Sorry, I Just Don't Get It.

[warren]

daimyo: Careful now! You are starting to carry on two party, philosophical conversations with yourself. That has to be a sign of something.

 

[maxx]

I agree, Sea Captain. End of thread.

 

[sablebrush52]

I've just started reading this thread, having noticed that it has grown to monumental proportions. I shall enjoy perusing it, but one of the early posts begs an answer, and if this has already been addressed, my apologies.

daimyo:
If artists themselves are no more than puppets what does that make the billions of appreciators. The vast majority of master painters have long been dead, something tells me their corpses care little what their works sell for. 99.9% of those who enjoy paintings will never own an original by anyone of note. When and if a painter finally succeeds in selling canvases for a livable wage he or she has usually invested their whole life to that point. The artists I know live job to job, giving their all with little hope of recognition in a world more than willing to underpay and not credit them.
You illustrate my point perfectly. What about a painting makes it worth 20 million dollars when millions of other artists are producing work of no lesser quality?
daimyo:
No one need like the pipe or even Werner's work but to claim his fame and earned price point is due to rich people wishing to imitate one another is asinine.
"Keeping up with the Joneses" is ludicrous behaviour for sure, but I'm not so sure what to think of the suggestion that a certain segment of the population is immune to it.

If you get his newsletter, you can read Maxim Engel write a great many words about how fickle the high end pipe market is. How the Chinese refuse to buy locally made pipes, how some years pipes from one country are all the rage and other years the same pipes won't budge from his shelves.
The comparison between 20 million dollar paintings and high end pipes may not actually be all that far off. It's a more widespread model for sure, one person buying one artist's painting for 20 million dollars will forever send the prices of everything that person does into the stratosphere. The same principles apply in that some makers get valued more highly than others based simply on the whims of "the market", and if you can tell me (or more importantly Maxim) why it ignores some people and not others, I'm sure that information would be worth a lot of money.

I'll reiterate, there's no questioning the quality of the pipes or the pipemakers, but how some become so consistently sought after is a great mystery.

Simple answer for some, not all, but a significant portion of, the gazillion dollar high end art market:
Significant tax credits when the billion dollar picture of soiled tennis shoes is donated to a public institution.
As one of the very few artists who has made a pretty good living from painting pictures for longer than some of you have been sentient on the planet, I can tell you that a lot goes on that has nothing whatsoever to do with loving art. At the high end, much of the activity in the art world revolves around art as a business commodity. Sometimes, artwork is priced in the stratosphere because it is useful for it to be so priced.

 

[dustmite]

Love it or hate it, this thread proves the intrinsic value of the pipe as art. Four pages devoted to something that looks like a kindergarten student drew makes a great statement on the power of art over humanity.

 

[maxx]

Wir müssen wissen

Wir werden wissen

- David Hilbert, mathematician

 

[edgreen]

The Tao that can be spoken is not the eternal Tao

The name that can be named is not the eternal name

The nameless is the origin of Heaven and Earth

The named is the mother of myriad things

Thus, constantly without desire, one observes its essence

Constantly with desire, one observes its manifestations

These two emerge together but differ in name

The unity is said to be the mystery

Mystery of mysteries, the door to all wonders
Chapter 2
When the world knows beauty as beauty, ugliness arises

When it knows good as good, evil arises

Thus being and non-being produce each other

Difficult and easy bring about each other

Long and short reveal each other

High and low support each other

Music and voice harmonize each other

Front and back follow each other

Therefore the sages:

Manage the work of detached actions

Conduct the teaching of no words

They work with myriad things but do not control

They create but do not possess

 

[sablebrush52]

The Tao that can be spoken is not the eternal Tao

The name that can be named is not the eternal name

The nameless is the origin of Heaven and Earth

The named is the mother of myriad things

Thus, constantly without desire, one observes its essence

Constantly with desire, one observes its manifestations

These two emerge together but differ in name

The unity is said to be the mystery

Mystery of mysteries, the door to all wonders
Chapter 2
When the world knows beauty as beauty, ugliness arises

When it knows good as good, evil arises

Thus being and non-being produce each other

Difficult and easy bring about each other

Long and short reveal each other

High and low support each other

Music and voice harmonize each other

Front and back follow each other

Therefore the sages:

Manage the work of detached actions

Conduct the teaching of no words

They work with myriad things but do not control

They create but do not possess

So, it's like Abbot and Costello.

 

[brian64]

At the high end, much of the activity in the art world revolves around art as a business commodity. Sometimes, artwork is priced in the stratosphere because it is useful for it to be so priced.

More true now than ever before...because such a vast amount of wealth has accumulated into such a tiny percentage of the population. It's really more about the value of the currency than the value of the art/collectible. The high-end collectibles market has gone into the stratosphere in recent years due to that tiny percentage attempting to convert digital currency into tangible items while the currency is still perceived as having value.

 

[edgreen]

The first time I saw the proof of the square root of 2 being irrational it opened a gate for me in understanding how our minds work. We are binary beings. We invented computers in our own image in that way. Billions of little "it is" or "it isn't" from data from our sensory organs, which are our only inputs. And the gloriously huge number of permutations and combinations that follow, making an amazingly diverse set of individuals to populate the planet at any one time. Mathematics and the Tao have fed my brain and soul for the 40 years since.
I have just read the three page definition of pass interference in the current NFL rulebook. It spells out what it is and what it isn't, yet on the field it certainly becomes really subjective. The rule for too many men on the field (What happens when there are female players in the NFL?) is one sentence and in practice is certainly objective. As assigned ref counts.

Which leaves me to believe that the fault of trying to make the subjective into objective is a problem of language. Language is only one aspect of our thoughts. Beethoven said there had to be music because language cannot convey all the meanings, thoughts and feelings about our universe and we had to come to some way to express this. Maybe that's a good definition of art. That which expresses beyond language.

 

[daimyo]

Wir müssen wissen

Wir werden wissen

Truly that is one of the beauties of science but that does not mean that many questions will not be answered. Science grows exponentially with our technology and has expanded at a rate that we could not have predicted. Science may very well answer some questions previously relegated to philosophy. Only time will tell is we will have chance before the massive meat grinder of a universe we seem to live in, ends us.

 

[seacaptain]

I'll just leave this here.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lNI07egoefc