Child's painting sells for $86.9m

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Re: Child's painting sells for $86.9m

Post by orpheus » Thu May 10, 2012 2:55 pm

Seraph wrote:
orpheus wrote:
Seraph wrote:
orpheus wrote:Listen to a piece by Mozart that you've never heard before. You have a certain experience of it. You like it; you don't like it, you think various things about it, it makes you feel certain emotions. If I then tell you it's not by Mozart after all, but by another late 18th-century composer you've never heard of, does that change your experience of the work?
Haha. Fritz Kreisler used to have a lot of fun with that. He'd regularly come up with lost scores by major composers he happened to find while rummaging around in dusty archives of some of the thousands of minor and neglected castles and palaces of Austria, Germany, Italy and France. He performed them in concerts. Works by Mozart, Bach and whoever. Later on it transpired that he actually composed them himself in the style of... They were, in short, fakes. Lots of egg was wiped off faces.
Not the same. We're talking about a PERFECT replica of the original. Not something convincingly in the same style.
Whatever you think about the quality of Kreisler's fakes, he had them comprehensively sucked in. Critics waxed lyrical about the latest discovery of each work and audiences lapped all of it up. Red faces all round when those works were revealed for what they were. Textbook examples of the emperor's new clothes.

I bet you that if it Rothko's 86 million dollar creation turned out to actually have been painted by Elmyr de Hory, there'd be a radical downward re-evaluation of both its monetary as well as artistic value, and admirers of Rothko's genius would view it "with different eyes".
Well, you missed the point again. The question was about perfect copies - and I answered that in terms of my own experience (which is all I'm interested in when dealing directly with a work of art), then yes, a perfect copy would be just as good. As I said, I have no interest in what dealers and collectors value these things at.
I think that language has a lot to do with interfering in our relationship to direct experience. A simple thing like metaphor will allows you to go to a place and say 'this is like that'. Well, this isn't like that. This is like this.

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Re: Child's painting sells for $86.9m

Post by orpheus » Thu May 10, 2012 2:57 pm

Seraph wrote:
orpheus wrote:I take it if you read a play and someone says "you really have to see it onstage; otherwise you're not getting what it's like onstage" they're wooful too? Or someone saying you've got to walk through a building to know what the experience of walking through it is like - looking at architectural plans and photos doesn't do it? They're full of woo too? Or hear a band that's great live but whose recordings are not great - if someone says you can't really judge the experience of hearing them live unless you do hear them live - they're full of woo too?
Looks like I need to repeat myself. I'm saying your statement that "until you see it in real life, your opinion is worthless" is shit, and represents a shitload of woo.
You didn't answer about all those other examples. That's telling. By your logic, all of them are full of woo, too. You can get everything from postcards.
I think that language has a lot to do with interfering in our relationship to direct experience. A simple thing like metaphor will allows you to go to a place and say 'this is like that'. Well, this isn't like that. This is like this.

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Re: Child's painting sells for $86.9m

Post by orpheus » Thu May 10, 2012 2:59 pm

mistermack wrote:
Seraph wrote:I'm saying your statement that "until you see it in real life, your opinion is worthless" is shit, and represents a shitload of woo.
I totally agree. And more than that, I think that people who rave about big blobs of colour are just incredibly suggestible, a hypnotist's dream.

Orpheus, you might even believe what you're writing. It's just odd that nobody raves about a particular artist's blobs, until it's been endorsed by the critics. Then the whole art world starts to get emotional about what was previously pretty ordinary.

It's like the grotto at Lourdes. Once the Pope said it was an official miracle, people started having uplifting experiences there. Before that, Bernadette was just a loony.

You are just seeing talent you have been told is there. It ain't. It's just a daub.
No, I fell in love with some of Rothko's work long before I knew who he was. Given my experience as a composer and conductor, I've learned to look at the art and shield myself from knowing who it's by for a while.

By the way, Rothko's work, like everybody's, is not a unified body. One is not like the other. There are some I like, some I don't. Some I feel are more successful than others. That discernment and the enjoyment it brings is one reason I look at art the way I do.
I think that language has a lot to do with interfering in our relationship to direct experience. A simple thing like metaphor will allows you to go to a place and say 'this is like that'. Well, this isn't like that. This is like this.

—Richard Serra

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Re: Child's painting sells for $86.9m

Post by mistermack » Thu May 10, 2012 3:10 pm

orpheus wrote: No, I fell in love with some of Rothko's work long before I knew who he was. Given my experience as a composer and conductor, I've learned to look at the art and shield myself from knowing who it's by for a while.

By the way, Rothko's work, like everybody's, is not a unified body. One is not like the other. There are some I like, some I don't. Some I feel are more successful than others. That discernment and the enjoyment it brings is one reason I look at art the way I do.
Fair enough.
Can you compose a few words of plain English and say what's so great about the OP painting?
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Re: Child's painting sells for $86.9m

Post by orpheus » Thu May 10, 2012 3:14 pm

mistermack wrote:
orpheus wrote: No, I fell in love with some of Rothko's work long before I knew who he was. Given my experience as a composer and conductor, I've learned to look at the art and shield myself from knowing who it's by for a while.

By the way, Rothko's work, like everybody's, is not a unified body. One is not like the other. There are some I like, some I don't. Some I feel are more successful than others. That discernment and the enjoyment it brings is one reason I look at art the way I do.
Fair enough.
Can you compose a few words of plain English and say what's so great about the OP painting?
No, because that's not one I've seen in person, so to speak.
I think that language has a lot to do with interfering in our relationship to direct experience. A simple thing like metaphor will allows you to go to a place and say 'this is like that'. Well, this isn't like that. This is like this.

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Re: Child's painting sells for $86.9m

Post by mistermack » Thu May 10, 2012 3:22 pm

orpheus wrote: No, because that's not one I've seen in person, so to speak.
Your favourite, then.
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Re: Child's painting sells for $86.9m

Post by Hermit » Thu May 10, 2012 3:45 pm

orpheus wrote:Well, you missed the point again. The question was about perfect copies - and I answered that in terms of my own experience (which is all I'm interested in when dealing directly with a work of art), then yes, a perfect copy would be just as good.
In your first post here you said "until you see it in real life, your opinion is worthless." That is what I'm having an issue with. You only added the "perfect copy" angle very recently, and I don't see why I should take a position on that while your original claim is being disputed.
orpheus wrote:You didn't answer about all those other examples.
I'd be happy to reply to the other examples, but I do try to address one issue at a time. In this case the issue is your claim that "until you see it in real life, your opinion is worthless." I have replied to that, disagreeing on the grounds that that "myth is created by wankers and propagated by those who profit from it the most - art dealers, critics, publishers", basically because it's in their material interest, and you finished up saying "I am right." Seems a bit difficult to see the discussion progressing from here, don't you think?

Orpheus, at this point I should mention that I do enjoy the discussion with you and appreciate your contribution. Don't let my disagreement with your claim and the forcefulness with which I express it make you think otherwise.
I am, somehow, less interested in the weight and convolutions of Einstein’s brain than in the near certainty that people of equal talent have lived and died in cotton fields and sweatshops. - Stephen J. Gould

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Re: Child's painting sells for $86.9m

Post by orpheus » Thu May 10, 2012 4:23 pm

Seraph, I enjoy it too. As you can tell, I feel passionate about this subject, for obvious reasons (art is my life and livelihood, and I think there are a lot of unfortunate misunderstandings about what we do - and that are insulting to us.)

But I'm also a bit caffeinated this morning, which I'm not used to. :D

Regarding the "perfect copy" question, I think we're talking at cross purposes. I only write about it because I was answering a question - an interesting and pertinent one, I think - that I'd been asked. I didn't bring it up originally.
I think that language has a lot to do with interfering in our relationship to direct experience. A simple thing like metaphor will allows you to go to a place and say 'this is like that'. Well, this isn't like that. This is like this.

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Re: Child's painting sells for $86.9m

Post by orpheus » Thu May 10, 2012 4:35 pm

Seraph wrote:
orpheus wrote:You didn't answer about all those other examples.
I'd be happy to reply to the other examples, but I do try to address one issue at a time. In this case the issue is your claim that "until you see it in real life, your opinion is worthless." I have replied to that, disagreeing on the grounds that that "myth is created by wankers and propagated by those who profit from it the most - art dealers, critics, publishers", basically because it's in their material interest, and you finished up saying "I am right." Seems a bit difficult to see the discussion progressing from here, don't you think?
Yeah, you're right. That was me being an ass. Sorry!

But I still disagree. And here I may not have been clear. What meant was "until you see it in real life, your opinion of the real-life experience is worthless." That seems self-evident to me. Of course you can have a perfectly and unarguably valid opinion of what you have seen - but not what you haven't! And with some works the original may be very different from reproductions. That's why I asked you to address the other examples - I may have been clearer in those. 

Now, whether or not this idea has been propagated by others for profit doesn't have any bearing on its validity.
I think that language has a lot to do with interfering in our relationship to direct experience. A simple thing like metaphor will allows you to go to a place and say 'this is like that'. Well, this isn't like that. This is like this.

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Re: Child's painting sells for $86.9m

Post by orpheus » Thu May 10, 2012 4:40 pm

mistermack wrote:
orpheus wrote: No, because that's not one I've seen in person, so to speak.
Your favourite, then.
I'll give you two. (And I'm sorry; I can't figure out how to embed the large picture viewer on the museums' websites.)

http://www.moma.org/collection/artist.p ... st_id=5047

"Archaic Idol" (second from right, from 1945). This is in the collection of the Museum of Modern Art in New York, but it's not usually displayed. I saw it in a special show there. I like it on its own terms - it's playful, a lot like the work Paul Klee was doing around 1930. But mainly I like it because it puzzles me: it's so different from the direction Rothko was to take later - and I couldn't see the connection. I still can't. And I found that odd, because I'd just been looking at an exhibition of Mondrian, and the chronological development of his work is obvious (and fascinating). It's similar with Bacon, and indeed with Rembrandt. But not with Rothko, and that was a new discovery for me. So I like that there's something going on here I don't completely understand. That intrigues me.

Of those in his later, more famous style, I really like this untitled one from 1954 (at the Metropolitan):

http://www.metmuseum.org/Collections/se ... 970)&pos=5

What do I like about it? I like how it played with my sense of time. We're used to our visual sense apprehending things so quickly; this slowed me down in a way I'd not experience before. Now, arguably that's something all of his "bands of color, layer upon layer of paint" pictures do. But what intrigued and moved me about this one was that the slowing of time (time to see the layering) was quite different for the three areas of the canvas. The middle was the most obvious and quickest. Then the bottom, then the lighter area on top (which is more complex than the others). For a long time I thought "well, that's neat - the different degrees of speed of apprehension", but I couldn't figure out why it seemed to elicit an almost physical sense of tension in me. Finally I realized that it was because the speed of seeing was in inverse proportion to the size of the area in question. The smallest (middle) is quickest and the largest (top) is slowest. Quite the opposite of what I would have expected.

Also, the middle section draws the eye to it first, because it's most brightly colored, is the only one that has clear striations, and is most centrally positioned - so it sort of "traps the eye". And so seeing the subtle things going on in the bottom and (especially) the top section was made even slower because the middle "attracted" the eye away from the other areas of the canvas.

All that put together made for a picture that set three different speeds of perception going at once inside me - all of them uncommon in everyday life; and at the same time it created an enormous sense of tension completely at odds with the quiet, serene light colors of the biggest section of the canvas. I'd never experienced anything quite like it, and I haven't since. 

And this second picture is a very good example of this original vs. reproduction argument: the reproduction - even the one on this website, which is quite good -just doesn't come close to the same effect. It gives maybe a tiny, tiny idea of the depth and complexity of the layering of paint. And it produces nothing remotely like the tension I described. 
I think that language has a lot to do with interfering in our relationship to direct experience. A simple thing like metaphor will allows you to go to a place and say 'this is like that'. Well, this isn't like that. This is like this.

—Richard Serra

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Re: Child's painting sells for $86.9m

Post by Hermit » Thu May 10, 2012 4:58 pm

orpheus wrote:What meant was "until you see it in real life, your opinion of the real-life experience is worthless." That seems self-evident to me.
Well. Yes. Definitely. I don't know how anyone could argue with that.

In the context of the thread's tenor, though, your revised comment would seem to be a somewhat irrelevant aside.
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Re: Child's painting sells for $86.9m

Post by Animavore » Thu May 10, 2012 5:00 pm

That second one just looks like a faded, unkempt wall on a beach public toilets, the middle stripe like a line of rust where an old pipe, stained by run-off from a corrigated roof had been pulled away.

:sofa:
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Re: Child's painting sells for $86.9m

Post by mistermack » Thu May 10, 2012 5:15 pm

Orpheus, I feel guilty for asking now.

I first read what you wrote, and then clicked on the pictures afterwards.
When I read what you wrote, I thought maybe I'm missing something here. ( although I hardly understood any of it ).
But when I clicked the pictures, to see what inspired those words, I realised that you must be completely mad.
However, mad in a nice way, I'm sure, and it obviously doesn't stop you from functioning properly.

If you love it, I can't knock it.
Last edited by mistermack on Thu May 10, 2012 5:18 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: Child's painting sells for $86.9m

Post by Hermit » Thu May 10, 2012 5:16 pm

Animavore wrote:That second one just looks like a faded, unkempt wall on a beach public toilets, the middle stripe like a line of rust where an old pipe, stained by run-off from a corrigated roof had been pulled away.

:sofa:
You obviously haven's seen it in real life. If you had, you would have found yourself overpowered by the sense of floating colours brought about by the layering, which would in turn have engendered a visceral experience in you akin to tripping, where time accelerates or slows down and you feel the need to waffle on about the meaning of it all... no, not the meaning exactly... the feeling... or perhaps that's not quite the right word either... it's all so transcendental... or is it subliminal... or something. Yes, that's exactly it! Something. Can we name that something in more concrete, down to earth terms? I think so. How about 86.9 million bucks? We can get our lawyers to draw up the relevant documents that will make our experience officially consummated. Deal?
I am, somehow, less interested in the weight and convolutions of Einstein’s brain than in the near certainty that people of equal talent have lived and died in cotton fields and sweatshops. - Stephen J. Gould

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Re: Child's painting sells for $86.9m

Post by hadespussercats » Thu May 10, 2012 5:19 pm

Animavore wrote:Image


Jayzis! I've a heap of these on my fridge.
I love this painting. If I had the kind of money to buy top-shelf art, I'd want to own it.
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