the museum directors with a shrewd eye toward what will sell next to the busy businessman to hang in the lobby of his corporation. And for the shrewd artist to discern where the trend is headed and to get busy supplying product.

No, I'm afraid way too much art, like women's haute couture, has become quite detached from any greater reality. To re-quote H.D.F. Kitto: "A high culture must, historically speaking, originate with an aristocratic class, because this alone has the time and energy to create it. If it remains for too long the preserve of the aristocrat, it becomes first elaborate and then silly...."


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## Arsakes (Feb 20, 2012)

Google found bad art for me:










So how much would you pay for it?!

1. 100$
2. 1000$
3. 10000$
4. 100000$


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## Guest (Jan 15, 2016)

Can we just clarify one thing -

Does popularity equate to good? Or does it depend on whether we are talking about Mozart or Britney Spears?


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## Abraham Lincoln (Oct 3, 2015)

There is no bad art, only art that has not been developed thoroughly enough.


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## MarkW (Feb 16, 2015)

Okay, I'll defer to Kitto and slip quietly off to the concert hall.


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## Headphone Hermit (Jan 8, 2014)

"A good sculpture if not a great one"

Interesting review at http://articles.latimes.com/2012/jun/22/entertainment/la-et-knight-heizer-rock-20120623

and for what its worth ... I can't say that I'd travel to California just to see it, but I also can't make up my mind about it without seeing it, so I reserve judgement on it


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## Gaspard de la Nuit (Oct 20, 2014)

MarkW said:


> Snarky high horse responses to that Praeger University guy:
> 
> -- Quality can be defined and objectively measured. No it can't.
> 
> ...


Those weren't snarky at all, they're just the truth.


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## TurnaboutVox (Sep 22, 2013)

Headphone Hermit said:


> "A good sculpture if not a great one"
> 
> Interesting review at http://articles.latimes.com/2012/jun/22/entertainment/la-et-knight-heizer-rock-20120623
> 
> and for what its worth ... I can't say that I'd travel to California just to see it, but I also can't make up my mind about it without seeing it, so I reserve judgement on it


So having read this, the artwork isn't just 'a boulder' and it's not even been bought with taxpayers' money but by private donations.

I have been enthralled and sometimes moved by good installations of this sort in the UK and Europe. Perhaps a 'straw man' has been set up in the 'Why is modern art so bad' thread?.


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## Woodduck (Mar 17, 2014)

Adam Weber said:


> http://www.scpr.org/programs/madeleine-brand/2012/03/09/25527/the-worlds-most-expensive-rock/
> 
> Amazing what a ten second Google search can do.


So the $10 million rock was paid for voluntarily by people who actually believe it's fine art, a worthwhile use of their money, a good use of museum space, and a worthy representation of the culture of our time.

How very reassuring.


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## KenOC (Mar 7, 2011)

Woodduck said:


> So the $10 million rock was paid for voluntarily by people who actually believe it's fine art, a worthwhile use of their money, a good use of museum space, and a worthy representation of the culture of our time.
> 
> How very reassuring.


Well, that rock got LACMA a lot of notoriety if nothing else. $10 million worth of notoriety? Dunno 'bout that.


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## Cosmos (Jun 28, 2013)

dogen said:


> Can we just clarify one thing -
> 
> Does popularity equate to good? Or does it depend on whether we are talking about Mozart or Britney Spears?


Popularity does not necessarily equate with good, I'd say. Like the example you brought up. Mozart is popular, his music is phenomenal. Britney Spears' music is like comparing apples to oranges here, but my own opinion, not as good as Mozart's. Of course, she's popular.

I'd say that popularity doesn't reflect value/worth as much as it reflects success. Even if you don't like Nicki Minaj, she is still successful and popular.


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## Woodduck (Mar 17, 2014)

KenOC said:


> Well, that rock got LACMA a lot of notoriety if nothing else. $10 million worth of notoriety? Dunno 'bout that.


Anything for attention.


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## ArtMusic (Jan 5, 2013)

Cosmos said:


> Popularity does not necessarily equate with good, I'd say. Like the example you brought up. Mozart is popular, his music is phenomenal. Britney Spears' music is like comparing apples to oranges here, but my own opinion, not as good as Mozart's. Of course, she's popular.
> 
> I'd say that popularity doesn't reflect value/worth as much as it reflects success. Even if you don't like Nicki Minaj, she is still successful and popular.


There is a key ingredient - popularity over time. This is the critical difference in popularity between Mozart and Britney. Pure and simple.


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## Guest (Jan 15, 2016)

ArtMusic said:


> There is a key ingredient - popularity over time. This is the critical difference in popularity between Mozart and Britney. Pure and simple.


So if Britney is popular in 200 years time you will change your opinion on her music and decide that it has become good, pure and simple?


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## mstar (Aug 14, 2013)

Woodduck said:


> So the $10 million rock was paid for voluntarily by people who actually believe it's fine art, a worthwhile use of their money, a good use of museum space, and a worthy representation of the culture of our time.
> 
> How very reassuring.


Indeed.


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## Petwhac (Jun 9, 2010)

If you have the time these lectures are worth a listen. They're a year or two old.

"How do we tell if something is good and who tells us it's good."


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## StlukesguildOhio (Dec 25, 2006)

One might almost think that he isn't comfortable with, and doesn't want to understand, the messages that artists might be trying to communicate other than surface beauty, some of which might be quite disturbing or disquieting, or even revolutionary in intent.

Let's be fair, here. If we look to the work of the "old masters" we will find an art that is quite frequently about more than surface beauty... some of which can be quite disturbing or disquieting or revolutionary in intent: Goya? Hieronymus Bosch? Pieter Bruegel? Matthias Grunwald? etc...

His own pictures rather backed this thesis up - they seemed devoid of deeper meaning, though technically reasonably 'competent'.

Meaning? It seems to me that the "meaning" lies more with the audience than with art.


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## StlukesguildOhio (Dec 25, 2006)

No, I'm afraid way too much art, like women's haute couture, has become quite detached from any greater reality. To re-quote H.D.F. Kitto: "A high culture must, historically speaking, originate with an aristocratic class, because this alone has the time and energy to create it. If it remains for too long the preserve of the aristocrat, it becomes first elaborate and then silly...."

Picasso suggested that left on its own, the "High"... aristocratic or "elite" art ossifies... and becomes reduced to Academicism or L'art pompier. Art drawn pandering solely to the popular/populist audience is frequently shallow, trite, and vulgar. As a result, Picasso suggested that the best route was to create Art like the Renaissance aristocracy produced heirs: through a marriage of the "high" and the "low".


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## Woodduck (Mar 17, 2014)

dogen said:


> So if Britney is popular in 200 years time you will change your opinion on her music and decide that it has become good, pure and simple?


I will specify in my will that if Britney is still popular in 200 years' time, cryonics will have failed me and I am to be thawed and cremated to the music of Brunnhilde's Immolation Scene.


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## Simon Moon (Oct 10, 2013)

MarkW said:


> Well, a college arts administrator I knew well used to address people who derided a piece of modern sculpture on campus made of welded together automobile bumpers. He commented that they were focused too much on the automobile bumpers and not on what they were made into. He posited that if they were led into a room full of automobile bumper sculptures and told to select one they would have to live with for a year, they'd start looking at them in an entirely different way. The "automobile bumperiness would recede" and things like form and aesthetics would increasingly take over their perceptions. It's not the fact of the rock so much as the particular rock and how it was oriented and displayed. (Now, I will admit $10 million to be extreme. )


I agree.

I actually live fairly close to LACMA and "Levitated Mass", and I quite like it. It's not great, but not bad.

It's not a "$10 million dollar rock", it is a $10 million dollar art installation. There is more to it than just a large rock. It is how it fits in to the environment that was created for it as part of the installation, and the surrounding city environment.

All I can say, is if I had a choice to view "Levitated Mass" or Robert Florczak's trite representational art, I'd pick "Levitated Mass". But here's the thing, i don't have to choose. I can view the best of classical art, and the best of modern art.

But then, I don't enjoy any classical music composed pre-1900. So, what good is my opinion.


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## Blancrocher (Jul 6, 2013)

Simon Moon said:


> I agree.
> 
> I actually live fairly close to LACMA and "Levitated Mass", and I quite like it. It's not great, but not bad.
> 
> ...


I'd be less bothered by the rock than the 5000th-best-or-so Paul Klee paintings taking up the more limited space within the walls of the museum. I hate it when museums go for the big name rather than the best artwork than can be found. Though I also suppose that judicious and knowledgeable museum staff don't always have as much control over what they acquire as I could hope.


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## Guest (Jan 15, 2016)

Woodduck said:


> I will specify in my will that if Britney is still popular in 200 years' time, cryonics will have failed me and I am to be thawed and cremated to the music of Brunnhilde's Immolation Scene.


Dang, you've spotted the fatal flaw in my otherwise brilliant argument.


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## isorhythm (Jan 2, 2015)

Is Britney even popular now?


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## Strange Magic (Sep 14, 2015)

StlukesguildOhio said:


> Picasso suggested that left on its own, the "High"... aristocratic or "elite" art ossifies... and becomes reduced to Academicism or L'art pompier. Art drawn pandering solely to the popular/populist audience is frequently shallow, trite, and vulgar. As a result, Picasso suggested that the best route was to create Art like the Renaissance aristocracy produced heirs: through a marriage of the "high" and the "low".


This is very nice! An excellent reference, and point. Kitto would be pleased. The thought suddenly struck me, upon reading this, that Picasso and Bela Bartok closely share this marrying of cultural, historical, esthetic yins and yangs to such good effect, over about the same time period. I try to avoid mixing up pictorial art and musical references, but this one tickles my fancy. Both Picasso and Bartok represent for me frontiers in their respective fields that I am comfortable with.


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## Guest (Jan 15, 2016)

isorhythm said:


> Is Britney even popular now?


No, but she is Great.


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## Dim7 (Apr 24, 2009)

isorhythm said:


> Is Britney even popular now?


No and she doesn't care - and even wrote a notorious essay on the subject.


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## Mahlerian (Nov 27, 2012)

isorhythm said:


> Is Britney even popular now?


Her popularity appears to be on the decline, but she's still making the charts, apparently.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Britney_Spears_discography


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## Blancrocher (Jul 6, 2013)

Dim7 said:


> No and she doesn't care - and even wrote a notorious essay on the subject.


Can someone post this?--it might be useful fodder on the "Britney versus Babbitt" thread.


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## Richannes Wrahms (Jan 6, 2014)

Petwhac said:


> If you have the time these lectures are worth a listen. They're a year or two old.
> 
> "How do we tell if something is good and who tells us it's good."


That turned out to be quite nice to listen to.

5 points for Petwhac


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## StlukesguildOhio (Dec 25, 2006)

I'd be less bothered by the rock than the 5000th-best-or-so Paul Klee paintings taking up the more limited space within the walls of the museum.

Paul Klee's paintings take up very little wall space when you consider that most are measured in terms of inches... most no larger than the size of a sheet of notebook paper. By the way... I have seen very few "bad" paintings by Klee.


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## regenmusic (Oct 23, 2014)

Bad visual art is all an investment scheme. The investors are in cahoots with the journalists who write about meaningless art and aesthetically bland or even disturbing work. Conceptually, it's often pretty decadent as well. But, it makes a lot of people a lot of money. Just because there are hundreds of thousands of artists doesn't mean that 1% of them, who usually are very bad, can't make a lot of money at it. There are always good modern artists, also. The Seattle Art Museum's modern wing is filled with really bad art, people I've never heard of and I've been pretty up on visual art my whole adult life.


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## Arsakes (Feb 20, 2012)

Arsakes said:


> Google found bad art for me:
> 
> 
> 
> ...


Yet to find a buyer/customer for this art. JUST GIVE ME A PRICE!

And I'm too tired to actually create a good poll, so later.


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## Arsakes (Feb 20, 2012)

mstar said:


> Indeed.


What is she doing? Is she fighting religion with those poses?!


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## CypressWillow (Apr 2, 2013)

I think that Britney/Nicki and their ilk will still be popular to some degree in the future, maybe even 200 years from now. Why? Because there will always be people for whom this type of stuff represents Music. The descendants of their current fans aren't likely to be much different from their progenitors, eh? 
So the argument that something is classic because a segment of the public will still enjoy it in the future feels rather lame to me.


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## ArtMusic (Jan 5, 2013)

regenmusic said:


> Bad visual art is all an investment scheme. The investors are in cahoots with the journalists who write about meaningless art and aesthetically bland or even disturbing work. Conceptually, it's often pretty decadent as well. But, it makes a lot of people a lot of money. Just because there are hundreds of thousands of artists doesn't mean that 1% of them, who usually are very bad, can't make a lot of money at it. There are always good modern artists, also. The Seattle Art Museum's modern wing is filled with really bad art, people I've never heard of and I've been pretty up on visual art my whole adult life.


And this is largely a 20th/current century occurrence I think. The vast sums of monies involved have made art a commodity and bad art is cheap and easy to produce.


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## EddieRUKiddingVarese (Jan 8, 2013)

Arsakes said:


> Google found bad art for me:
> 
> 
> 
> ...


Don't worry I've fixed it, must be worth plenty now................


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## Fugue Meister (Jul 5, 2014)

dogen said:


> no, but she is great.


"blasphemer!".....


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## science (Oct 14, 2010)

Arsakes said:


> What is she doing? Is she fighting religion with those poses?!


She's having fun. People even did that in the old days.


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## science (Oct 14, 2010)

regenmusic said:


> Bad visual art is all an investment scheme. The investors are in cahoots with the journalists who write about meaningless art and aesthetically bland or even disturbing work. Conceptually, it's often pretty decadent as well. But, it makes a lot of people a lot of money. Just because there are hundreds of thousands of artists doesn't mean that 1% of them, who usually are very bad, can't make a lot of money at it. There are always good modern artists, also. The Seattle Art Museum's modern wing is filled with really bad art, people I've never heard of and I've been pretty up on visual art my whole adult life.


I won't limit this to "bad" art, but art in general is a market, and the big buyers are the unbelievably rich people who control a lot of our world although most of us don't believe in them. How do you impress your peers when all of you already have a dozen luxury homes, at least one huge yacht, thirty sports cars, and so on? What can make such peers jealous? One option is art and other collectibles. If those guys decide to start competing in some other way, the prices of collectibles will crash.


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