Wise Words From P.A.M. Dirac

The great physicist Paul Dirac is supposed to have said the following:

When asked on some occasion about his views on poetry, he replied that 'in science one tries to tell people, in such a way as to be understood by everyone, something that no one ever knew before. But in poetry, it's the exact opposite.'

If the provenance of this quote is accurate, it shows that the otherwise taciturn Dirac's reputation for wit was well justified. His views on aesthetics are certainly worth paying attention to as well - especially in an age when canned feces, rotting sharks, unmade beds and urine-stained sheets are all worshipped as "art" by those supposedly in the know; if only I too had the sheer gall to champion my effluvia as "art", and the good fortune to find a rich fool to promote it as such ...

Comments

[dsquared]

The Hirst shark is visibly not rotting, because it is in a tank of formaldehyde. You're thinking of a different Damien Hirst installation piece which featured a rotting cow.

[if only I too had the sheer gall]

Well that's rather the point; you don't. Hence, art.

You're also coming over as a bit ignorant and old-fartish in assuming that everyone either takes the whole Saatchi bill of goods (which wouldn't include "Mierda d'artista" which is of a previous generation of surrealism) or rejects it en bloc (or in other words, takes the whole Stuckist bill of goods). Personally, I haven't much time for Hirst; I think he's a shallow adman playing at art and there's quite a lot to the Stuckists' charge of unoriginality - I don't personally care much whether he actually copied things or whether they're just very obvious ideas.

But Tracey Emin is clearly extremely talented; her draughtsmanship is excellent when she decides to paint her nude figures and her quilts are wonderfully composed. When she decides to do something like the bed pieces, she's doing it for a reason, and not understanding that reason doesn't really make you any more intelligent than not understanding Dirac's equations.

[Abiola Lapite]

"The Hirst shark is visibly not rotting, because it is in a tank of formaldehyde."

What a ridiculous non-sequitur! Do your homework and google it, why don't you? The damn thing is decaying, formaldehyde or no.

"You're thinking of a different Damien Hirst installation piece which featured a rotting cow."

No, I'm not. Do your homework before telling me what I'm thinking.

"Well that's rather the point; you don't. Hence, art."

Only if the definition of "art" is "chutzpah" - which makes OJ Simpson and the Menendez brothers the greatest artists of our time. I'm actually proud of having a sense of shame, believe it or not, and I'm not willing to try to pull a fast one over the public for a bit of fame and fortune.

"You're also coming over as a bit ignorant and old-fartish in assuming that everyone either takes the whole Saatchi bill of goods (which wouldn't include "Mierda d'artista" which is of a previous generation of surrealism) or rejects it en bloc (or in other words, takes the whole Stuckist bill of goods)."

Where have I made any such "assumption", pray tell? Go ahead and quote chapter and verse of where I've done so, if you can. The ignorant one here is *you*, for placing claims in my mouth that anyone can easily see I haven't made. Also, that Manzoni's "Merda d'Artista" dates to the 1960s is of absolutely no relevance whatsoever to my argument - the fact is that the Tate Modern acquired a very expensive sample of Manzoni's shit in the year 2000, as you'd know if you read the Telegraph article.

http://www.tate.org.uk/servlet/ViewWork?cgroupid=999999961&workid=27330&searchid=7663

"But Tracey Emin is clearly extremely talented; her draughtsmanship is excellent when she decides to paint her nude figures and her quilts are wonderfully composed."

This is irrelevant. However "talented" she may be, it isn't her draughtsmanship or her quilts that are at issue here. It could be Gianlorenzo Bernini himself we're talking about and his unmade bed and urine-soaked sheets *still* wouldn't be "art" in my eyes, just evidence of a shameless exhibitionism on his part.

"When she decides to do something like the bed pieces, she's doing it for a reason, and not understanding that reason doesn't really make you any more intelligent than not understanding Dirac's equations."

No, *you* claiming to "understand" that she's doing what she's doing for some higher or noble reason makes *you* no more intelligent than those who call E=mc^2 a "sexed equation" and Newton's "Principia" a "rape manual." *Of course* Emin's doing what she's doing for a reason: the point is that I don't think that reason extends beyond anything more than garnering fame and monetary rewards for herself by continuously stirring up controversy and shocking the bourgeoisie.

[Andrew]

Wow, the rotting shark is gross... there's a reason biologists perfuse sacrificed lab animals with fixative rather than just dunking them into a vat of formaldehyde!

[J.Cassian]

Strangely enough, conceptual art was parodied decades before it even began (which raises plenty of questions about why art history has been written the way it is, e.g. how original was Marcel Duchamp anyway?):

http://www.nyu.edu/greyart/exhibits/counter/index.html

"On Sunday afternoon, 1 October 1882, the artists Edouard Manet, Pierre Auguste Renoir, and Camille Pissarro, the composer Richard Wagner, and the king of Bavaria were among two thousand curious invitees reported to have crowded into the Left Bank apartment of the young writer and Hydropathe Jules Lévy to view the exhibition bizarrely entitled Arts incohérents. Two months earlier, as a challenge to academic art, Lévy had organized a show of "drawings made by people who don't know how to draw." Lévy's October proto-happening included professional artists who poked fun at the art establishment and produced "incohérent" works using a variety of peculiar and everyday found materials, for example, sculptures made from bread and cheese. One entry, a group painting by six artists, anticipated the collaborative efforts of the Surrealists some forty years later. The most provocative work was the first documented monochrome painting by the poet Paul Bilhaud and entitled Negroes Fighting in a Cellar at Night. Artist Alphonse Allais expanded on Bilhaud's conceit by exhibiting a white and then a red monochrome painting in the 1883 and 1884 Incohérent shows; in 1897 he published a book of these images along with an empty musical score billed as a funeral march for the deaf. As early as 1885, with photographs of an ear filled with cotton and a hand holding a rose, filmmaker Emile Cohl prefigured the uncanny juxtapositions of Surrealists. And in 1887 proto-performance artist Sapeck (Eugène Bataille), who was known to travel the streets with his head painted blue, portrayed the Mona Lisa smoking a pipe years before Marcel Duchamp added a moustache to the Louvre's venerated icon. But while these pieces anticipate the work of later avant-garde artists, the Incohérents employed raucous humor rather than esoteric theory to challenge academic tradition."

[dsquared]

[The damn thing is decaying, formaldehyde or no]

In the same sense, the Mona Lisa is decaying. The decay of "The Impossibility of Death in the Mind of Something Living" isn't part of the artwork and is something that ought to be arrested by a restorer. This is important in the context of Damien Hirst, as he has produced a number of other installation pieces in which the decay of organic matter is part of the art.

[Do your homework]

No, why should I bother when you clearly don't (example; referring to Chris Offili's Madonna as a scuplture)

[Where have I made any such "assumption", pray tell?]

"in an age when canned feces, rotting sharks, unmade beds and urine-stained sheets are *all* worshipped as "art" by those supposedly in the know" (emphasis added)

If by this you weren't talking about a group of people named by the phrase "those supposedly in the know" and saying that they "worshipped" all the items on your list, then you went about it a very funny way. In general, if you don't want me to make the most natural assumption about what you're thinking then you're going to have to express yourself more clearly and preferably not blame your readers when it doesn't come off.

[Also, that Manzoni's "Merda d'Artista" dates to the 1960s is of absolutely no relevance whatsoever to my argument - the fact is that the Tate Modern acquired a very expensive sample of Manzoni's shit in the year 2000]

If it's of no relevance to your argument, why bring it up, since it's from an entirely different period of time and artistic school from your other examples? This is almost bound to confuse. By the way, if you think that £22,300 is "very expensive" for an acquisition of the Tate's then you might profitably do some homework yourself because it isn't; pop down to Bond Street and see what you can get for under £25k.

[his unmade bed and urine-soaked sheets *still* wouldn't be "art" in my eyes, just evidence of a shameless exhibitionism on his part]

Well so what? If you don't like it, then don't queue up and pay money to get into the next exhibition it's shown at. If you revile it so much that you don't want anything like it to be produced at all, then tell everyone not to buy products advertised by Saatchi. On the other hand, since the Emin bed pieces have been very popular at exhibition and attracted big bids from art collectors, it's pretty clear that a lot of knowledgable people disagree with you, and since your only argument appears to be the simple statement that it isn't art, I doubt you're going to have much luck convincing them they're wrong.

[No, *you* claiming to "understand" that she's doing what she's doing for some higher or noble reason makes *you* no more intelligent than those who call E=mc^2 a "sexed equation" and Newton's "Principia" a "rape manual." ]

In fact, I didn't claim to understand Emin's beds; for a man who screams bloody murder about having words put into his mouth you don't half hand it out. It might be the case that I do think I understand what she's trying to do, but I haven't said so. In the event that I decide I do understand it, I don't think anyone is really going to believe that understanding something makes you stupider than not understanding it. For example, I *do* understand both the Irigaray and Harding quotes that you allude to (due to having read them in their proper context), and I don't see why anyone else would want to refer to them if they didn't.

[I don't think that reason extends beyond anything more than garnering fame and monetary rewards ]

Doubt that this is true; the bed piece is not at all susceptible to mass reproduction and probably gains her as much bad publicity as good. Emin is notoriously obsessive about keeping control of the bed pieces and making sure that it is put together in exactly the same way when they're exhibited; since she gets no reward from this as they've already been sold and it's a lot more work than just allowing the museum staff to chuck the bits about any old how, I think the evidence suggests that you're wrong.

[continuously stirring up controversy and shocking the bourgeoisie]

I don't think anyone's particularly shocked by Tracey Emin, least of all the bourgeoisie. As I say, she's very popular.

[eoin]

", if you think that £22,300 is "very expensive" for an acquisition of the Tate's then you might profitably do some homework yourself because it isn't; pop down to Bond Street and see what you can get for under £25k."

I dont know, but am I right in assuming that you get shit from a less well known artist at that kind of price? Is that what you are trying to say.

Scatological art is all the rage, it seems, and we cultural reactionaries dont get it, even though we presume to be smarter than you who do get it. That said, I have a fondness for Mr. Poo ( on Southpark) and fart jokes: hoping for a grant for my fart joke collection too. Where can one apply?

"I don't think anyone's particularly shocked by Tracey Emin, least of all the bourgeoisie. As I say, she's very popular."

That's right, I think she is trying to shock the 1950's rural Irish bourgeoisie which is getting a bit old. Maybe Tracy should make fun of homosexuals if she really wanted to "epater les bourgeois" these days. As quite the wily business lady ( who, of course, other charlatans - astrologers and psychics- knows her audiance are dupes) I am so sure she wont.

[dsquared]

Lord, why are people so incurious? I don't, as of this present moment, understand why anyone might care about the Wiener-Ikehara Theorem but you will find no comment from me on this weblog suggesting that the Wiener-Ikehara Theorem is for wankers. If I ever want to understand the Wiener-Ikehara theorem I will put in a bit of work and learn about it, and when I do, I will do so by asking people who know about it in a spirit of sincere inquiry, without first giving them a lecture on what my preconceptions are about what kind of a theorem it *ought* to be.

If, as at present seems more likely, I continue to find other things more immediately enthralling than the Wiener-Ikehara theorem, I will scarce give it a minute's thought, other than to occasionally smile at the thought that others may be getting pleasure or understanding from the Wiener-Ikehara theorem. I won't ever berate other people for liking such a shitty theorem unless I see can prove to my own satisfaction, after first understanding the theorem, that it is a bad or unattractive piece of mathematics and that this is due to some deficiency in the Wiener-Ikehara theorem rather than in my understanding.

If you take this kind of attitude to the world, you find yourself learning a lot more, a lot faster.

[Dan Phillips]

Dennis Dutton (the Arts & Letters guy) has an interesting article called "Aesthetics and Evolutionary Psychology":

http://www.denisdutton.com/aesthetics_&_evolutionary_psychology.htm

He points out that skill at art is an indicator of fitness. He covers the "my kid could paint better than that" aspect too, and if I understand his point correctly, he says that even if "blackboard scribbles" don't obviously demonstrate skill, being able to talk convincingly about such non-obvious art is itself a demonstration of skill and thus fitness.

[dsquared]

By the way, is it me or are Paul Dirac's views on aesthetics (assuming that they are accurately summarised by the link) not so much "worth paying attention to" as "really quite mysterious"? As far as I can see, his view is that there is an objective standard of beauty, that it is mathematical in nature, that the beauty of mathematical equations has to be appreciated by a subjective sense, that this sense is not innate and cannot be explained to non-mathematicians (can it be taught to mathematicians who do not possess it?) and that this sense allows one to make judgements about fundamental physics. Possible, I grant, but I don't really see how this is somehow clearer and superior to any of the critical theories produced by people who do it for a living.

By the way, the linked comment on Dirac also claims that "It was the fragile beauty of [general relativity] that convinced physicists of its worth long before it had any serious support from experiment". Is this really supported by history? Einstein's original exposition of general relativity was a really gnarly work of mathematics, understood by not all that many physicists and included an ad hoc cosmological constant which nobody, including himself, was happy with. Also, it received "serious support" from experiment almost immediately after publication.

[Jason Malloy]

From the link: [[["For Dirac, mathematical beauty was more profound than the concept of beauty in art, literature and music. In his view, whereas we can disagree about the aesthetic merits of, say, Rembrandt and Warhol, mathematical beauty transcends the personal. Such beauty is universal, even if its appreciation is not. To those without mathematical training who inquired about his aesthetic credo, the famously taciturn Dirac would reply firmly but courteously: 'You could not possibly understand'.

This sort of comment, along with ***Dirac's championing of what he saw as the objective beauty of mathematics and his indifference to the arts*** would not find favour among today's cultural commentators"]]]

I can't tell if this post is intentional intellectual self-parody or not. To demonstrate that you aren't close-minded and clueless about art, you link to someone who was equally close-minded and clueless about art, and for the same reasons. From the link provided it appears Dirac's "views on aesthetics [that are] certainly worth paying attention to" in this shameful and disingenuous age of rotting sharks is that art isn't very interesting, and math is really cool.

These insights hardly clarify whether Tracey Emin or Picasso are or aren't artists, and in fact it abnegates the whole question - declaring the questions of the subjective realm pointless and equating real beauty with mathematics (about as revealing coming from a physicist who is in love with the physical sciences and little else as a dog who declares chasing sticks the only worthwhile art). So I'm afraid Dirac doesn't tell us much about the aesthetic standing of "unmade beds".

[Abiola Lapite]

"I can't tell if this post is intentional intellectual self-parody or not. To demonstrate that you aren't close-minded and clueless about art, you link to someone who was equally close-minded and clueless about art, and for the same reasons."

I'm supposed to take your pathetic exercise in name-calling as an argument? Go find someone else who's more likely to be cowed by the "You uncultured brute!" line of pontification, as what you have to say is nothing more than content-free spam as far as I'm concerned. I simply don't give a shit about whether or not you or any other self-appointed member of the avant-garde approve of my cultural tastes.

[Jason Malloy]

It's "content free" to point out that your link doesn't logically demonstrate what you claim it does? Dirac's comments differentiate art and math, not Emin and da Vinci - True or false?

Furthermore, let's not play the martyr, you were the one claiming that lovers and creators of a very broad class of art were dupes and charlatans, and yet never offered much justification (or much evidence of a good-faith concern for the subject matter) beyond your assertions and angry conviction that it isn't art.

[Abiola Lapite]

"never offered much justification (or much evidence of a good-faith concern for the subject matter) beyond your assertions and angry conviction that it isn't art."

I offered a link showing that even the art "experts" couldn't tell high art from children's dabblings, but seeing as you're the self appointed authority on what constitutes "good faith", one can see why that wouldn't be justification in your eyes.

The fact of the matter is that I'm simply not one of those people who yearns for the approval of some clique of high art aficionados, and if you can't be bothered to give a reasoned explanation of why your enthusiasms are worth taking seriously, it's all the same to me: unlike you, I know that the great mass of public opinion is on my side anyway. You, on the other hand ... well, you wouldn't be wasting energy on here condemning me for my "narrow-mindedness" if you shared a similar indifference.

PS: I'm feeling generous. Here, read the following.

http://foreigndispatches.typepad.com/dispatches/2005/01/frauds_ancient_.html
http://www.abrasha.com/picasso.html

You might also want to take the time to actually *read* the Telegraph article I linked to on Piero Manzoni, making sure to pay particular attention to the portion from which the following is excerpted:

["Manzoni died, aged just 29, within two years of creating his tinned art. He was a hard drinker and his alcohol consumption led to him to suffer from a liver condition. In a letter to a friend, he explained that his motivation for tinning his faeces was to expose the gullible nature of the art-buying public.

"I should like all artists to sell their fingerprints, or else stage competitions to see who can draw the longest line or sell their shit in tins," he wrote. "If collectors really want something intimate, really personal to the artist, there's the artist's own shit. That is really his.""]

At least Manzoni knew he was perpetuating a hoax on the modish and highly suggestible. It's too bad so many people are still bent on proving him right in his low estimation of his fellow men.

[Jason Malloy]

"and if you can't be bothered to give a reasoned explanation of why your enthusiasms are worth taking seriously, it's all the same to me"

Abiola, you don't listen, and the fact is that every time I've raised an argument pertinent to defending "my enthusiasms" with logical explication (e.g. the Stossal test only proves its own premise; Picasso was important; Dirac doesn't say anything speaking to the low artistic status of Emin), you've never engaged the argument and just responded with some redundant permutation of how you won't be intimidated by self-proclaimed phony elitist doctrines. So while you've accused me of empty ad hominem in every one of your responses so far, it's actually my arguments which haven't been engaged despite being presented in a way that can be refuted and your arguments which have yet to be properly defended or even explained (which is why you keep accusing me and D2 of "putting words in your mouth" but, revealingly, never offering what your real views are then).

[Abiola Lapite]

"Abiola, you don't listen"

Wow, I'm just bowled over by the logic of that argument: you've completely won me over now!

"every time I've raised an argument pertinent to defending "my enthusiasms" with logical explication (e.g. the Stossal test only proves its own premise; Picasso was important; Dirac doesn't say anything speaking to the low artistic status of Emin), you've never engaged the argument"

On the contrary, I *have* engaged the argument - by pointing out that it's a load of tosh. You just don't happen to like the terms of my engagement. Simply asserting, e.g, that Picasso was "important" and therefore a "great artist" doesn't pass muster with me as a serious argument, especially when you refuse to accord the same recognition to the likes of Britney Spears despite their importance. If you can't be bothered to display a minimal level of intellectual consistency, why should I take you seriously? And again I ask you, o knowledgeable sir, what the hell does that stuff about "the Stossal test only prov[ing]
its own premise" *mean*, if not an attempt on your part to avoid the question? How is it that recognized art experts can read all sorts of complex mumbo jumbo into paintings by 4 year olds they've mistaken for masterpieces, and how much is an aesthetic criterion that can't distinguish between the two groups worth? Are you capable of answering such questions in plain English or aren't you? You can't, which is why you retreat into precisely the sort of babble you spend all the rest of your time attacking on GNXP.

"it's actually my arguments which haven't been engaged despite being presented in a way that can be refuted"

No, your arguments *have* been engaged *and* refuted, despite your assertions to the contrary.

"why you keep accusing me and D2 of "putting words in your mouth" but, revealingly, never offering what your real views are then"

Yet more Jason Malloy illogic: my views are precisely what I've written, no more no less, and simply because my words don't satisfy some internal quota you seem to have in mind doesn't give you license to go adding to them. Again, I can't be bothered to engage people who refuse to reason carefully and to stick to the evidence in their deductions, and if that's too much to expect of you, go ahead and think me a philistine for all I care - because I don't.

[dsquared]

[I know that the great mass of public opinion is on my side anyway]

I don't think you know this at all; it's not obvious that it's even true. The DCMS museum visiting figures are a bit frustrating because they combine Tate Modern and Tate London but on my casual empiricism of looking at the amount of cafe space, I'd guess that the TM gets at least as many visitors as the National Gallery and many more than the National Portrait Gallery (the NG actually often puts on contemporary shows). If you're trying to make the claim that the great mass of public opinion agrees with you that Picasso wasn't a great artist then I would say you're on very shaky ground indeed.

[Abiola Lapite]

They may not agree with me on Picasso (though, oddly, he seemed to share a similar estimation of his own work as I do ...), but I'm damned sure they agree with me where the likes of Emin, Hirst, Creed and Manzoni are concerned. As for your Tate viewing figures, how many of those consist of repeat visitors and curiosity-seekers out looking for something to gawk at, in the same manner that car-wrecks tend to attract lots of rubber-neckers?

[Jason Malloy]

"On the contrary, I *have* engaged the argument - by pointing out that it's a load of tosh. You just don't happen to like the terms of my engagement . . . your arguments *have* been engaged *and* refuted, despite your assertions to the contrary."

There is an important difference between admitting you don't understand someone's arguments and "engaging" and "refuting" them. I do like the spin though: "I demolished your arguments by ignoring them entirely".

"And again I ask you, o knowledgeable sir, what the hell does that stuff about "the Stossal test only prov[ing] its own premise" *mean*, if not an attempt on your part to avoid the question? How is it that recognized art experts can read all sorts of complex mumbo jumbo into paintings by 4 year olds they've mistaken for masterpieces, and how much is an aesthetic criterion that can't distinguish between the two groups worth? Are you capable of answering such questions in plain English or aren't you? You can't, which is why you retreat into precisely the sort of babble you spend all the rest of your time attacking on GNXP."

As far as I can tell my argument against the Stossal test should be understood by now (if not in every detail, at least in a suitably rudimentary sense), given how much space I've already given to it, and its unremarkable complexity. I explained exactly why in my first comment; the test runs on the premise that "true art" should be special even if thumbnailed and divorced of all context - of the artist, conceptual framework, creation process, the historical context, and the style set that it's a part of. "True art", the test tells us, will be judged as such even without those things. So regardless if the historically regarded pieces are recognized and/or preferred or not, Stossal and his test start out with the exact premise that needs to be defended - that those things don't (or shouldn't) matter. This puts a great many stupid restraints on Stossal's "true art". To take one example, one of the most popular pieces in their set was the bulldog fabric bought at the Salvation Army. The fabric is obviously done in the style of Warhol's famous pop-art series featuring e.g. Marilyn Monroe. The implication of this is that Warhol's actual stylistic innovations and work are worth uniquely little or nothing as art, and if I go into photoshop and cook up a George W. pop-art pic done in the same style it's just as significant as Warhol's Monroe paintings that invented it. So Stossal's test is telling us that ideas, authenticity, historical significance and originality don't matter and that any "true art" would out of necessity be technically difficult to imitate. This works in the other direction too, one of the most recognizable pieces in the Stossal test is Kasimir Malevich's 'Black Circle'. Since many people can draw a circle, the test helpfully let's us know that Malevich isn't art. But such a litmus test does little to gauge the importance of Malevich to the world of art. Along with El Lissitzky he developed Suprematism, a distinct abstract geometric style, which became the influence of Bauhaus and De Stijl, again all foundations of modern design. Suprematism and Malevich's role in the break with Classicism had an astonishing effect on Russian art and the kind of red propaganda you can see from the era, and even today passed down to China. Your view of "Modern artists" as liars and greedy moral pigs isn't new, despite his key role in defining the Soviet "look", Malevich and other Suprematists were killed and arrested as "bourgeois artists" and enemies of the state. Same in Germany as "degenerate artists". Its difficult to agree with Stossal that his work wasn't special or important.

So, like asking someone when they stopped beating their wife, you can't really "fail" the test unless its premise is true.

Your response to this argument after my first comment was "Derrida and Lacan would be proud of this supreme effort at sophistry: we might as well discard the scientific method itself whenever it gives us answers that don't fit with our prejudices". So basically you ignored me and re-asserted that the test was solid, scientific even [1]. You didn't engage the argument, because you didn't understand it; though you didn't try very hard. I responded by saying what you believe if you accept the test:

"Ok Abiola, your definition of art - realistic looking pictures that are technically hard to imitate - is the "scientific" one. Any definition of art that deviates from the Stossel/Abiola/Fred Reed definition is pseudoscientific, disingenuous and illogical. Art with a narrative or context within a larger body of art is not real art, because Abiola's definition is mandatory and scientific. Art is completely visual and not conceptual because Abiola and John Stossal say so. Not literature though, that has another clear and compartmentalized mandatory "scientific" definition, courtesy of the art pope"

You could've responded by showing why these premises don't follow from the test (e.g. that it could include more as art than "realistic looking pictures that are technically hard to imitate") Your response was to say that I was putting words in your mouth:

"Learn to read before spouting off in future. Where have I given a definition of art? Go ahead, point it out! . . . Again, where have I said what art "is"? When you stop having arguments with the straw men you're hallucinating in your head, I'll pay attention to what you have to say"

Now note what I was talking about with your complaints that everybody is "putting words in your mouth". But as with D2 above, your ideas were inferred logically from what you say and accept. If I say "Everything Hitler did was great" and somebody accuses me of liking the Holocaust, it hardly makes sense to accuse them of "putting words in my mouth". You never responded to my next comment that if you accept the test then you accepted those premises (whether you *said* them or not). Furthermore usually after accusing people of "putting words in ones mouth", people clarify what part they don't agree with (e.g. "I actually think the Holocaust was a horrible crime against humanity, I was thinking more about all that Audubon and Volkswagon kind of stuff"). You have been content to skip that burden, presumably because you don't really have a logical position - which appears to hover in limbo between Dirac's position that art can't be judged (hence your outrage at putting Picasso above Spears), and Stossal's position that real art is determined purely as a visual reaction, not an intellectual one (which is why Emin's bed "isn't art").

Moving on to Picasso:

"Simply asserting, e.g, that Picasso was "important" and therefore a "great artist" doesn't pass muster with me as a serious argument, especially when you refuse to accord the same recognition to the likes of Britney Spears despite their importance. If you can't be bothered to display a minimal level of intellectual consistency, why should I take you seriously?"

If you really were really interested in a good faith discussion, you would've ackowledged that I didn't simply "assert he was important", I did say, "Picasso was a genius . . . because he was fertile, original, and vastly expanded the vocabulary of art and design", and I went on to describe why those are meaningful and true claims, and you were free to contradict those specific claims (e.g. Picasso had minimal influence on other artists; Picasso didn't have an original artistic vocabulary). When it comes time for music critics to judge Britney Spears creative legacy and artistic significance in the music world, they will go by similar criteria, and they no doubt will place her much lower than Prince and Madonna.

[1] Even ignoring the stupid premise, it is truly doubtful that an adequate sample of critics, teachers, and art historians really couldn't recognize the genuine works in this batch, since even I did. While Stossal's wrongly premised test *could've* been set up as an actual prudently conducted experiment with representative sampling, meaningful sample sizes, and statistical significance checks, etc., it wasn't. So this is basically as close to the "scientific method" (your words) as Jay Leno's "Jay-Walking" segment.

[Abiola Lapite]

"There is an important difference between admitting you don't understand someone's arguments and "engaging" and "refuting" them."

Funny coming from you, seeing as you're the one who's suffering from a lack of understanding ... Stop wasting my time and yours; I don't find anything you have to say on this topic insightful or thought-provoking in the least, and "arguments" of the sort you're willing to provide certainly won't be changing my mind on anything.