I would like to think the truly right-wing-- in it's best sense-- attitude would be an appreciation for the ability to openly voice these opinions and the ability for people to openly disagree with you. If you're getting downvoted by individuals for your criticism of a private opera house's policies, that's a win for personal liberties, not an indictment of them.

I don't mean to strawman, but it seems like you're advocating for the exact opposite of what you claim. You want an authority to step in and tell these people downvoting you that they can't have their opinions? You want your viewpoints to have a certain number of mandated agreements?

I actually agree that the grunginess of Bushwick can be obnoxious and frankly gross a lot of the time, but the thought of hanging out with a bunch of cishet normies in an expensive SoHo club is anathema to why I would even go out in the first place.

A blind appeal to "rule of law" is the one argument that I think is stupid on its face. Law as the sole moral barometer will always result in marginalization and injustice. It is the function of protest, civil disobedience, and yes, sometimes violence, to shape law as a function of morality.

In other words, of course we need healthcare reform but literally killing healthcare leaders is a path to anarchy, not reform.

Those who beg for war usually get more war than they wanted.

Yes? Art has been made for at least 17,000 years, it is a fundamental expression of human consciousness. This is like asking if symbolic thinking or language is more important than IT. Yes. Obviously. The sum of all IT work is a blip compared to the sum total of human expression across our species's existence.

You're right, if IT hadn't been present during the last pandemic, we would have been much worse off. But even if we had apocalyptic human collapse and reverted to a pre-historic hunter-gatherer existence with primitive technologies... people would still be making art.

But that is not an argument for art doing more for the world, right now, than the IT industry. In fact, it is the latter that takes art and makes it accessible on a scale that was impossible decades ago. Accessible to the masses, understandable to anyone, and so on. Literature is art. And we now have every piece of human literature at our fingertips. And not just us, I mean almost any human being, including the poorest of the poor. You should look at the impact technology is having in the less fortunate parts of the world - from health care, to supplies delivery, clean water, education, access to information, and so on.

It's one thing to consider art important. It's another to put it ahead in "world impact" than technology.

You can have whatever subjective response to art you'd like, but whether your response should be considered as serious insight and commentary into the structure, context, and significance of that art depends on how much time you've spent studying the field and honing your ability to read artworks.

If the only music someone listens to is top 40, I don't think I care very much what they have to say about Bartok. If the only paintings someone is familiar with are the Mona Lisa and Van Gogh, they're not qualified to speak about an Imhof painting. Someone wearing Walmart doesn't have anything interesting to say about Demna. You get the idea.

I think the common response to this is that it is elitist and exclusionary... But we are elitist and exclusionary in most other fields too. Nobody would listen to the engineering opinions of someone who can't name a programming language. Art is more experiential, sure, but not all experience or cognition that arise from experiences is of equal insight.

Firstly, lots and lots of people use government-engineer built apps. I pay for the products of government engineering contracts every time I tap my phone to enter the subway. Car commuters use it every time their plate is scanned to cross a government-built bridge. Often the same companies that carry out government, tax-payer funded contracts are also taking on contracts in the open market.

Governments fund non-profits like art museums because these institutions, while existing within the free market, provide a public good that most agree ought to be as accessible as possible. To that end, the non-profit model allows for museums to guide themselves based on an ethical mission (usually having to do with providing accessible art and culture) rather than a profit-driven market strategy. They are still private, so the board has autonomy from government oversight, but they have tax structures and funding structures that position them as utilities rather than business ventures.

Museums, like for-profit ventures, still compete for funding, they still compete for relevance and cultural capital, and they are still beholden to providing a service that people care about. Fantasizing about slashing government budgets doesn't really make sense here. The government is taking money from people to fund museums because if we all pay $100 a year to arts funding in our taxes, we get to go see sculptures from 2500 years ago in a palatial building attached to a giant park for free... Without group buy in, that same experience might be stratified to only the very wealthy.

You seem to think it is politicians deciding what art people see. In reality, it is arts experts pitching the relevance of their expertise to secure funding and outputting culturally significant material to justify their existence in the same way software engineers make themselves appealing for government contracts.

Someone on this thread likened it to watching a boxing match and then complaining that they aren't using their legs. This is a good comparison. I would also compare it to having only eaten chicken nuggets your whole life and then complaining that a serving of foie gras isn't filling enough.

Yes, the foie gras isn't really filling, the boxers aren't using their legs, and the art doesn't look like real life. But your judgement is based on ignorance. You lack the vocabulary to describe what you're seeing-- but more than that, you lack the eye to even see it in the first place. And instead of conceding that you just don't really know what you're talking about, you double down and insist that you're actually privy to some profound truth about art. It can't be that the countless Art History PhDs, renowned critics, museum collections, and artists who see the relevance of Warhol based on years of study and consideration are correct. No, your perspective is greater because you... were dragged to a museum one time and didn't really pay attention? Because you have delusions about "effort" and the difficulty of trompe l'oeil? For fuck's sake, read a book.

Sorry, you can't get me to shut up through ad hominem and appeals to authority. You have to actually convince me I'm wrong. Argue your point or don't bother; you're just wasting your time otherwise.

Multiple commenters have used pathos and ethos to argue with you because your understanding is so rudimentary and your ignorance so great that to argue the nature of art with you would be like trying to teach algebra to an ape. You cannot comprehend an actual argument from your starting point.

I for one don’t really like Warhol. I’m a spurned formalist along the likes of Greenberg and Fried, and I think the true inheritor of post-modernist conceptualism lies with Minimalists like Serra, Morris, Smithson, etc. I’m not convinced by Baudrillard, and I think the strongest Warhol is his early and late periods where he was much more concerned with illustration and surface treatment, respectively. I am still not such an uneducated simpleton so as to make the claim that Warhol isn’t art or worthy of art historical study. -This- is what an argument against Warhol looks like. Demonstrated knowledge of art history, methodology, and reasoning. You are claiming people aren’t engaging with you but you lack the fundamental skills to be engaged with. Again, this is like arguing mathematical proofs with someone who can’t multiply two numbers. Read a book!

No. Obviously I don't have the same respect for all fields.

>-This- is what an argument against Warhol looks like. Demonstrated knowledge of art history, methodology, and reasoning.

See, you're misunderstanding. You expressed an idea in the form of an argument that might convince someone educated the same way you are, of its truth. I simply made an appreciation and then explained how I got to it. It was never meant to be convincing, it was just meant to be out there. And all I got were a bunch of people who said I shouldn't say that, or I shouldn't look at it that way, yet could offer no reason why I shouldn't say that, or why I shouldn't do that. You're doing it, too; you're just telling me to read a book. I'm not going to read a book on art history. I don't have the inclination or time, and my appreciation of art doesn't work like that the way it does for you. I have nothing to gain from reading a book on art, and much to lose. You're the one who thinks I shouldn't be saying the things I'm saying, convince me I shouldn't.

WHY am I wrong in approaching the subject in this manner? Because so far the only problem I see is that it ruffles the feathers of people with art degrees. If that really is the only reason then I simply do not care.

You’re asking me to justify to you why one shouldn’t flap their mouth about things they don’t know anything about and then stand by their willful ignorance when confronted by domain experts? You want me to convince you that it’s not ok to just spout bullshit and insist that it’s a valid position to hold irrespective of knowledge, methods, accuracy, reasoning, logic, research, justification, experience, etc etc? Lmfao. You’re delusional.

You're not entitled to free education from us, particularly - against your will ("convince me"), when there are many resources out there available to you.

We can point out why your opinions are bad (they are grounded in too little knowledge of what you're opining on), we can point out where to get more knowledge.

If you want to learn, you will.

The saddest thing here is not even arrogance, but lack of curiosity.

The difference is that I'm not asking you to not write stupid things, but you ask me to explain things to you.

>So you want something out of me

That would be projection. You want something out of other people (an explanation), whereas we want you to get something for yourself.

We get absolutely nothing if you learn more about the subject you opine on. You will.

>I can simply tell you to piss off.

You certainly can. You're not in the right forum for that though.

I did write an explanation up the thread - long enough to not fit into the limits of a single comment on HN (a hilarious limitation for 2024, but I digress).

Please read it.

PR was not how tech overcame that. It was charismatic founders (who often broke the rules of PR at the time) and massive break-throughs in adoption by winning customers over directly.

It’s honestly amusing that so many believe that marketers were the reason users decided to love tech. By and large, market-speak was the anti-thesis of what would win over the early adopters of tech. Like most sea change movements, tech was very punk at the start. To be tech was to stand against the corporate types who milked people for money without offering real value.

Doesn’t feel like it today, but most of the people I know in tech are still coming from a place of wanting to build things of genuine value, usefulness, and helpfulness. Those intentions may not be enough, but there’s not much to be gained in discounting them either.

>To be tech was to stand against the corporate types who milked people for money without offering real value.

Positioning yourself as punk, as pro-consumer, as an alternative to the corporate hegemony... This was all carefully developed by marketers and brand strategists to grow their vision of selling tech. You are not immune to propaganda, it was not some granola revolution that gave the people iPhones. And that's ok! It's ok to admit that marketing is an important force that should be leveraged for change and innovation.

You think iPhones are a superior product... Why? Other phones have more RAM, better screens, more capable OS. An iPhone is designed in response to market demands-- it is the vision of Apple to anticipate what users will want, and to show users what phones can be.

So many Apple billboards around New York show kids or families, the "memories" function of the iOS Photos app is designed to pull from forgotten pictures and tug on your heartstrings. Part of this is Apple marketing responding to a demographic of tech-consuming people becoming parents or grandparents... But it is also Apple showing us what tech is good for. It's a vision of compassionate technology that will hopefully sell more iPhones while also structuring the narrative of what an iPhone is. An iPhone is a superior product not because it has the best tech specs or the best combination of components. An iPhone is the superior product because the future of technology can be compassionate, and Apple wants to position themselves there. This is a marketing strategy, and it is likely why you associate iPhones with quality and superiority.

We cannot immediately see all possible uses and promises of technology, no matter how tech-literate we think we are. It takes institutional vision (in many cases a function of market/brand strategy) to figure out what makes a good product and how we can show people that our product fulfills that idea.

iPhones are extremely popular around the world and in 99% of those places, the people have little or no interaction with Apple billboards or marketing. Not everyone is a family in New York City, or even speaks English.

You’d have more of a point if you said Apple aims to portray a premium brand and therefore they have this reputation globally because of marketing, but even then, that doesn’t last for long if the products themselves don’t have a good reputation.

The majority of brand management work is not material that is shown to the public, it is strategic decision making about how to position a brand and control it's reputation across markets. This includes yuppies in NYC and teenagers in Southeast Asia. The cultural positioning of Apple is a function of western hegemony and global memetics. An Eastern European housewife that wants an iPhone doesn't want it because she's done the tech research to understand that it is the most reliable and technically sound product, she wants it because Apple has taken great care to maintain their image through brand strategy. She probably sees iPhones on social media, in the hands of celebrities, the nicest store in her city is the new Apple outpost, they're teaching classes on apps and she wants to have the experience that she sees other iPhone users having.

Your misunderstanding is a larger trend in the tech space of people overvaluing "utility" instead of recognizing that the driving forces of any industry-- not just tech-- cannot be reduced to a spec sheet.

You really don’t seem to understand how widespread Apple is, and instead are intent on portraying yourself as some kind of expert that puts down others. Their popularity isn’t merely due to some brand strategy plan, as their products are practically a baseline of modern life at this point.

I didn’t say anything about “utility” I said their products were higher quality, which they are. Especially on the design/UI front. People buy them because the competition simply isn’t as good, among other social reasons. A mastermind branding plan is not really that relevant when you’re already as widespread as they are. Nothing I wrote has anything to do with customers doing tech research.

So just to reiterate and wrap up this conversation: no, Apple is not widely used because their branding team crafted a smart campaign for every corner of the globe. They are widespread because they’ve been making solid products for a long time, people use them, and then form an impression that they’re quality products. All the advertising and celebrity sponsorships and everything else are dressing at best.

This is a unique situation and if you were talking about anyone other than Apple, I’d agree with you that the market positioning / PR is key, but in this instance it’s simply not the case.

0. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apple_Store#Countries_and_regi...

You just think your opinion of something is the obvious truth and anyone not seeing it is blind.

Wow. Don't you see the problem with selling something that doesn't exist? There's a thin line between making up a story to make people buy a product, and straight up scamming people with a nonexistent product. Elizabeth Holmes was a genius marketer, but is that really somebody you want to idealize?

Theranos is an example of a failed project through and through, but even something unarguably successful like the iPhone was built through market strategizing-- not just technical engineering. Identifying what consumers wanted, conveying that vision, shaping a compelling brand, these are all things that can easily be written off as "fake" by people who cannot buy into the vision, but when done well they are just as important as the technical innovations.

Funny. I thought a marketer's job is helping companies sell their product, not selling a nonexistent product based on a vision. The individuals and companies doing the latter are known as grifters, snake oil salesmen and scammers.

The iPhone succeeded because it was a fantastic product released at the right moment in history. Apple saw a major gap in the market, and they filled it brilliantly. No amount of marketing would've made the iPhone a success if it wasn't an outstanding product on its own right. Apple embellished its capabilities with its usual marketing tactics, but the product was real, and people wanted it regardless.

What you're advocating for is exactly what Theranos did. Market the product first even if it doesn't exist yet, and the product will miraculously materialize from that vision. This is known as fraud, and is what rightfully landed its CEO in prison.

art historical texts are usually much more concerned with close reading of artworks to establish syncretic pathways of artistic convention. art writers are usually unconcerned with null hypothesis and burden of proof. the authors here had no real claim about history or any interesting reading of artwork. i couldn't imagine something like this being disseminated in an arts journal or publication-- there just isn't enough time spent with the methods of art history, i.e close readings of the examples presented, primary source inclusion, historiographic narrative, formal analysis, etc.

i wish i could provide a counterexample, but my work is on american conceptual sculpture, not renaissance art. i think the last very good text i read on the renaissance was james hall's book on michelangelo's anatomy published some years ago.