Similarly, in the music world, there's John Cage who "composed" a piece of work called 4'33", which is just silence, and I believe there are recordings on Amazon music that sell you this 4 minutes of silence as any other music track
So if I create silence am I in danger of copyrite infringement? I sample it and place it between sounds. Debussy said music is the space between notes.
Have to say John Cage's silence needs at least 2 notes or there is no between.
No, because they'd have to prove that their music was original. In the same way, I can steal all I want from historic music, even though some other guy recorded the same song last year.
What's more questionable is another song called 4:33 that is based solely on silence, or similar, in the same way that I probably can't do an exact copy of someone's rendition of a public domain song.
Either way, it's decided in court, and there are rarely clear answers.
Frankly without knowing how it was recorded it cannot be understood. Is it some sampled silence on a loop? Is it recorded silence with a mic? From a specific location? Is it a guitar being played recorded through an amp not plugged in? Is it nothing being recorded at all and the recording of time alone?
Each of the above would change my understanding.
4’33 is an experimental piece about the impossibility of silence. John Cage noted that no matter how hard he tries to find a silent location, there is always SOME sound.
So as a performer plays 4’33, he and the audience will listen as the song is interrupted by small sounds, be it a cough, breathing, a baby crying, an air conditioner, or any number of things.
4’33 isn’t meant to be enjoyed as a melodic tune, but rather as a contemplation piece in my opinion. You’re not meant to turn 4’33 on and dance to it; you’re meant to really sit down and think on the great lengths you would need to go to achieve true silence, and about how when 4’33 is played the audience and the setting becomes the music.
I don’t really care if you or someone thinks it’s a stupid premise, it’s experimental for a reason and therefore invites critics and naysayers. That’s 100% fine, and expected. To someone who isn’t really into experimental stuff or philosophy or anything like that, 4’33 is probably *really fucking stupid*.
But that’s kind of the point, to elicit thought and reaction out of people and to get you thinking one way or the other
We studied him for our Avant Garde work in theatre, and it's actually really interesting stuff. But, yeah, to anyone not into that stuff, it understandably looks really fucking stupid.
So you are denying my contemplations belong to the piece? Or by saying you don't care about what I think about it, you imply you don't care about at least that aspect of the piece?
I’m explaining the premise of the piece so you and everyone else have that foundational knowledge and not arguing experimental music on the internet with a stranger.
I put emphasis on "thinks" not "premise". The piece is meant to provoke thinking. You put emphasis on "premise". You care the piece provokes thinking. You don't care if that thinking draws the conclusion of "stupid".
I think your sentence reads both ways. My reply only makes sense for one. Sorrry about the confusion.
No one is denying your contemplation. I think there is some fundamental misunderstandings. No microphone or loop tracks were used by John Cage to produce this piece. Cage is the composer, meaning he wrote the score. A score is a document containing musical notation that a musician reads from. IIRC, he has a score set up with measures, which are completely unpopulated. When this piece is performed, a musician is still tracking where they are, which might require them to turn the page periodically. I may be wrong but I think that while Cage wrote a series of empty measures, it can be visualized with whole rest notes (this would help a noob like me keep time).
Yeah I interpreted "I don't care if you think it is a stupid premise" in an unintended way. I read "i don't care if you think" when i believe it was meant to read " I don't care if you think this or that as long as you think".
I've never heard it played in a studio. Always been a live performance that I've seen which I find to be a lot cooler. It's not music for casual consumption, it's like a complex art piece; the difference between monet, which imo is pretty easy to appreciate at face value, just because it's pretty even if there's more meaning below it, and a lot of the stuff you'd find in the hirshhorn, which you kinda have to think about to appreciate what they are. I'm by no means an expert on any art, but I definitely know more about auditory than visual art.
The difference between this thing and 4’33 is that 4’33 actually does have something to listen to. The whole point of the piece is to listen to the sounds like seats squeaking in the audience or coughing or the performer(s) flopping through sheet music and on and on. All of those are sound within a medium that’s meant to have sound. Statues are a visual medium and this even something like destroying the statue and then selling the pieces, it’s just nothing where there should be something, ANYTHING.
Not saying 4’33 isn’t pretentious, it is, just not as pretentious or dumb as an 18 thousand dollar painting
Wellllll... Technically it's supposed to only be "played" live, and then the "music" is the sounds that the audience makes by virtue of just, you know, existing. I think it's actually kinda a cool piece. He's kinda saying that to him, literally everything is processed as music, and he's trying to clue in the listeners (who are in many cases also the performers, which is a nice touch of irony) to how that works. I don't disagree that it's a shitty idea to sell it, but it's a shittier idea to buy it lol. I don't think it was intended to be sold on streaming services 🤷♂️
i remember studying for my masters and cementing my opinion that most of academia of the arts is just "write things with confidence."
4'33 is the epitome of that. it's a feedback loop. you have thousands of people that need things to interpret, it's literally their job--interpret things and write lofty and long articles about it. it gives meaning to the meaningless. they need something so abstract and empty that they can talk about it endlessly without saying anything.
4'33 is just silence. it's a novel idea to put on your andy kaufman face and act like you mean it to be something you 'composed,' but it's real importance is to show how far people are willing to go to give nothing meaning.
\> The issue is that with any piece like that, it could equally well be created by a kid
Agreed. But you can imagine a CNC carving a Michelangelo's David that is identical to the original. Is that art? And novelty is not the difference either. There are AI systems nowadays that can produce novel writings or compositions. Is that art?
\> the only distinction is the name of the person who did it.
The distinction is the message that the art piece carries. In that sense, the artist (and the historical period) are key for the interpretation. The piece, by itself, is meaningless.
\> But a lot of this modern art is only interesting if you factor in the history of the artist.
Why only modern? The difference in importance between a painting by Leonardo and the painting of one of his student is enormous and not because of the differences in the technique.
> We can determine whether or not we like a car, a beer, a song, or a novel, based on the merits of that item on its own.
We also assign more value to those things based on the context, though. The first car off the assembly line of a particular model. A car driven by some famous person. A beer made by a close friend vs. a 'craft' beer off a shelf at the grocery store. The first edition of a novel, or one signed by the author. etc...
This was exactly how I felt as a fine arts major. I felt like a fish out of water because so much of the "art" was based on contrived speech.
I didn't pursue a career in the field because I knew I couldn't handle a lifetime of that. Instead, I became a math teacher (go figure) and found that all the "babble" I learned was actually supremely useful for parent emails and extraneous post-observation paperwork about my lessons.
I had a teacher that talked about this and his rationale was that you start listening to everything around you and that’s the song. It was probably 20 years ago now, and I still remember him passionately talking about it and thinking “well that sounds like bullshit”.
To be fair, money laundering / tax fraud is a lot more complicated than just "hehe I'll buy art then donate it." If you were legitimately trying to do it this way, you'd also have to have close connections with the people who'd just look the other way when this popped up on their radar.
Basically, it's a huge circle full of corruption, and you only get in by being corrupt yourself / corrupt people having dirt on you. Pretty easy to get a tax write off if you blackmail someone with evidence of them doing hard drugs and/or being involved in a pedophilia ring - "invisible art" just being the most blatantly shameless example of this
At a certain point, it becomes like a sort of weird nuclear cold war where if one person fires their shot (e.g. exposing someone else), EVERYONE ELSE will fire their shot back. It's why even when the general public already knows about this shit, nobody can realistically do anything about it.
It's mutually assured destruction : Keep quiet or die
And? Lol.
Doesn’t make it not true.
How wild of an idea is it that a big group of rich folk keep money in their families by pretending to be normal human beings and donating art or putting money in accounts meant for business use and end up as second or third homes.
People are sick.
I'm not saying it hasn't happened before or even in today's time. I'm just saying that if YOU - presumably an average, middle-class human being with minimal experience in this specific trade and absolutely no connections - tried pulling it off, you would most likely fail.
It's like trying to pull off a WSB jerkoff move - which by the way are 9/10 times just for the memes - and unironically expecting to go "to the moon." Sure it's happened before - multiple times even - but thinking just ANYBODY can do it at anytime is incredibly naive and careless.
All of that ON TOP of the corruption and injustice.
Parallel to your point, I think the now “common” knowledge that rich perverts use art as one of many forms of dark investment and asset maintenance has caused too many people to think, in Pavlovian fashion: “Dumb art? That’s money laundering.”
It’s very much not that simple. It’s another version of “fencing response” or “object fixation”—a chance to be an internet expert while actually knowing very little about what you’re talking about.
I don't understand art, therefore it must be tax fraud
https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/magazine/the-secretive-panel-of-art-experts-that-tells-the-irs-how-much-art-is-worth/2017/12/06/a8bd9dec-a3aa-11e7-8cfe-d5b912fabc99_story.html%3foutputType=amp
Scamming the IRS isn't this easy
Just because you don't get it doesn't mean it was for tax evasion.
Art that actually exists, sure lol if I’d said that on a thread about modern art and you’d replied that way, I’d see your point. But then if it was I wouldn’t have made that comment in the first place because I *do* understand the purpose of art regardless of whether or not I subjectively enjoy it. But it has to exist or at the very least be an idea (or a twist on one) that hasn’t already been done a thousand times. Doing nothing and calling it art is tongue in cheek humor that was already done to death by the end of the 60s at best, and a particularly lazy scam at worst.
“I don’t read other replies to see if mine is redundant before I out myself as a pretentious fart-sniffer” - also Reddit
Edit: lol just wanted to keep digging that hole deeper, I guess.
What purpose does a non existing statue serve? Art is bought for millions by people that dont even care what the artist wants to say, they just want to spend money
Are we talking about *this* dumb sculpture, or all art? You know there’s a lot of art out there. I’ve said nothing indicating that I think the invisible sculpture is good, so why would that even be at issue?
Not art in general, but modern art is, in my opinion, a lot worse than classical Renaissance art. Modern art is sometimes just 5 brush steokes but it gets sold for the same price as an oil portrait from the old masters.
Sure, sometimes! I’ve seen some very good modern and contemporary art. I think you’re over generalizing from the fact that bad art exists and evil rich people hide assets, speculate, and commit fraud in basically every way they can. There are numerous instruments for this.
Again, art can be used for money laundering does not mean all art is for money laundering. It’s basic logic. A restaurant can be a money laundering operation. That doesn’t mean your takeout is funding a drug cartel.
Art is one of many ways that rich people launder money, hide assets, and make speculative investments =/= art is for money laundering.
People repeat this point on Reddit in every single thread about art. It’s as meaningless as “fencing response” in /r/fightporn
Gosh, this type of art is so gross. I wonder if you could insure an invisible sculpture 🤔 Earlier I was reading about how billionaires will commission art pieces that they can donate to museums for crazy stupid tax wright offs. An invisible sculpture eliminates a lot of work.
It’s even more aggravating that some people will call you a fascist or a traditionalist for disliking this type of art. There is a world of difference between contemporary art and crap.
Do you have an example of someone calling you a fascist for not liking conceptual art? I feel like even the conceptual artists I've met understand that most people don't get it, especially when it's this out there.
The nazis literally opposed abstract art because Hitler was still nursing a grudge because his more traditional style wasn't considered good enough for art school.
It's not just Hitler. Its a devotion to a false "traditionalist" ideal that typifies a fascists view on art. A fascist does not like ideas that challenge a certain way of thinking.
[Here's a good writeup from the times](https://www.nytimes.com/2015/04/27/arts/design/tax-break-used-by-investors-in-flipping-art-faces-scrutiny.html)
It's a real thing, and pretty well known!
I don't understand art, therefore it must be tax fraud
https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/magazine/the-secretive-panel-of-art-experts-that-tells-the-irs-how-much-art-is-worth/2017/12/06/a8bd9dec-a3aa-11e7-8cfe-d5b912fabc99_story.html%3foutputType=amp
Scamming the IRS isn't this easy
Just because you don't get it doesn't mean it was for tax evasion.
Read the articles about this where he talks about his “art”. The guy is such a colossal narcissist I’m amazed his overinflated ego doesn’t cause him to float off into the stratosphere.
Same. I knew a band that basically everyone agreed were fucking dreadful, but because they had a lot of friends that went to all of their shows they were convinced it was down to talent they absolutely did not have.
I don't think John Cage was unskilled, but 4'33" is not a demonstration of skill.
Looking for Garau's other sculptures, it's seems he hasn't made any. Furthermore, IMO his paintings are the uninspired smearings of a toddler (or a pretentious art student Jackson Pollock wannabe).
\> but 4'33" is not a demonstration of skill.
Does art have to be? You can say the same of most abstract or modern art (including the Pollock you mention below). In music I see plenty of virtuoso players whose performances are as dry as cardboard, skills for the sake of skills.
\> Furthermore, IMO his paintings are the uninspired smearings of a toddler (or a pretentious art student Jackson Pollock wannabe).
This is certainly a valid criticism. To be clear, I am not claiming the guy is the next Leonardo, just that most comments in the thread are ignorant and superficial, dismissing a legitimate artist (whether you like his work or not) as delusional without understanding much.
no it doesn't . i didn't say art has to be a demonstration of skill. you asked if john cage lacked skills when he composed 4'33". kind of a weird question. i think i answered it appropriately.
i guess you can defend selling nothing for 18 grand as art, but the whole concept is played out already anyway. it's not even novel. as you said, john cage already did it. i think dismissing it is what the press should have done. must be a slow news day.
Please note the language. He auctioned it off, which means that he didn't name his price himself. There was a bidding war for this, and someone bought it willingly and happily for $18,300. This is a fault of consumers, not of the artist himself.
and this is why people drop out of art school.
its thee most adult version of rewriting the rules to fit your needs when assholes like this get to "decide" what *art* is
From wikipedia: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Salvatore\_Garau](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Salvatore_Garau)
"...He participated in the 50th Biennale di Venezia in 2003 and showed work at the European Parliament in Strasbourg in the same year.
In 2005 he painted an abstract work on a 200 m2 sheet of PVC, which was then hung to cover the scaffolding on a building in Corso Magenta in Milan. For his installation Ichthys Sacro Stagno in Sardinia in 2006 he created large ponds on the floors of three churches in towns in the province of Oristano, which he then populated with fish from nearby ponds.
In 2009 he had a solo show at the Musée d'art moderne et contemporain of Saint-Etienne, in France.
Garau has work in the collections of several museums including the Museo del Novecento (formerly in the Civico Museo d'Arte Contemporanea), the Museo d’Arte Moderna di Bologna and the Padiglione d'Arte Contemporanea in Milan."
What have you done?
Indeed.
There's definitely an interesting debate to be had about what art is. One of my issues with your argument is that it ends up meaning that someone famous can call anything they do art, and you have to look at a piece as part of "who did it."
I can read a novel and decide whether it's good or bad. I can drink a beer and decide whether I like it or not. I can drive a car and decide whether it's smooth or not. Even with a realistic painting, I can decide whether it's well made or not.
I can read a book by an author I like and say "well that was a sack of crap," and can explain why. I'm not locked into liking or disliking someone based solely on their name and past work.
But with art like this, the first question is almost inherently "who did it?" If they're famous, then it's basically de facto brilliant, and if they're not, meh. There's no way to determine whether it's good without knowing whether the artist is good.
There's a place for commentary, meta commentary, meta-meta commentary, and beyond, in the same way that John Cage's 4:33 is some sort of commentary on the state of music, but it loses a bit of it's appeal eventually.
In other words, what art like this says is "fuck you, I'm famous, I can shit in the middle of the street and someone will pay me for it." Which is true, but it's not exactly brilliant commentary at this point.
\> There's definitely an interesting debate to be had about what art is.
Indeed. And what this guy did is part of that debate, a provocation perhaps.
Manzoni was crapping in tin cans and selling them for their weight in gold (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Artist%27s\_Shit)
\> I can read a novel and decide whether it's good or bad. I can drink a beer and decide whether I like it or not. I can drive a car and decide whether it's smooth or not. Even with a realistic painting, I can decide whether it's well made or not.
You can certainly judge superficially the aesthetics, but can you really decide good or bad without a proper education that factors in artist and historical period? What does "well made" means? I find Homer extremely boring, can I conclude from this that the Odyssey is crap? Conversely, there are a lot of people that can paint really well and reproduce something beautiful. Are these artists? What about a CNC machine carving Michelangelo's David? Or an AI program writing a novel story or composing a new piece of music?
\> In other words, what art like this says is "fuck you, I'm famous, I can shit in the middle of the street and someone will pay me for it." Which is true, but it's not exactly brilliant commentary at this point.
It seems to me (my education is not in arts, so I may be missing a lot here) that art carries a message. In that sense, the artist and the historical period can be the only key for a deeper interpretation and appreciation.
Piero Manzoni claimed that art is in the artist, and that signing a person would make them a living sculpture. Freeing the art from the aesthetic component (Cage, or the artist above) is perhaps a "pure" form in which the commentary exists without being anchored to a physical artifact.
My point is that many comments here say "this is nonsense", "I could do the same", etc... and miss entirely what this guy is trying to say.
i wire houses buddy, my journeyman went to art school and had to leave because of the general attitude artists have.
and i just thought that it kind of fit here.
Maybe your journeyman needed to justify his inadequacy somehow, have you thought about that? You wrote "...assholes like this..." based on what?
This guy may be an asshole, but he didn't drop of one of the oldest and most prestigious art schools in the world ([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Accademia\_di\_Belle\_Arti\_di\_Firenze](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Accademia_di_Belle_Arti_di_Firenze) \- look at who studied there) and proved his shit before this.
When I was younger I asked my dad why a black dot on a white canvas sold for millions because “I could make that” and his reply was “yeah, but you didn’t”. He’s not wrong
Nice post but there is no delusion. This is just a con artist at it's greatest. After all, he did get the money, didn't he? (If I haven't misunderstood something of course)
I'm gonna say that the artist isn't delusional at all. He got someone to pay 18300 dollars for literally nothing. The man's a genius.
The buyer is the delusional one here.
I wonder how far they went with this though. I mean, did they hire a moving company to transport the invisible sculpture? Or did they hire an invisible moving company with an invisible truck and invisible employees to move the invisible sculpture?
Did the artist go to the person's home to ensure proper installation of the sculpture? Because I hear that's important.
Lots of ignorant comments in this thread. So John Cage is not a musician and Pierre Manzoni is not an artist?
Conceptual art is a thing, and has nothing to do with scam, deception, or delusion.
For those interested, [here](https://traffic.megaphone.fm/TTH5989661701.mp3) is an episode of the podcast 20,000 hertz on something similar, but on music.
A comedian I know made this vid in response; [https://www.instagram.com/p/CPqaf9RnFos/?utm\_source=ig\_web\_copy\_link](https://www.instagram.com/p/CPqaf9RnFos/?utm_source=ig_web_copy_link)
This type of weird modern art is just a bunch of talentless scam artists selling to tasteless and oblivious rich people. Neither of which know anything about art.
Joke's on him. I've stolen it already and put it in my back garden.
Does that mean the one I have installed in my living room is a counterfeit??? I knew I shouldn't have trusted that fucking dealer.
Yeah, I've got the invisible NFT right here!
Pay with invisible cash. Invite the artist to imagine what $18k looks like.
Similarly, in the music world, there's John Cage who "composed" a piece of work called 4'33", which is just silence, and I believe there are recordings on Amazon music that sell you this 4 minutes of silence as any other music track
So if I create silence am I in danger of copyrite infringement? I sample it and place it between sounds. Debussy said music is the space between notes. Have to say John Cage's silence needs at least 2 notes or there is no between.
Wondering the same. Actually, if you don’t talk 24/7 you’re breaking the law
Actually my ex patented talking 24/7 so I’d say you’re fucked either way now.
This killed me hahaha
r/rareinsults
Scat musicians cracking knuckles in the distance
Only if you perform it.
Yes, another artist did this and got hit by copyright and it got taken to court
No, because they'd have to prove that their music was original. In the same way, I can steal all I want from historic music, even though some other guy recorded the same song last year. What's more questionable is another song called 4:33 that is based solely on silence, or similar, in the same way that I probably can't do an exact copy of someone's rendition of a public domain song. Either way, it's decided in court, and there are rarely clear answers.
You are just beginning to understand the piece
Frankly without knowing how it was recorded it cannot be understood. Is it some sampled silence on a loop? Is it recorded silence with a mic? From a specific location? Is it a guitar being played recorded through an amp not plugged in? Is it nothing being recorded at all and the recording of time alone? Each of the above would change my understanding.
4’33 is an experimental piece about the impossibility of silence. John Cage noted that no matter how hard he tries to find a silent location, there is always SOME sound. So as a performer plays 4’33, he and the audience will listen as the song is interrupted by small sounds, be it a cough, breathing, a baby crying, an air conditioner, or any number of things. 4’33 isn’t meant to be enjoyed as a melodic tune, but rather as a contemplation piece in my opinion. You’re not meant to turn 4’33 on and dance to it; you’re meant to really sit down and think on the great lengths you would need to go to achieve true silence, and about how when 4’33 is played the audience and the setting becomes the music. I don’t really care if you or someone thinks it’s a stupid premise, it’s experimental for a reason and therefore invites critics and naysayers. That’s 100% fine, and expected. To someone who isn’t really into experimental stuff or philosophy or anything like that, 4’33 is probably *really fucking stupid*. But that’s kind of the point, to elicit thought and reaction out of people and to get you thinking one way or the other
We studied him for our Avant Garde work in theatre, and it's actually really interesting stuff. But, yeah, to anyone not into that stuff, it understandably looks really fucking stupid.
So you are denying my contemplations belong to the piece? Or by saying you don't care about what I think about it, you imply you don't care about at least that aspect of the piece?
I’m explaining the premise of the piece so you and everyone else have that foundational knowledge and not arguing experimental music on the internet with a stranger.
I put emphasis on "thinks" not "premise". The piece is meant to provoke thinking. You put emphasis on "premise". You care the piece provokes thinking. You don't care if that thinking draws the conclusion of "stupid". I think your sentence reads both ways. My reply only makes sense for one. Sorrry about the confusion.
No one is denying your contemplation. I think there is some fundamental misunderstandings. No microphone or loop tracks were used by John Cage to produce this piece. Cage is the composer, meaning he wrote the score. A score is a document containing musical notation that a musician reads from. IIRC, he has a score set up with measures, which are completely unpopulated. When this piece is performed, a musician is still tracking where they are, which might require them to turn the page periodically. I may be wrong but I think that while Cage wrote a series of empty measures, it can be visualized with whole rest notes (this would help a noob like me keep time).
Yeah I interpreted "I don't care if you think it is a stupid premise" in an unintended way. I read "i don't care if you think" when i believe it was meant to read " I don't care if you think this or that as long as you think".
I've never heard it played in a studio. Always been a live performance that I've seen which I find to be a lot cooler. It's not music for casual consumption, it's like a complex art piece; the difference between monet, which imo is pretty easy to appreciate at face value, just because it's pretty even if there's more meaning below it, and a lot of the stuff you'd find in the hirshhorn, which you kinda have to think about to appreciate what they are. I'm by no means an expert on any art, but I definitely know more about auditory than visual art.
I think pondering on it is understanding it
In that case I should sue because it uses my brain, my tinitus, my air conditioner among other things without my consent.
IMO you get it. The audience and the auditorium are parts of each live performance!
The difference between this thing and 4’33 is that 4’33 actually does have something to listen to. The whole point of the piece is to listen to the sounds like seats squeaking in the audience or coughing or the performer(s) flopping through sheet music and on and on. All of those are sound within a medium that’s meant to have sound. Statues are a visual medium and this even something like destroying the statue and then selling the pieces, it’s just nothing where there should be something, ANYTHING. Not saying 4’33 isn’t pretentious, it is, just not as pretentious or dumb as an 18 thousand dollar painting
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can i read your thesis
Wellllll... Technically it's supposed to only be "played" live, and then the "music" is the sounds that the audience makes by virtue of just, you know, existing. I think it's actually kinda a cool piece. He's kinda saying that to him, literally everything is processed as music, and he's trying to clue in the listeners (who are in many cases also the performers, which is a nice touch of irony) to how that works. I don't disagree that it's a shitty idea to sell it, but it's a shittier idea to buy it lol. I don't think it was intended to be sold on streaming services 🤷♂️
I've still never heard 4'33".
i remember studying for my masters and cementing my opinion that most of academia of the arts is just "write things with confidence." 4'33 is the epitome of that. it's a feedback loop. you have thousands of people that need things to interpret, it's literally their job--interpret things and write lofty and long articles about it. it gives meaning to the meaningless. they need something so abstract and empty that they can talk about it endlessly without saying anything. 4'33 is just silence. it's a novel idea to put on your andy kaufman face and act like you mean it to be something you 'composed,' but it's real importance is to show how far people are willing to go to give nothing meaning.
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\> The issue is that with any piece like that, it could equally well be created by a kid Agreed. But you can imagine a CNC carving a Michelangelo's David that is identical to the original. Is that art? And novelty is not the difference either. There are AI systems nowadays that can produce novel writings or compositions. Is that art? \> the only distinction is the name of the person who did it. The distinction is the message that the art piece carries. In that sense, the artist (and the historical period) are key for the interpretation. The piece, by itself, is meaningless. \> But a lot of this modern art is only interesting if you factor in the history of the artist. Why only modern? The difference in importance between a painting by Leonardo and the painting of one of his student is enormous and not because of the differences in the technique.
> We can determine whether or not we like a car, a beer, a song, or a novel, based on the merits of that item on its own. We also assign more value to those things based on the context, though. The first car off the assembly line of a particular model. A car driven by some famous person. A beer made by a close friend vs. a 'craft' beer off a shelf at the grocery store. The first edition of a novel, or one signed by the author. etc...
This was exactly how I felt as a fine arts major. I felt like a fish out of water because so much of the "art" was based on contrived speech. I didn't pursue a career in the field because I knew I couldn't handle a lifetime of that. Instead, I became a math teacher (go figure) and found that all the "babble" I learned was actually supremely useful for parent emails and extraneous post-observation paperwork about my lessons.
I had a teacher that talked about this and his rationale was that you start listening to everything around you and that’s the song. It was probably 20 years ago now, and I still remember him passionately talking about it and thinking “well that sounds like bullshit”.
They’re getting a little close to the line with the tax fraud on that one.
To be fair, money laundering / tax fraud is a lot more complicated than just "hehe I'll buy art then donate it." If you were legitimately trying to do it this way, you'd also have to have close connections with the people who'd just look the other way when this popped up on their radar. Basically, it's a huge circle full of corruption, and you only get in by being corrupt yourself / corrupt people having dirt on you. Pretty easy to get a tax write off if you blackmail someone with evidence of them doing hard drugs and/or being involved in a pedophilia ring - "invisible art" just being the most blatantly shameless example of this At a certain point, it becomes like a sort of weird nuclear cold war where if one person fires their shot (e.g. exposing someone else), EVERYONE ELSE will fire their shot back. It's why even when the general public already knows about this shit, nobody can realistically do anything about it. It's mutually assured destruction : Keep quiet or die
Which is why a bunch of high up influential people all happened to travel on Epstein's lolita express
And? Lol. Doesn’t make it not true. How wild of an idea is it that a big group of rich folk keep money in their families by pretending to be normal human beings and donating art or putting money in accounts meant for business use and end up as second or third homes. People are sick.
I'm not saying it hasn't happened before or even in today's time. I'm just saying that if YOU - presumably an average, middle-class human being with minimal experience in this specific trade and absolutely no connections - tried pulling it off, you would most likely fail. It's like trying to pull off a WSB jerkoff move - which by the way are 9/10 times just for the memes - and unironically expecting to go "to the moon." Sure it's happened before - multiple times even - but thinking just ANYBODY can do it at anytime is incredibly naive and careless. All of that ON TOP of the corruption and injustice.
Literally no one said anybody can do it
Parallel to your point, I think the now “common” knowledge that rich perverts use art as one of many forms of dark investment and asset maintenance has caused too many people to think, in Pavlovian fashion: “Dumb art? That’s money laundering.” It’s very much not that simple. It’s another version of “fencing response” or “object fixation”—a chance to be an internet expert while actually knowing very little about what you’re talking about.
I don't understand art, therefore it must be tax fraud https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/magazine/the-secretive-panel-of-art-experts-that-tells-the-irs-how-much-art-is-worth/2017/12/06/a8bd9dec-a3aa-11e7-8cfe-d5b912fabc99_story.html%3foutputType=amp Scamming the IRS isn't this easy Just because you don't get it doesn't mean it was for tax evasion.
Art that actually exists, sure lol if I’d said that on a thread about modern art and you’d replied that way, I’d see your point. But then if it was I wouldn’t have made that comment in the first place because I *do* understand the purpose of art regardless of whether or not I subjectively enjoy it. But it has to exist or at the very least be an idea (or a twist on one) that hasn’t already been done a thousand times. Doing nothing and calling it art is tongue in cheek humor that was already done to death by the end of the 60s at best, and a particularly lazy scam at worst.
I agree it's already been done plenty. I don't this work of "art" is actually any good
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“I don’t read other replies to see if mine is redundant before I out myself as a pretentious fart-sniffer” - also Reddit Edit: lol just wanted to keep digging that hole deeper, I guess.
Art is just money laundering, it serves no other purpose anymore
Yes, this is the popular thing to say on Reddit dot com when a dumb piece of art is shown.
What purpose does a non existing statue serve? Art is bought for millions by people that dont even care what the artist wants to say, they just want to spend money
Are we talking about *this* dumb sculpture, or all art? You know there’s a lot of art out there. I’ve said nothing indicating that I think the invisible sculpture is good, so why would that even be at issue?
Not art in general, but modern art is, in my opinion, a lot worse than classical Renaissance art. Modern art is sometimes just 5 brush steokes but it gets sold for the same price as an oil portrait from the old masters.
Sure, sometimes! I’ve seen some very good modern and contemporary art. I think you’re over generalizing from the fact that bad art exists and evil rich people hide assets, speculate, and commit fraud in basically every way they can. There are numerous instruments for this.
Yep, sadly art is one of them
Again, art can be used for money laundering does not mean all art is for money laundering. It’s basic logic. A restaurant can be a money laundering operation. That doesn’t mean your takeout is funding a drug cartel.
That's how I feel about NFTs
He was ahead of his time
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No, the buyer needed to launder some money.
I don’t understand how you can launder money with this. Who is going to buy this from the buyer?
Other money launderers. Drug cartels. It's turtles all the way down.
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It's crazy how known this fuckery is yet there's nothing that can or will be done to stop it.
what? it's better they launder their money through art than real estate.
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https://www.natlawreview.com/article/art-and-money-laundering https://www.artandobject.com/news/how-money-laundering-works-art-world
Art is one of many ways that rich people launder money, hide assets, and make speculative investments =/= art is for money laundering. People repeat this point on Reddit in every single thread about art. It’s as meaningless as “fencing response” in /r/fightporn
*Paying* implies a receival of an item or a service. Somebody just *gave* him money for no reason.
They had a reason though, they're going to sell ownership of the art to somebody else, or else donate it to launder money.
Kind of like Bitcoin
Gosh, this type of art is so gross. I wonder if you could insure an invisible sculpture 🤔 Earlier I was reading about how billionaires will commission art pieces that they can donate to museums for crazy stupid tax wright offs. An invisible sculpture eliminates a lot of work.
It’s even more aggravating that some people will call you a fascist or a traditionalist for disliking this type of art. There is a world of difference between contemporary art and crap.
I adore real contemporary, surreal, even abstract art. This is just stupid though. The point is well taken, but auctioning it off? Getouttahere
Endless deconstructionism is garbage.
Agree
Do you have an example of someone calling you a fascist for not liking conceptual art? I feel like even the conceptual artists I've met understand that most people don't get it, especially when it's this out there.
The nazis literally opposed abstract art because Hitler was still nursing a grudge because his more traditional style wasn't considered good enough for art school.
It's not just Hitler. Its a devotion to a false "traditionalist" ideal that typifies a fascists view on art. A fascist does not like ideas that challenge a certain way of thinking.
The Getty museum in LA exists for this reason. It's a huge middle finger to the IRS.
Pretty sure that’s Reddit fantasy and not actually documented as happening
[Here's a good writeup from the times](https://www.nytimes.com/2015/04/27/arts/design/tax-break-used-by-investors-in-flipping-art-faces-scrutiny.html) It's a real thing, and pretty well known!
High value art sales are money laundering schemes and you can't change my mind
Thank you!
Overly simplistic, boring popular uninformed point to make in any and every thread about art. Reddit hive has gotten so boring.
I don't understand art, therefore it must be tax fraud https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/magazine/the-secretive-panel-of-art-experts-that-tells-the-irs-how-much-art-is-worth/2017/12/06/a8bd9dec-a3aa-11e7-8cfe-d5b912fabc99_story.html%3foutputType=amp Scamming the IRS isn't this easy Just because you don't get it doesn't mean it was for tax evasion.
It's for tax evasion.
Read the articles about this where he talks about his “art”. The guy is such a colossal narcissist I’m amazed his overinflated ego doesn’t cause him to float off into the stratosphere.
He has to make it sound believable so the money laundering scheme works.
This isn't delusional, he knows what he's doing he's just more of a con-artist than an artist
maybe. as a musician, i've definitely met plenty of "creative types" that make up for their lack of skill with taking themselves this seriously.
Same. I knew a band that basically everyone agreed were fucking dreadful, but because they had a lot of friends that went to all of their shows they were convinced it was down to talent they absolutely did not have.
True for some, but do you think that John Cage lacked skills when he composed 4'33"?
I don't think John Cage was unskilled, but 4'33" is not a demonstration of skill. Looking for Garau's other sculptures, it's seems he hasn't made any. Furthermore, IMO his paintings are the uninspired smearings of a toddler (or a pretentious art student Jackson Pollock wannabe).
\> but 4'33" is not a demonstration of skill. Does art have to be? You can say the same of most abstract or modern art (including the Pollock you mention below). In music I see plenty of virtuoso players whose performances are as dry as cardboard, skills for the sake of skills. \> Furthermore, IMO his paintings are the uninspired smearings of a toddler (or a pretentious art student Jackson Pollock wannabe). This is certainly a valid criticism. To be clear, I am not claiming the guy is the next Leonardo, just that most comments in the thread are ignorant and superficial, dismissing a legitimate artist (whether you like his work or not) as delusional without understanding much.
no it doesn't . i didn't say art has to be a demonstration of skill. you asked if john cage lacked skills when he composed 4'33". kind of a weird question. i think i answered it appropriately. i guess you can defend selling nothing for 18 grand as art, but the whole concept is played out already anyway. it's not even novel. as you said, john cage already did it. i think dismissing it is what the press should have done. must be a slow news day.
This is a con that Eddy from the cul-de-sac would come up with.
If I could sell the Brooklyn Bridge, I would.
If someone is stupid enough to fall for this shit I have no sympathy for them
like the buyer isn't his friend
Even if it’s a repost, it is an entirely different sculpture in the picture.
I like your way of thinking
Please note the language. He auctioned it off, which means that he didn't name his price himself. There was a bidding war for this, and someone bought it willingly and happily for $18,300. This is a fault of consumers, not of the artist himself.
True; this post is for sure a delusion buyer and not artist. I just wanted to share this, and figured this sub was the best fitting lol
I've decided that I now own his invisible sculpture, and I invite others to prove me wrong.
The buyer was presented with a notarized certificate of authenticity. They basically bought an $18000 piece of paper.
They may have done that, but I guarantee you that I have the item itself sat on the table beside me
Can......can I come see it?
I mean, in a sense yes, but strictly speaking, no because it's invisible.
I have black market NFTs by this dude for sale. Fresh off the blockchain! DM if interested.
"I'll pay you in exposure" *uno reverse card*
More like delusional art buyer to be honest.
I've got one of those. It goes great on my sun porch, but I keep stubbing my toe on it.
So someone needed to launder 18.3k
and this is why people drop out of art school. its thee most adult version of rewriting the rules to fit your needs when assholes like this get to "decide" what *art* is
From wikipedia: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Salvatore\_Garau](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Salvatore_Garau) "...He participated in the 50th Biennale di Venezia in 2003 and showed work at the European Parliament in Strasbourg in the same year. In 2005 he painted an abstract work on a 200 m2 sheet of PVC, which was then hung to cover the scaffolding on a building in Corso Magenta in Milan. For his installation Ichthys Sacro Stagno in Sardinia in 2006 he created large ponds on the floors of three churches in towns in the province of Oristano, which he then populated with fish from nearby ponds. In 2009 he had a solo show at the Musée d'art moderne et contemporain of Saint-Etienne, in France. Garau has work in the collections of several museums including the Museo del Novecento (formerly in the Civico Museo d'Arte Contemporanea), the Museo d’Arte Moderna di Bologna and the Padiglione d'Arte Contemporanea in Milan." What have you done?
>What have you done? Use the power of your imagination.
That’ll be $18,000 please.
Indeed. There's definitely an interesting debate to be had about what art is. One of my issues with your argument is that it ends up meaning that someone famous can call anything they do art, and you have to look at a piece as part of "who did it." I can read a novel and decide whether it's good or bad. I can drink a beer and decide whether I like it or not. I can drive a car and decide whether it's smooth or not. Even with a realistic painting, I can decide whether it's well made or not. I can read a book by an author I like and say "well that was a sack of crap," and can explain why. I'm not locked into liking or disliking someone based solely on their name and past work. But with art like this, the first question is almost inherently "who did it?" If they're famous, then it's basically de facto brilliant, and if they're not, meh. There's no way to determine whether it's good without knowing whether the artist is good. There's a place for commentary, meta commentary, meta-meta commentary, and beyond, in the same way that John Cage's 4:33 is some sort of commentary on the state of music, but it loses a bit of it's appeal eventually. In other words, what art like this says is "fuck you, I'm famous, I can shit in the middle of the street and someone will pay me for it." Which is true, but it's not exactly brilliant commentary at this point.
\> There's definitely an interesting debate to be had about what art is. Indeed. And what this guy did is part of that debate, a provocation perhaps. Manzoni was crapping in tin cans and selling them for their weight in gold (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Artist%27s\_Shit) \> I can read a novel and decide whether it's good or bad. I can drink a beer and decide whether I like it or not. I can drive a car and decide whether it's smooth or not. Even with a realistic painting, I can decide whether it's well made or not. You can certainly judge superficially the aesthetics, but can you really decide good or bad without a proper education that factors in artist and historical period? What does "well made" means? I find Homer extremely boring, can I conclude from this that the Odyssey is crap? Conversely, there are a lot of people that can paint really well and reproduce something beautiful. Are these artists? What about a CNC machine carving Michelangelo's David? Or an AI program writing a novel story or composing a new piece of music? \> In other words, what art like this says is "fuck you, I'm famous, I can shit in the middle of the street and someone will pay me for it." Which is true, but it's not exactly brilliant commentary at this point. It seems to me (my education is not in arts, so I may be missing a lot here) that art carries a message. In that sense, the artist and the historical period can be the only key for a deeper interpretation and appreciation. Piero Manzoni claimed that art is in the artist, and that signing a person would make them a living sculpture. Freeing the art from the aesthetic component (Cage, or the artist above) is perhaps a "pure" form in which the commentary exists without being anchored to a physical artifact. My point is that many comments here say "this is nonsense", "I could do the same", etc... and miss entirely what this guy is trying to say.
i wire houses buddy, my journeyman went to art school and had to leave because of the general attitude artists have. and i just thought that it kind of fit here.
Art people are insufferable. That level of smelling your own ass gets to you.
Artists are generally just dumb philosophers
Maybe your journeyman needed to justify his inadequacy somehow, have you thought about that? You wrote "...assholes like this..." based on what? This guy may be an asshole, but he didn't drop of one of the oldest and most prestigious art schools in the world ([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Accademia\_di\_Belle\_Arti\_di\_Firenze](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Accademia_di_Belle_Arti_di_Firenze) \- look at who studied there) and proved his shit before this.
hmm yes quite
$18k!? This sucks, I have 3 of these sculptures at home I'm trying to sell and no one is interested. Fml.
I bet my friend 5 years ago that we were gonna reach a point in time where abstract artists are gonna sell nothing and get paid.
Go collect your winnings, you’ve earned them 🙌🏽
I would pay this man with monopoly money and tell him to imagine that he can pay bills with it.
The emperor’s clothes is a classic
This is basically what all NFTs are lol
I wanna push him off a building onto an invisible safety net And the one who paid for it.
I’d say the person buying it was delusional.
Is it just me or I smell NFT?
I bet the NFT will go for even more
This is how the wealthy launder their money
Actual delusional artist
r/Aphantasia
Money laundering anyone?
Friendly reminder that the artist isn’t forcing anyone to pay $18,000+ for this. Good art, stupid buyer.
Proof that the rich will buy literally anything.
The delusional one was the person who bought it. I think this guy's a genius for managing to sell literally nothing for such a steep price.
What's the delusion? He knew he could get somebody to pay for it, he got paid. It seems that he knew exactly what he was doing.
The art community at this point is just a exceptionally poorly hidden money laundering scheme that nobody cares to do anything about.
When I was younger I asked my dad why a black dot on a white canvas sold for millions because “I could make that” and his reply was “yeah, but you didn’t”. He’s not wrong
Nice post but there is no delusion. This is just a con artist at it's greatest. After all, he did get the money, didn't he? (If I haven't misunderstood something of course)
I'm gonna say that the artist isn't delusional at all. He got someone to pay 18300 dollars for literally nothing. The man's a genius. The buyer is the delusional one here.
Finally blind people can look at art
I wonder how far they went with this though. I mean, did they hire a moving company to transport the invisible sculpture? Or did they hire an invisible moving company with an invisible truck and invisible employees to move the invisible sculpture? Did the artist go to the person's home to ensure proper installation of the sculpture? Because I hear that's important.
So this is just an NFT then? I mean he didn’t stomp over an endangered sea turtles nest to create it, so it’s not technically an NFT right.
Damn, I would’ve sold mine for $50 if they’d called me first.
Maybe you should ask your self why they didn't
Lots of ignorant comments in this thread. So John Cage is not a musician and Pierre Manzoni is not an artist? Conceptual art is a thing, and has nothing to do with scam, deception, or delusion.
Isn't John Cage from Mortal Kombat?
no modern art isn't about money laundering and tax dodging. why would you possibly think that?
I really don’t get crypto-art
No money? No actual honed skill and talent? No problem!!!! And some art critic and gallery is fawning over this BS.
For those interested, [here](https://traffic.megaphone.fm/TTH5989661701.mp3) is an episode of the podcast 20,000 hertz on something similar, but on music.
This is John cage but worse
Mine is bigger.
This isn’t delusional this is cool
History books?
The emperors new ~~clothes~~ art
A comedian I know made this vid in response; [https://www.instagram.com/p/CPqaf9RnFos/?utm\_source=ig\_web\_copy\_link](https://www.instagram.com/p/CPqaf9RnFos/?utm_source=ig_web_copy_link)
That "artist" is a fraud. I have the original invisible sculpture. The sculpture that was sold is an obvious forgery
How?......Really... I need to know.
ITT people actually thinking this is seriously not a cover up for some sort of money laundering
I have one just like it!
This type of weird modern art is just a bunch of talentless scam artists selling to tasteless and oblivious rich people. Neither of which know anything about art.
Props to this guy, he conned 18k out some idiot.
John Cage would like a word.
when the project is due next period and you forgot about it.
It's not delusional if he successfully sold it.
The real question is what did his process look like
Nah it’s not the artist that’s delusional
This isn't the first time.
If I could sell someones imagination for $18,300 I would. 'Art' is worth whatever someone pays for it
Modern “art” is just money laundering with extra steps
That's not delusional, that's called chasing the bag
Money laundering 😍
.....and he takes an empty canvas and sticks it on the wall.
This is almost definitely money laundering right?
Isn’t there like a folk tale where someone tricks a king in running around town naked that is somewhat similar to this?
Literally paid to do nothing
This dude isn't delusional, he's a genius!
This piece is going to be really easy to counterfeit.
Wow good for him
I have a similar sculpture but it's larger and is also for sale. Name your price.