this post was submitted on 15 May 2024
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I’m not going to say it’s not “art,” but this is basically the level of sophistication that parents get from their kid to hang in their diner. If this was actually painted by anyone who wasn’t the ex-president, it wouldn’t be noticed by anyone, much less exhibited.
Its defiantly above the level of well done sweety I'll hang it on the fridge here.
Why go to so much effort to discredit an artwork just cos u dislike the creator? Also when was the last time u listened to Michael Jackson?
I didn’t say “hang it on my fridge,” I said “hang it in my restaurant.” It’s not like a five year old, but it’s like a high school student. You can look at his paintings online and see how he developed over time.
I’m not discrediting it - I’m saying it doesn’t have great vision, great technique, or innovation. He’s been doing this for ten years, and he is still at the level of “That’s great! Keep practicing!”
It’s fine though. Painting is a great hobby. I don’t have a problem with him painting, and I don’t have a problem if his political loyalists want to imbue them with some value. I read a fun article from about a decade ago intentionally overanalyzing his shower-selfie painting.
What I am saying is that there is nothing special about his paintings except the fact that he’s the one who painted them. I’m not comparing W to Hitler, but Hitler’s paintings were also pretty bad, and the only reason why anyone looks at them today is because they were painted by Hitler.
Sure its nothing special but its still interesting to see how a man if such influence expresses themselves.
And I'd disagree some of Hitlers painting have legitimate artistic merit.
Thats was my point exactly. Michael Jackson has a lot of good music, Kevin Spacey's Keyser Söze is an amazing character... You can and I think should separate man from art.
I have no idea where the disconnect is. I don’t care that the paintings are by W, I’m pointing out that they’re amateurish and that if they weren’t by W they wouldn’t be exhibited. It has zero to do with my artistic judgement being informed by knowing the artist.
I don’t actually listen to MJ very often, although I do enjoy his music and appreciate his contributions to both music and dance. I do tend to avoid work by people like Weinstein, Spacey, and Joanne Rowling because I would prefer not to contribute even incrementally to their income or the perception of public support.
But in particular, as someone who does not believe in free will, I don’t believe in the idea of culpability. I believe that if you physically recreated W’s brain in perfect detail and put it into someone else, you’d get the exact same outputs to the exact same inputs. Even if you want to include some kind of randomness from quantum effects, that doesn’t make for free will, it’s just randomness. That’s the opposite of free will.
So although it might be a natural reaction from me to hate W or Trump or Hitler, I try to remind myself that it’s all neurophysiology and neurochemistry (plus other aspects of physiology) as informed by factors such as learning and genetics.I can pretty much guarantee that, were we to do neuroimaging on Trump’s brain, we’d find a hypertrophic amygdala and a hypotrophic prefrontal cortex. Simplifying a bit, you can think of those as the primitive fear center and the rational consideration parts of the brain. No one with that kind of neuroanatomy is going to behave in a rational and controlled manner, especially under stress.
I might hate the harm they cause and want to prevent it, but there’s no “self” inside of them for me to hate.
Agree but art is subjective. He is a nepo baby to begin with, and a white straight rich man, so does he have more oportunity for exposure?! For sure! But again that does not devalue art. Maybe for someone this is good enough, idk
To be clear, I explicitly stated that I wasn’t saying it’s not art. It is art, and I am all for people embracing their creativity. I think more people should be painting/sculpting/playing music/etc., especially in retirement. What I’m saying is that as much as someone might get a kick out of playing Wonderwall doesn’t mean they should be getting a public concert at Epcot.
Although if I was in the neighborhood I’d probably pay $15 to see Dick Cheney play a self-taught version of Wonderwall if he was also singing.