The irony here is that if you reduce art to its most utilitarian "purpose" -- "A painting is for hanging on the wall to make a room look nice" -- then one of Rothko's color fields obviously *does* do that, from an interior design standpoint, much better than classical artwork https://twitter.com/NMamatas/status/1382130467990753282

Rothko's Orange, Red, Yellow is nice and bright and would really liven up your living room to walk past every day, it's quite aesthetically pleasing

Compare, say, Bosch's Garden of Earthly Delights, which everyone who wants to start this fight seems to agree is "real art"

Would you want this staring at you while you eat breakfast

Reducing Rothko to mere interior design is, arguably, taking the piss out of him, although Warhol would say it's all well and good to take the piss out of anybody this way

But I do think there's a deeper point -- people rarely have a real defense for normative claims here

Like, it's actually pretty rare for people to really try to make the case that modern art "isn't real art" because "I, for one, do not enjoy looking at it"

They make the case based on *effort* and *skill*, like it's some kind of contest with a prize

If that's what art is to you, evoking an impressed response to a display of pure technical skill, applauding a party trick - "I painted this blindfolded with my brush held between my toes!" "I played this guitar solo with my pick held between my teeth!" - then hey good for you

But like

I personally don't care

"What evidence do you have that Rothko was as skilled at figure drawing as one of the old masters"

Who actually gives a shit

What's funny is that we've had this debate in popular music so many times

Punk and grunge and lo-fi and whatnot all emerging as this response to obnoxious musicians trying to show off virtuosity

"Stop trying to get laid by showing off your Dex score and just play the song"

It's why the next step after Abstract Expressionism was Pop Art - "Anything a person made that makes other people feel something 'counts', even if it was for a commercial"

I mean you know the old masters will disappoint you if you think of them as dogs playing tricks

Most of the Sistine Chapel was actually physically painted by apprentices, etc

The big "exposé" that the camera obscura was a vital tool for the Renaissance masters when painting landscapes

That's right, snobs, they fucking TRACED PHOTOS

They hadn't invented film, yes, but they'd sit in a little dark room (a "camera") and just put a piece of paper on the wall and trace the image that came through the pinhole

Like a hack on DeviantArt

(As always the correct answer to "What tools should a great artist be allowed to use" is "Whatever the hell works"

Stop trying to see how the sausage is made and get out of the way of the hungry customers)

Anyway what strikes me about people policing "real art" is they're trying to impose Marx's labor theory of value on the art market, which is adorable

Especially because a lot of these people consider themselves right-wing capitalists

"I don't object to you thinking a Rothko print is a nice thing to put on your wall

I object to the idea that he deserved six figures for the original painting at auction"

Well sheesh why is that any of your business

"I simply do not accept that Rothko's painting can be worth more than a detailed realistic portrait, the amount of effort isn't comparable"

Well gosh dude I could put EVEN MORE effort into a work of art than your favorite portrait painter and get paid NOTHING for it

People spend their ENTIRE LIVES on works of art that no one will ever pay them for because no one wants them

Is that unjust, somehow? Does everyone who puts effort into anything deserve payment for that effort even if it's not of benefit to anyone else

They're so close to stumbling on Nozick's "Wilt Chamberlain" problem, that capitalism will always be perverse and silly all over the place

Do pro athletes deserve to get paid 10,000x a teacher's salary to play a game? Is their signature on a ball objectively worth $5,000?

People get so lost in the weeds about how rare athletes' physical abilities are and how painful their lives are and how high the risk of injury

But that's obviously missing the point

Nobody took a vote that NBA players should make that much because their lives suck

They get paid that much because people really really enjoy watching basketball games, and pay a lot of money for that privilege, and the players demand they get a big chunk of that or else they won't play

That's it

Welcome to markets 101

Don't like it, rebuild all of society on a different system

Until then don't come complaining to me about the one part that annoys you because you don't share the customers' tastes

(Talking about art and music, there's this one guy who can make his hands make that farting noise by pressing his palms together and he can do it with enough fine control to play recognizable tunes)

(This is an EXTREMELY rare skill, it's estimated that there are less than a dozen "manualists" in the world who can reliably reproduce sounds this way, and he's the best at what he does

AFAIK all he has is a middle-tier YouTube channel)

(And you know, before the Internet he wouldn't have that

The rarity and difficulty of what you do really is not the point and doesn't matter, the ONLY thing that matters is how much people like it)