It looks like the cracks are same on all 4 sheets. That is amazing. Their are only 4 pictures though. I want to see them more closely.
Edit: while looking for more photos found more work here. The 3D effect by layering sheets is so cool. https://aurum.gallery/simon-berger/ I like the sphere more than the skull.
Edit: Found some more pictures of those sheets with same cracks in his Instagram https://www.instagram.com/p/C_34-G0K-Qm/?igsh=MWtzY2FydWQxa2...
https://museemagazine.com/features/2018/10/15/walead-beshty-...
For better or worse, he’s mostly know in the “street/urban art” world (which is much bigger than graffiti). And one of the features of a lot of the art in that scene is high technical mastery paired with “low” / populist motifs and composition.
Seen up close these works are really quite amazing, and I respect the artist choosing to make the things that can make him a living. Even Brice Marden, at some point, just kept making those trademark squiggles and cashing those checks.
That's an interesting distinction. I hadn't really noticed that but it makes a lot of sense.
I suppose Banksy would be close to the crossover point between those two worlds? The ideas and the chutzpah are the main attraction, but generally 'low' populist motifs, without high technical mastery. Someone you could either look up to or sneer down on from either side.
As clever as his art is, I think he's still very much an outsider in the capital-W Art World, which for his part he's often trying to prank. (Which they richly deserve, see Exit Through the Gift Shop.)
Things like the self-destroying painting were high-concept but also completely staged. For another artist getting rich off his contempt for the Art Market, but solidly on the Art World side of the fence, see Maurizio Cattelan.
One person with a foot in both worlds is Alex Face but he's mostly known in South-East Asia. I have a feeling it'd be easier to find examples in Asia than in the West.
Interesting to consider how different mediums are mechanically reproducible to varying degrees as AI and automation grow more capable.
Technique is undoubtedly interesting, but content....
Not to dismiss the rest of the world, but my focus was on the western side, not so sure how it goes in other parts of the world.
I think this is probably the best idiomatic example of the type of story that I think belongs on HN that I've seen in quite some time.
I'm serious. The world is rife with things the "don't seem like a big deal" only in retrospect, when people downplay innovations as "no big deal/anyone can do that" when something comes on the scene that a lot of people connect with.
Heck, I feel like your response is the art equivalent of this top comment on the original Dropbox Show HN submission by Drew Houston:
> For a Linux user, you can already build such a system yourself quite trivially by getting an FTP account, mounting it locally with curlftpfs, and then using SVN or CVS on the mounted filesystem. From Windows or Mac, this FTP account could be accessed through built-in software.
The artist in question is presumably not raising VC money, so concerns about long-term viability of the niche if other artists start imitating the style probably don't apply. (Maybe it's even the reverse situation, where increased production of cracked-glass art raises the profile of the trailblazer and increases the demand for "originals.")
This is never a good question. It doesn't take much imagination to substitute X in "Why didn't you come up with X first?" with something of no value. Obviously, if someone finds something to be of no value, then they would not have come up with it, would they. Or at least they would not have pursued it.
Rather, one must give reasons for believing something has value. (And I seriously doubt this is "new", though novelty is itself irrelevant. Valueless things can be "novel", too.)
IMO, this glass technique is maybe interesting, but it is also sort of gimmicky, at least as presented.
This is the first time I’ve seen the language of tier lists applied to art. Feels very weird/of a consumerist mindset.
Any serious artist would respect technical competency. I guess that says a lot about your credentials “as an artist”.
--https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
> While interesting […]
“On-Topic: Anything that good hackers would find interesting” --also hnguidelines
It is fair to say dont post “this is turning into xyz” as it doesnt contribute to the discussion. And that is fair. i could have explained why rather than dismiss the post.
I make no good hacker claims but i didnt find this interesting. I am in the minority it seems.
I didnt like this because the title looks clickbaity and the actual website content is not compelling. The landing page as far asi can tell doesnt show any glass painting. Maybe i didnt dig deep enough.
My only motivation for submitting the OP was thinking that others here would find it cool and interesting too.
That falls within the HN guidelines, don't you think?
And I am confused about the “doing it any other way”? I don’t really see other ways to achieve the same result. Say painting and photography will both produce end results that are quite different. The skills are very different. The end material is also quite different. The same way stained glass is quite different from painting
The fact he has a portrait of Kamala Harris called “glass ceiling breaker” and one of the victims of the Beirut explosion called #weareunbreakable suggests that you don’t need to dig particularly deep to find meaningful subtext in the choice of material and technique.
If anything it’s maybe a bit on-the-nose.
This is what I was driving at. I should have been more specific to say not particularly meaningful or evocative to me. From the previews I've seen it's all based around shattering and breaking. Where I will give credit, there's one: "Transformation" where natural light is reflected at the shattered glass to portray a face which I find to be fascinating. The rest feel kitschy, it's not quite to my tastes.
> I don't think there's anything particularly meaningful or evocative about shattered glass as opposed to any other planar medium
These seem contradictory? If the medium is "uninteresting", then how it can be the focus of interest?
Without judging the artistic merit of these pieces, I submitted the OP only because the idea and process of "painting" on glass with a hammer struck me as cool and interesting (pun intended). In any case, artistic merit is always in the eye of the beholder.
Stuff like that though always makes me curious
The technique is cool though.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pareidolia
Cheap 4K dash cams are awesome at creating the wackiest noise in suboptimal lighting conditions.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rod_(optical_phenomenon)
https://cryptidz.fandom.com/wiki/Air_Rods
That's ok, not all art affects all people the same and to me that's the wonderful thing about art – it really is ok to have different opinions and taste, no one is wrong. I'll just move on to the next piece and hopefully enjoy that more. :o)
In this case, that's not true. See the examples shared by https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47163837 on this page.
See also https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47162666 for context.
The exhibitions section [0] has examples of abstract pieces of art too.
[0] https://simonbergerart.com/exhibitions
I bet nobody here saw the art from the submission in person but look at how many opinions around.
Every time I hear armchair critique of someone else’s “boring uninspired art” and “expressionless faces”, or “art connoisseurs” giving snippets of wisdom, I know they’re fuller of hot air than a desert on a hot summer day.
If it's shallow and uninspired, why not make a better version? The medium is freer than Free Software. A sharpened hammer, a pane of laminated glass, and some time.
How hard can it be?
$$$$$ for supplies, you could probably take up oil painting for cheaper.
Bigger panes of laminated glass is expensive, but you can start small, no? I'd go to the local glass shops and ask for their scraps, for example.
However, the point is not the cost of the supplies, but supporting the argument by putting out something better than the thing being criticized.
It can be valid to criticize something as uninspired even if you're not capable of doing it yourself. Movie critics would have a hard time otherwise.
In this case I wouldn't be quite as dismissive, personally. But if you've seen one, have you seen them all? Probably yes.
It can easily be said that this makes no sense, because the yeller has no idea of the tremendous work that even the lowest-tier athletes put into their vocation.
On the other hand, they are a “customer” of the athlete, and have a “right” to criticize the “product.” They are probably out of line, suggesting root causes and solutions, but they aren’t out of line for complaining about their experience with the product.
I wrote a short piece about this mindset, some time ago: https://littlegreenviper.com/problems-and-solutions/
> but they aren’t out of line for complaining about their experience with the product.
They are just as asshole, as much valid as me mocking random people on the street.
Go to a scrapyard and see if you can pull the windscreen out of a car. It's just a contaminant when it goes in the fraggie anyway.
I 100% guarantee you have criticized things without trying to produce better work yourself. It is a deeply dishonest standard.
It’s like there are 2 axes: - cool technique and - cool picture. The second is way more important than the first, which is way painters are still on top of the 2D art world.
Some people can do both though. And i’d say even in these cases the art world tend to dismiss the weird technique as gimmicky.
Damien Hirst is a more polarizing third contender.
Edit: also Yayoi Kusama
You've just got the sausage, and there's (not necessarily) any indication of how it was made inherent to the sausage - even if the way the sausage is made is cooler than the sausage itself.
(that analogy got tiresome quickly)
Yeah, art is only real if it is unpopular and elicits a “I don’t get it” /s
And the wonder of it is that we can all have different responses to the same thing. (The Mona Lisa is a waste of canvas and oil - a hill I will die on).
Seems like Mona Lisa elicits an emotional response in you as a viewer ;)
I get what you're saying though. I always "correct" people that claims some piece of music is "bad", there's no bad music, only music you don't like.