[danielpal]

I'll explain. Most people who criticize contemporary are, usually use a combination of its just a bunch of random lines or a "5 year old could have painted that" - as if the complexity of difficulty of an art piece its what makes it valuable. But nothing is further from the truth, a simple piece, with a strong composition such as Number 17a, could look simple but its quite powerful and complex.

Let me use an analogy you can better understand. I am sure you can appreciate music. Most people who listen to the Marriage of Figaro by Mozart, can understand it's a master piece. Yet, it isn't the most difficult balad Mozart composer and many other musicians have created far more complex balads. Also a gifted 5 year old could probably learn to play it and reproduce it quite accurately. Does that diminish its value because a 5 year old can play it? It's even possible for an average 5 year old to invent a similar balad after listening to it. But could an average 5 year old create something like the Marriage of Figaro from scratch without ever hearing it? It takes a pretty special 5 year old, like Mozart to produce something like that. And its the whole composition that matters, not just a few notes - anyone can play a few notes.

The same happens with Pollock. He was the first drip painter. And while an average 5 year old could drip some paint in a canvas (play a few notes), they won't be able to create a powerful composition of colors that mirrors a full Pollock composition. Sure, there are amazing reproductions of Pollock made by very trained art forgers - yet that doesn't diminish the value of Pollock just because someone else after analyzing his technique is able to reproduce it.

The value is another story. It's worth $200M because of its size and scarcity. Pollock wasn't a big art producers and thus there aren't many paintings around. Yet there are many people who love his work and want to buy it. Supply and demand dictates the price. Sure you can buy something similar from an art forger, but its not the same, the same way that listening to a album on a set of speakers is not the same as having the artist play live for you.

[LudwigNagasena]

>as if the complexity of difficulty of an art piece its what makes it valuable

But it is true. Of course it is not the whole story, but complexity and difficulty influence how humans interpret and value things.

[watwut]

Realistic drawings are not considered difficult, not by artists. It is called fundamentals and you learn it in school. It takes effort to learn, but effectively it is just that.

Which is why more abstract drawings raised into prominence. And they are not so easy either - as much as five years old scribble, they don't create same effect not pleasing composition of colors or structures.

[longerthoughts]

Complexity is not exclusively visual. The complexity of modern art largely comes in the form of the effect it has on the observer and the meaning they derive from it.

[robocat]

> Sure you can buy something similar from an art forger, but its not the same, the same way that listening to a album on a set of speakers is not the same as having the artist play live for you.

That's not a double-blind standard - you are comparing pipes to chairs. Although I can understand that one may care for the homeopathy or placebo effect of having the "real" item.

But I believe that there are artists that could make a better Pollock than Pollock himself.

[umvi]

It doesn't take much to forge Pollock. It's like an author taking the output of monkeys pounding on typewriters and publishing it. Not hard to forge compared to JRRT.

Modern art is a sham. I only appreciate art that I recognize takes skill above my own to create. Anyone can come up with random novel "art". For example, I could buy a SpaceX rocket and launch a piece of feces into low earth orbit. "Poop in Orbit" would be extremely novel and random piece of modern "art".

Michaelangelo blows my mind. Pollock makes me roll my eyes.

[beat]

I can draw stick figures and call them forgeries of Michaelangelo. That doesn't make them good forgeries. Read the original article for some sense of the technical difficulty of forging Pollock in a way that couldn't be easily spotted by a Pollock expert.

[umvi]

Yes, and I could hire a team of "umvi experts" that study 1000 samples of my written signature. Then it would be really hard for people to forge my signature because I have a team of experts that have studied me to the point they know my subconscious nuances. That doesn't mean I have any skill whatsoever, it just means people wasted time training their neural nets to recognize my idiosyncrasies in order to prevent forgeries.

[beat]

So basically, you're saying that Pollock is easy to forge, as long as no one understand what makes his paintings distinctive?

I mean, I could probably spot an amateurish Pollock forgery, and I'm no expert. And while forging his general style would be difficult, forging specific works would be nearly impossible - the layers are very specific. It would be even harder to forge drip technique paintings, where his direct control of the "brush" was limited.

[umvi]

> So basically, you're saying that Pollock is easy to forge, as long as no one understand what makes his paintings distinctive?

I'm saying it's easy to make Pollock-esque paintings. I bet you could study Pollock for a few hours and then make a Pollock-esque painting that would fool 99.9% of the population. You can't do that with Michelangelo.

> forging specific works would be nearly impossible - the layers are very specific.

Obviously. That's like me throwing a fistful of sand on the floor and taking a picture of it and saying it would be very hard for someone to forge the picture because the sand grain positioning is very specific - which is technically true.

[lonelappde]

Why don't you provide some evidence for your claim, since you believe all the evidence in the OP is invalid?

I could claim that whatever it is you do (including your HN comment) is no more complex or interesting than monkeys banging on typewriters.

Saying that careless sprinkling sand is as good as a Pollack is very nearly the same as saying picking numbers off the top of your head is as good as a secure RNG for crypto. It's not, in ways only an ingorant person fails to understand.

[longerthoughts]

>I only appreciate art that I recognize takes skill above my own to create

Even if you had the skill to create a passable forgery of a Pollock, which you probably do not, you're attributing no value to the importance of concept and initial creation. A kid performing a Beethoven piece at a recital is not Beethoven.

[umvi]

Simple thought experiment:

I let you study Michelangelo's sculptures for 24 hours using any resources you want. I then hand you a block of marble and a chisel and ask you to create a Michaelangelo-style scupture.

We then present your sculpture alongside an authentic Michelangelo sculpture and ask 50 random people on the street to identify which one was made by you and which was made by Michelangelo. I would wager 100% would reject your sculpture as inauthentic (based on an obvious lack of skill).

Now we repeat the same experiment but with Pollock. I would wager 50% would reject your painting as inauthentic and 50% would reject the Pollock painting as inauthentic (people would randomly choose).

Pollock paintings require no skill, just a large canvas and a few contrasting colors to splatter and drip. There is no dexterity or experience required to make a painting in the style of Pollock, unlike Michelangelo sculptures.

[longerthoughts]

1) You’re responding to a point about you attributing no value to concept by doubling down on the importance of realist technique and ignoring everything else. Even pieces that truly don’t require technical skill can still have value, which you don’t seem to grasp. A realistic portrait is far less interesting to many than something abstract that makes you reflect.

2) Please try to replicate a Pollock. I think you’ll be surprised.

[umvi]

> Even pieces that truly don’t require technical skill can still have value, which you don’t seem to grasp.

No, I understand. The Japanese flag is a red circle on a white rectangle. Takes no skill to design or draw. But I still think it's has value as a symbol. But I wouldn't pay $200M for it and I certainly wouldn't prop up the person who made it as some sort of highly skilled artistic juggernaut. I would think "neat concept, but I could've done that" and that would be it.

> Please try to replicate a Pollock. I think you’ll be surprised.

Please try and replicate my signature. I think you'll be surprised at how difficult it is (I've been perfecting it for 20+ years signing documents) and that should cause you to respect me much more, right? If not, please explain why not and in doing so you'll understand why I don't care for Pollock or his work.

Anyone can just make up a new form of art and "perfect" it by just doing it over and over (like your signature). I could invent a new form of music by randomly mashing keys on a piano in a way unique to me. So what? There is no negative feedback loop so therefore the "perfection" process is completely nebulous and arbitrary and takes no real effort because there is no defined destination.

Can we at least acknowledge the massive skill gap between learning to play a Chopin piano piece and pioneering a Pollock-esque field of art where there are no rules or negative feedback loops to correct you?

[SamReidHughes]

Playing a Chopin piano piece is much, much easier. You can tell Pollock is legit just by looking at his art.

[flowerlad]

I don’t think Pollock’s drips are art either. But I do think Picasso’s cubist paintings are art. And yet some of Picasso’s paintings are easy to re-create so would fail your test.