[lukko]

Exactly - context is everything in art, in how it's experienced and how it is created.

I think it's important to note that a jpg of Monet is not fully experiencing the painting in any sense. Colours will not be accurately captured, the texture, the framing, the scale - it's sort of like getting a heavily watered down version of the expensive wine, saying it's cheap wine, and asking what people think.

[surgical_fire]

This reminds me the day I went to see in person Starry Night Over The Rhone.

I am not exactly an art person, but I once was explained why that painting is a big deal, the whole impasto thing, etc.

I get there and there's an horde of morons taking selfies next to the painting, and another horde of morons taking photos of the painting. I just wanted to observe a bit the depth of the carved layers of ink and how light reflected on them.

Why bother taking a photo when I can find professional high definition photos of it online?

In the end I was unable to observe anything. It was sort of a let down, and the experience made me hate people a wee bit more than before. Nobody wanted to fucking look at the painting.

[etrautmann]

I love deeply observing paintings and also love taking a photo while in a museum. It helps me remember the details and review like spaced repetition the things I saw, or spend more time observing nuance later. Are many people ticking boxes? Probably, but the issue is the too many people. Even with people just looking, I feel uncomfortable spending time if there’s a line.

[surgical_fire]

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/9/94/St...

I don't think any picture you take with your cellphone will have as much detail as this.

The act of taking photos of paintings in museums is meaningless.

[AlecSchueler]

> It helps me remember the details and review

Note that they said "remember the details" not "capture the details."

[tasuki]

> The act of taking photos of paintings in museums is meaningless.

No. I found some paintings I liked in a museum and took photos of them with a serious-at-the-time camera and uploaded them to wikimedia and found the endeavour worthwhile. Not all the paintings are super-famous and been scanned at infinite resolution!

[aworks]

This is why John Cage's 4'33" mentioned above is genius. If you listen to the composition with sincerity and seriousness, you get the full, unadulterated (non-silent) experience as opposed to an interpretation.

[unparagoned]

I feel really sorry for people that find context is key for art.

For them often context is more important than the actual art. Lie about the context and their view of art changes completely. I would say these people have objectively bad taste in art. These are the worst kinds of people.

In respect to your point about jpeg, you could have had a jpeg marked as real and one ai, and you would have had all the same comments about how the real jpeg was much better for all kinds of reasons. There is going to be almost zero chance anyone commented how they did due to it being a JPEG, vs them thinking it was ai.

[kergonath]

> Colours will not be accurately captured

Even looking at the real thing, as most pigments degrade with age. There is no way of experiencing it as it was painted.