One of the nicest things about art is that Iâve yet to meet anyone who didnât like something they knew was bad art eg a Queen song. Bad art can be very entertaining.
We can all agree that Jeff Koonsâ metal rabbit is objectively great art, right? Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchinâs father bought it at auction for $91 million, and we are told that billionaires are super smart and rational actors.
If my whole profit line is driven by money laundering, then this is a fine piece of art. Let them question my credibility!
There are other reasons people buy art other than thinking itâs very good art.
Edit: and in any case I doubt anyone itf is qualified to say whether that piece is good art or not, though obviously the price is absurd.
I watched a documentary on Duchamp yesterday, and Koons was on it with a eulogy to the great man.
My previous post was mostly facetious. My subjective opinion on Koonsâ art is that it should be worth .000001% of what it sells for. I will give it credit for accurately representing overpriced Americana and opulence really well. His series on Michaep Jackson isâŚuniqueâŚ
The bunny is great art. The ultra rich buying it at crazy prices for status or tax shenanigans doesnât taint the quality of the art.
I saw many of Koonsâ pieces in person in LA prior to knowing who he was and what they sold for. They didnât do much for me personally from an aesthetic perspective, but Iâm no art critique.
What makes the bunny great art to you?
Art price have little to do with some kind of objective quality measure.
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One of my favorite pieces of art is this photo, even though it wasnât meant to be art:
Also pretty good:
The photographer waited specifically to make this shot, so I guess it is intentional art.
Some more great (and partly amgigously intentional examples):
i canât judge the price before knowing how big the rabbit is.
Just to be clear, The Wrong Missy is a fine Friday night bake watch
I know itâs been mentioned upthread, but the How To show on HBO is worth checking out. Iâve only seen the first two episodes (small talk and scaffolding) and they are both great. The scaffolding ep has a lot of inside baseball for New Yorkers, but he does a good job explaining things for out of towners.
I should probably be embarrassed to ask this, but Iâm surprisingly not:
Does anyone besides me still watch MTVâs The Challenge? New season just kicked off.
All this talk about art just serves to remind me even more of the film Phat Beach.
Itâs a mistake to assess modern art by using ideas of aesthetics. After Duchamp, the most important artist of the 20th century, much of modern art has been in revolt against bourgeois values of tastefulness.
Iâm not a Koons fan, just pointing out that different metrics apply when assessing certain types of modern art.
Well I meanâŚI havenât seen this piece before and know nothing about it, but itâs very obviously deliberately hideously gaudy and probably some kind of conceptual joke aimed at the sort of Uber rich moron who thinks itâs a signifier of good taste.
I was trying to think of something kitsch and not really very artistically good, but which has broad appeal.
I think most people like at least one Queen song, even if guiltily.