[arduanika]

> the fact that the flag is unadorned (which/whose flag is it?), and the man is unknown, makes me think this statue could be the ultimate Rorschach test

This is part of what's obvious. The whole thing, including this oooh aahh Rorschach part, is obvious. It's thoughts that we all had in high school, and it is hack.

[hn_throwaway_99]

Lol, right now this comment declaring "the oooh aahh Rorschach part is obvious" is literally just below another comment declaring that the sculpture could only reasonably be interpreted as being anti-nationalist. So thanks for proving my point.

[card_zero]

That just means you're both wrong. "Its location - Waterloo Place, St James's - is an area designed to celebrate imperialism and military dominance in the 1800s", says the BBC. Banksy is from Bristol, where they threw a statue of a slave-trading philanthropist in the river. The statue is wearing a suit. It's not very interpretable. We can wonder whether it's about the Conservative party or the Reform party, but nobody's suggesting it represents Hamas or the CCP.

※ I admit that Xi Jinping wears a suit, but I'm still classifying that theory under "plausible deniability".

[hn_throwaway_99]

Every single comment that proudly declares "my interpretation is obviously the correct one and you other guys are wrong" only further serves to prove what an actual great piece of art this is. That is, it's art that makes you think and can be validly interpreted in many different ways, and more serves as a projection of the own viewer.

Who necessarily cares what the original design of Waterloo Place is for, it's also just a place in the center of London with lots of foot traffic, visibility and a ton of statues. Or that the place Banksy is from threw a statue into the river (that connection in particular is quite the stretch - are you saying all the things that happened in your home town are inherently reflections of you?).

The more I see people declare that their interpretation is "right" (just see the argument thread over whether right wing or left wing people are more likely to wrap themselves up in a flag), the more I think this is a pretty brilliant piece of art.

[card_zero]

That's not brilliant, and it's not important to art. It's more like clickbait.

The statue is blank because deliberate ambiguity is the arty thing to do, because provocation is supposed to be a praiseworthy aspect of art.

But it's paper-thin ambiguity, and ambiguity isn't praiseworthy anyway. Inexplicit meaning is praiseworthy, but that's something else. This statue just has a veneer to suggest that it might possibly be saying something other than what the artist obviously thinks, if you know all about him, as we do.

[leourbina]

And yet here here we all are taking about it. Art is about inciting a response, and he’s done it. Whether we think he’s a hack or not is irrelevant - he has the world’s attention.

[Petersipoi]

Gp said, "it's a hack"

You said, "Whether we think he's a hack", which fundamentally changes what is being discussed.

The only reason we're talking about this is because of Banksy. Not because it is a clever or "deep" piece. It's disappointingly surface level, and the fact that we're talking about that doesn't suggest otherwise.

[hn_throwaway_99]

> The only reason we're talking about this is because of Banksy.

Baloney. It's a guerilla sculpture put up in the center of London. My guess is we might be talking about it more if it were unsigned as a case of whodunnit.

But for me personally, I roll my eyes at all the ex-art students who always complain "it's a hack" for any piece of art that appeals to a wide audience and isn't some obnoxious 8-layers deep meaning. You literally see it all the time, and half the time it just strikes me as thinly-veiled jealousy, if not from the art student perspective than from the "I'm so much more sophisticated than the unwashed masses" perspective.

It happened on HN a few months ago in a post about Simon Berger, an artist who makes portraits with cracked glass. The artist has achieved relatively wide appeal, and many of the comments here were along the lines of "Meh, he's a talentless hack, he just stumbled along a 'cool' technique but the subjects are boring."

I'd have a lot more respect for folks that could just say "it's not my bag" and move on, rather than pretend they're so much more sophisticated than people who enjoy this art.

[arduanika]

This is slander! I am not an ex-art student! :)

I would agree that "it's not my bag" is a fine thing to say about some art gallery piece that fails to inspire you, but when a statue is foisted upon the public square, with possible state cooperation, we're allowed to criticize it. He has inserted it into the conversation.

Moreover, the main complaint about this statue isn't coming from some expert artiste perspective, saying that it's somehow unsophisticated as art. The complaint here is that it's making a truly banal political statement. The entire piece consists of making that statement, with little else to recommend it. (Indeed, most political art is hack, unless it's saying something really original or really well, and it's even worse when it tries to be cute about it.)

So here, the complaints are coming from everyday onlookers who might not be qualified artistically, but who are able to say which sorts of statements are tiresome and overplayed in the culture we all live in. We are all qualified to ask ourselves whether this predictable statement advances or degrades the conversation.

Anyhow, FWIW, I just looked up Simon Berger's portraits based on your comment, and I really like them. Thanks.

[arduanika]

Thanks for drawing the distinction. For the record, I do not think Banksy is a hack (noun), and he has done good stuff in the past. I'm merely saying that this piece under discussion is hack (adjective).

[card_zero]

Where does the "art is about inciting a response" theory originate from?

I went and looked at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theory_of_art but couldn't find it there. The "anti-essentialist" section is good, though, I think. It has Berys Gaut listing ten properties of art, all of which are nice-to-have but none of which are essential. Then if a piece ticks lots of boxes it's a shoo-in, but if it doesn't tick many of them you can argue about it.

Some of those involve eliciting some sort of response, but you could also have a decorative piece with this combo:

(i) aesthetic, (iv) complex, (v) meaningful, (vi) idiosyncratic, (vii) imaginative, (viii) skillful, (ix) art-shaped, (x) intentional

Which would be 8 out of 10, to which we could add "completely ignorable" and it could still be art. I don't see why attention-grabbing and provocation is important, and it certainly isn't sufficient on its own, plus it's irritating.

[IAmBroom]

You are both entitled to your own definitions of "art".

[card_zero]

Relativist.

It's an idea, it describes something real. We can all make our own guesses and our own assertions about what that is, and then we can critique them and try to make them agree. There's no point just saying "we can all think whatever we like about anything" and leaving it there.