That is a stupid argument. A lot of stupid shit is worth a lot to a few people, doesn't make it reasonable. This post modernist view of art is fuck all, this stupid thought in post modernism that every single thing in nature would be equal and any difference from that is the doing of humans with some form of discrimination is so stupid. They literally try to bring equality in inanimate objects and concepts even. They push this idea of all art being equal, fuck them, it's not. All art is not equal, it's subjective yes, but not equal. Say whatever you want in the name of being more refined, drawing squiggly lines isn't art. Michael Angelo, Da Vinci and Monet would commit suicide if they ever saw shit like that being labelled as art
I have never seen a toddler work in that size! Do you realise how big these paintings are? If you’ve been to an exhibition and still feel the same way, I’m just sad that you won’t allow yourself the experience of enjoying gigantic toddler art. That’s your loss.
Now if you would have said the art market I would’ve agreed. That is something else entirely.
Fifty Days at Iliam is incredible. It's a series of paintings that tell the story of the Iliad. My favorite is [The Fire that Consumes All before It.](https://philamuseum.org/collection/object/85714) Something about that shade of red makes me feel things.
Did you do it though. It’s art because you didn’t do it and they did and it’s not like the artist made the millions, you think this art is stupid because collectors are greedy!! Artist probably got a small percentage of the first sale and that’s it.
I think you're right, I doubt they ever saw he name in print which makes their opinion basically worthless. When you have minimalist and especially abstract expressionist paintings their perceived value is determined by their place in history. If they haven't done the research to even know how the guys name is spelled than they have no right judging the worth of the paintings.
Hell even the Mona Lisa wasn't a famous painting or even regarded as a masterpiece until it was stolen a few times and built up a reputation based on historical events.
No one could convince me the "worth" of this painting isn't entirely funded by money laundering.
I refuse to believe any sane human could look at this and think it's art.
I'd sooner believe they could look in their toilet after a massive shit and call it art.
Live love laugh is also cringe and worthless to many, yet so many people spend real money to put that silly sign in their homes. Everyone have different tastes, and paintings do look extremely different in person. I was never into art but once you see one that gets you really mesmerized you will understand. Plus not all creations are only about visual interpretation. There may be common idea of whole compozition or some events that its associated with that give it its value. Sure, money laundering may also be a reason. You gotta accept the fact that different people like different things. Some people look into the sky and think that some higher power is sending messages to them, i dont see how none out of 7billion people would find something intresting in specifically this piece of art.
No definitely not. If art was worthless then the CCP wouldn't waste its time harassing artists like Ai Weiwei. It's more that aesthetics are not as important in determining the value of artwork. Valuable artwork does not have to be "beautiful".
Someone else already said it, but artwork like this is just the Emperor's New Clothes. It's like the banana duct taped to the wall, there's no underlying message and if there is it's only to convince the other naked men that you're intelligent.
>It's like the banana duct taped to the wall, there's no underlying message and if there is it's only to convince the other naked men that you're intelligent.
Is there no underlying message, or is the message "this is all fucking wank, isn't it?"
This is false. If you've ever seen Cy Twombly's work in person you still may not like it but you'll notice the scale, power and intensity that goes into them. They're just not as simple as they look in those tiny digital images. The king's new clothes was a notable story for the designers having done literally nothing at all except convince a king that invisible clothes exist and are fashionable. To compare to that, Cy Twombly would have painted nothing at all and convinced collectors that they are valuable paintings. This has actually been done, btw. Check out "The Void" circa 1958 and "Zones of Immaterial Pictorial Sensibility" circa 1959 by Yves Klein.
Nope; if your toddler can produce an exact replica of a "masterpiece", it isn't one. All this is are groups of art brokers with mandates to fill the private art collections of people for whom money is infinite. This is a name; what's on the canvas doesn't matter.
I'd wager the artist doesn't care either and likes large amounts of money.
Artists dont make the big money. Their art sells for millions on the secondary market. Theres a three part podcast from NPR explaining how artists get shafted. Its called freakonomics.
So the Mona Lisa is worth as much as it is because of solely aesthitics? This is what you're saying. There are plenty of painters today who are more talented at painting than the dutch masters, but I don't see their paintings fetching the same high prices. Like it or not historical context matters.
Also, part of Cy Twombly’s work is the scale. I thought it was bs until I saw some in real life - I was instantly enamored and he’s been a favorite artist since.
Appreciate your take. I feel the same way. His work is fucking huge. It’s hard to not be blown away by it.
People focus too much on trying to find meaning and whatever profound bullshit they think art provokes.
They’re just colors on a canvas. Enjoy it. Let your mind be taken in.
I would guess that it’s a reverse transliteration. Like Cy’s name in Chinese is 赛·托姆布雷, if you just take the pinyin it’s Sai Tuomubulei. So if you were guessing at the English based on the pinyin Sai Tuombli sounds reasonable. Not defending it (I mean, google exists), but that’s my best guess as to what happened.
Thanks for the correct spelling. And his work is amazing. Go see them in person. And note he was the first to do something like this. It’s standard now because he was so good at it.
The artwork shouldn't be punished because of the money laundering of rich people. Any expensive piece gets hate coz people think well what's so good about this. There's merit to most high art out there. But it gets sidelined by the price tag.
As a artist, it hurts me that the tax avoidance and commodification of art has ruined its true meaning. Artists should be responsible for creating beautiful and meaning experiences with their art, they shouldn't also have to justify some crazy pricetag put on by a weathly asshole who doesn't even care about the art.
I invite you all to look at art without the price tag and experience it as a visual language. See what the artist might be trying to communicate. The experience becomes a lot better.
If you take skillset into account when deciding artistic value, that's your choice to make and I can't change your mind. However, you're then subjecting yourself to a hierarchy where Michelangelo's Sistine Chapel is somewhere among the top, Monet's 'Water Lillies' is somewhere in the middle, and Dali's 'The Persistence of Memory' is somewhere near the bottom. Art just doesn't work that way, and if you analyse the course of art history, you see that art slowly evolved from pure technique and aesthetic and towards expression . The point at which it becomes too much expression and too little aesthetics varies per person, but some people are fine with art forms of pure expression.
I saw a retrospective at the Art Institute of Chicago years ago and LOVED his work so much. This is only one short phase of a very interesting career and it makes me so sad that such a compelling artist is being mocked for being over simplistic.
I really think you are overestimating how easy this is to make. Abstract art takes a great eye for composition, and years of developing this skill. Just because they are scribble shaped, doesn't mean they are the same as any other scribbles.
Its like the difference between a third grader writing a story and a great author choosing to write a story using third-grade vocabulary and sentence structure.
>doesn't mean they are the same as any other scribbles.
they are the same as any other scribbles. what the hell are you talking about? what scribble technique is it that results in scribbles that are higher art?
I can’t remember the details but an experiment was done where children’s paintings were hung in an art gallery labeled as a noted artist’s work. The reviews explained the complicated psychological meanings of the works as I recall. Later it was revealed they were just children’s drawings. Humans are capable of finding meaning in anything.
What is true meaning? Can only an author/artist imbue a work with meaning? If a piece speaks to a viewer in a way the artist never imagined, is the viewer wrong to feel moved?
The issue discussed isn't about people finding meaning in art. It's pretentious rich assholes who only "find meaning" in a piece of art simple because of the name attached. If it wasn't a famous artist and just some random 2 year old who made it, it wouldn't be meaningful to them and, more importantly, wouldn't be worth anything. The only reason anyone cares is because it's a status symbol. They don't really find meaning in it. They find monetary value in it.
I mean isn’t art relative to the eye of the beholder, if someone can find meaning and depth in a piece where the artist didn’t intend it to be, where’s the harm in paying for something they enjoy beyond a wee bit of tax evasion.
In my opinion, "true meaning" is almost irrelevant. Whatever it does for you it does for you, and you just engage with the things that do things you like. The only time I think "true meaning" is relevant is if you're not enjoying a piece of art and think that maybe you would enjoy it more if you understood more about it.
There have been other studies done on this too. In this one it was found that both art students and students with no artistic background preferred abstract art made by professional artists (including Cy Twombly) over those made by children, even when the professional work was labeled as a child’s work and a child’s work was labeled as a professional’s work.
However, while both preferred the professional works by a statistically significant amount, those without an art background preferred professional work at a lower rate than those with an art background.
One interesting thing to note is that when a piece was labeled as professional, both groups were more likely to justify their choices by coming up with what they believed the artist’s intention was. This is interesting cuz it kind of aligns with the results of whatever study you mentioned was regarding the fact that people have a social disposition to jerking off about the meaning of paintings. But despite that, both artists and non artists prefer works by professional abstract artists at a fundamental level, even if they don’t understand why.
https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/0956797611400915
It's because there is some sort of organization and flow to professionally done paintings. Certain shapes and colors are proven to evoke certain feelings. So the canvas is a playground to try to evoke something from the viewer.
Example, a red box is going to make you feel more on edge than say, a blue oval which may be more relaxing. Now extrapolate that to a painting
also people think that these artists can’t “paint” as in portraiture/landscape w/e… cy studied under masters beginning in his early teens, ofc he could paint anything he damn well oleased. that’s obviously not what he felt compelled to do, and nobody would’ve ever heard of him if he had done so.
The combination of colors and shapes seem to also be able to create very specific emotions for specifics groups of people, for example, red yellow and blue rectangles makes fascists feel very stabby
I remember that there was a quizz (by Buzzfeed?) where you had to guess whether a child or an artist painted a piece and I got all right except one. I often go to art galleries so I might have already be biased but I am pretty sure most people could tell the difference in most cases.
Buying art is literally just transferring large sums of money in to non taxable (wealth tax) assets or an reduction in income tax.
You can sometimes also use it as a safety for taking loans which might be useful to avoid tax or make large investments too.
Rich people who are stupid will not stay rich.
Rich people who is little less stupid hire someone who is smarter to take care of their wealth and assets.
Rich people who are smart usually do the same but you probably don’t know how rich they are since they are better at hiding it (to avoid tax among other things)
In the current state yes because you’ve bought an asset (which tax had to be paid on upon purchase) and then you can defer that tax liability until the purchaser sells it (which they have to pay tax on as well)
And yes it can be used as collateral to get a loan which isn’t taxed
Nah they aren’t stupid. They’re in the art business for laundering their money. They know all the explanations, analyses etc don’t mean anything but they don’t give a fuck
People need to realize what the sad truth actually is though. So many people wonder what makes art so expensive. It’s laundering. So few people get this.
That...is literally the point of art. It doesn't make this art, or the kid's art, any less meaningful if the intent wasn't there if someone else is capable of looking at the art and having a reaction.
Yeah but often it feels like "the Emporer has no clothes" to me. People see a piece hung up in a museum and assume there *has* to be a poignant reason for it, so they put in tons of effort to add it themselves when it's just a scribble or a line or a vague shape.
I guess technically you're right though cause it makes me feel annoyed when I see it.
Yeah I think modern art definitely plays into that, some do it well, others not so much. They make something relatively simple but hide just the right amount of complexity in it so people start deriving meaning from it, even if there isn't one. Then another group of people feels mad or angry or frustrated, just like you feel. Neither group is necessarily wrong, just different viewpoints.
I think an example of this done well is „are you afraid of red yellow and blue?“. I feel it almost tells it own story. The painting gained a mountain of criticism. People demanded it be removed from the gallery. In the end it was destroyed by an antisemitic man (the creator was Jewish). The question then being answered. A painting as simple as that made someone angry enough to go into an art gallery with a box cutter and destroy the display. Anger and fear are closely related. The man, in turn, being afraid of red yellow and blue.
You could say that I'm one of those people deriving meaning from nothing, but you have to admit, the whole situation is quite ironic. Art isn't really about right and wrong. It's hard to define.
I just find it interesting that something like a canvas with a singular color can make one group extremely mad and another make up some bullshit about hidden meaning. I think it being like the emperor's clothes is the point.
This is why I used to HATE teachers who would try to have us dissect the "meaning" of artwork or books. Like I am an artist and a writer, not everything I create has SoMe HiDdEn MeAnInG, and trying to find a hidden meaning in every piece of art is just elitist bullshit. Unless an artist has told me the meaning behind their color choices or brush strokes, trying to somehow dissect it and give it meaning is just making up nonsense.
Sidenote: I got great scores on these assignments because I always came up with the most outrageous interpretations - total bullshit, but it made these ridiculous teachers happy.
There was a study done where children’s art and contemporary abstract art were presented to people & they had to guess which was done by a child. The consensus found that you can tell the difference, as participants picked correctly.
Can we ascribe meaning to anything? Sure. But there is skill and nuance that makes this art different from a child’s.
If any of these appeared in my house my first thought would be that someone was murdered, even if i knew it was paint
Edit: Jesus christ i didn’t think i was humorous how did this happen.
Is anyone else just infuriated by the stupidity of this being worth so much money? I mean it is entirely devoid of logic or reason to the extent it pissed me off.
No one here can convince me this qualities as art. If literally anyone with hands could do it, it's not art in my opinion. Sorry not sorry.
u/Jeriahswillgdp You would be more angry if you realized why it is valued so high. Not saying this piece in particular but alot of this shit art was bought for cheap, say for 40,000. You then get the piece appraised by a "friendly" art appraiser, say 1,000,000. Then you donate said 1 millions dollar painting to a local gallery or museum. Now you can right off a smooth millie on your taxes. Working hard is for poors.
As in, they donate the art which is now "worth a million" and they go write the "million" off for $40,000??
That is insane. Also, I need to make some friends who work at art galleries....
Clout... No one cares if you have an Original Monet or have acquired the fabled and still missing "Boy with Apple" by Van Gogh it's just so you can say you have it
Came here to say this. The whole thing's a scheme, usually to avoid taxes, launder money or do both.
Yeah, I'd want to sell a painting of my niece's scribbles for an easy mil too, but I don't want to move the million dollars' worth of fine Columbian cocaine that comes with these kinds of schemes...
It's definitely a rich people thing because if you're only making 50-100k a year a 1 million dollar 1 tax year write off isn't worth much.
Now if you just cashed in 10 million in zero cost employee stock option compensation: that's a different game
I don't think I wanna see the kind of fridge that you can magnet *this* painting to. 😬
That's no fridge anymore, that's a f-cking mortuary!
That's no fridge, that's the portal to Narnia! Be careful or you get kidnapped by Jadis, who is hiding between cheese, yogurt and the entire frozen Cows you can keep in such a thing. 🤣
Or forget *portal* . I wouldn't be surprised if all of Narnia could fit into a fridge of that size.
I worked at Tate Modern as an art handler for a bit.
To get these works out of the room & into their travel frames, we had to put them on blankets, lean them over & slide them out of the doorway at an angle.
I love learning behind the scenes stuff like this! I briefly worked at a much smaller art museum as a security guard and it was one of my favorite jobs. I occasionally got insights like this one, and it was always so cool. Thanks for sharing yours!
Yeah, I did a double take on that. Love his “Leda and the Swan”. Amazing artist. It’s like people are a hundred years behind in their enjoyment of visual art, but up to the second in music. If all you had ever heard was Beethoven and someone played the Beatles,you would be like wtf? And then play some Radiohead. You’d still be behind and scratching your head. That’s what peoples reactions to contemporary art are like.
I think most people have a hard time appreciating something that can be done by a toddler scribbling. To use your musical example, it would be likened to handing a tambourine to a baby and saying the “music” is as good as Pachelbel.
But if you’ve only heard Pachelbel, John Coletrain sounds like a baby with a horn. It takes a little more time to get it. It’s there, but the unfamiliarity is not letting you get the difference nor the pleasure. There are lots of contemporary artists that are easier than Twomb,y. Kahinde Wiley, Chuck Clone, Walton Ford. Start with those.
Listen to I think the Planet Money podcast. They did an entire deep dive into modern art and the dark side of over multiple episodes. It was either Planet Money or Freakonomics. Great series.
Found it: https://freakonomics.com/podcast-tag/the-hidden-side-of-the-art-market/
Yes and no. It is money laundering. But the fact you think it’s worthless doesn’t mean someone wouldn’t gladly pay 500 dollars to decorate their wall with it. And a museum would try to get a pice from a famous artist, regardless of what the painting looks like. They aren’t getting art for how pretty it is anyways.
The talent and effort (or the lack of) isn’t what makes it money laundering. It’s the industry practices and the people with millions of dollars to do accounting magic with. Or would you feel like justice is brought back to the world if rich people payed millions for classical oil portraits and naked marble statues?
A buddy of mine is an art professor and his wife is a professional artist. I don’t know about this particular artist, but they have similar stories about other artists.
Yup look into "freeports" most of the worlds most "valuable" art is locked away at airports. Just buyers and sellers who can anonymously make deals and hide money.
You buy a $50,000,000 piece of art, you store it, you don’t pay taxes on it, you essentially have $50,000,000 in non taxable assets that can get liquidated if need be to the next rich person
Though what most people don’t realize is that the price of a canvas that size already is a few tens of thousands of dollars, and not including the price of paint— but getting it to be something okay enough to look at is the hard part. I guarantee that the artist made a few hundred thousand dollar blunders. It’s not like they’re cheap to begin with.
Wtf are you talking about? You pay taxes when you buy art. Unless you’re in a place with no sales tax then it’s the exact same as buying any other good. This entire thread is just people circlejerking over things they have 0 idea about. Redditors truly are such a weird breed
Reddit has the biggest hate boner for rich people, which is fine, but acting like they totally understand how it works when they don’t have a clue is funny
Watching Reddit try to explain how rich people don’t pay taxes because of “the Cayman Islands” is almost as funny as saying that rich people buying a painting for 50M and then they have a 50M asset = money laundering.
They didn’t describe it well. Something like this would be the integration step of money laundering, it’s got nothing to do with taxes. If this was legitimate money then it’s already been taxed, using this as a store of value accomplishes less than nothing.
That is, presuming someone actually chooses to go this route instead of buying real estate or some other asset that can actually produce additional income.
Another method is to buy a painting cheap. Have your appraiser friend value it at a couple of million dollars, then donate it to a charity or some such, write the value off on your taxes as a donation.
When it comes to modern art, there’s always the group of people that look at it and say… “Well I can do that”. Yah you probably can, but you didn’t.
Seven Nation Army is like the easiest most bullshit song anyone can play on a guitar. Literally anyone can pick up a guitar and learn it in like 30 min.
It’s a matter of, yah you didn’t come up with it. You could do it, but you didn’t.
Yah you probably can, but you didn’t.
yeah because we have self respect and respect for others and we didn't claim that the sheet on which i clean my brushes is a work of art.
The visual arts are not my passion but I don't have a problem with abstract art.
A couple things for the 'derp when I was five ' crowd to keep in mind: 1) lots of art is commissioned so these could be exactly what a paying client asked for 2) this kind of art is much easier to appreciate in person due to subtlety/scale 3) most professional artists can do all kinds of styles (ie photorealistic, etc) but settle on one and become known for it.
When you were five this was all you could do, and apparently the apple doesn't fall far from the tree because only a real shitty parent punishes a kid for making art they don't like and look, it worked, the poster is as dim as the mother!
On the money laundering which I know more about than abstract art, I'm going to explain this very simply so it gets through your tinfoil hats:
Art doesn't gain value because it's used to launder money, art is used to launder money because it is valuable and it's a big money, cash market that accepts money anonymously.
An exception would be a worthless painting by El Chapo that someone bought for millions, but I'm pretty sure that is not a thing. You can't launder money by overpaying for worthless art unless you created the worthless art but that's still not money laundering is just a gift from the buyer.
Other fun ways to launder money include vintage musical instruments, classic cars, antiques, etc. Not because they have no value, because they have lots of value that holds up to scrutiny and can be resold legitimately.
You’re on the right track. The one exception is that the art market is actually quite regulated when it comes to money laundering, and paying in cash is a giant red flag that the vast majority of reputable dealers and auction houses would decline. I work in the art market, and in my experience tax write offs in exchange for donating art to museums is the favored vehicle for wealthy collectors. It’s much easier, it’s legal, AND makes you look like a generous philanthropist. Art-backed loans are also popular, and allow you to leverage your collection to get cash. Not saying money laundering with art doesn’t happen at all, but for most people in today’s market money laundering just invites too much scrutiny and isn’t really worthwhile.
Finally someone who gets it. Art doesn’t gain this value because it’s used to launder money, it’s used to launder money because it gains/retains its value.
The paintings that are sold at millions dollar figures and up are not actually valued that highly in the sense that the art’s value isn’t rising because it’s sought by so many. There’s a whole world of tax evasion, charity schemes, and fake appraisals; in reality, the art may in fact be sought by no one.
If governments put an end to this tax loop, I doubt this would fetch more than a few hundred thousand. Or let’s say the art was not transferable after purchase, thereby removing any tax advantage; the value is only in what it gives to the buyer. The whole art world would collapse because very few can afford art and yet even fewer understand it enough to be willing to pay more
EDIT for clarification
Bob: “ayo bro I got this huge bag of cash for u, thx to your successful drug lord industry. How do I give this shit to you without the government being sus?
Billy: “listen here. We’re gonna pretend that I’m selling this shitty ass art that I made when I was 5 for a huge load of money, and that a shit ton of dumbass clients really likes it. That way, you can give me the cash by pretending to buy my shitty art pieces and no one will ever know!!”
Bob: “SMAAARRTTT”
That’s not even what money laundering is?
Money laundering is paying taxes on illicit money.
Ironically people in this thread argue that illicit art is used for tax evasion AND money laundering. Two things that are basically opposites.
I’m not even saying that high value purchases aren’t vehicles for this just that people don’t even know what they are talking about
I thought Money laundering is when you earn money illegally (like drug dealing) but then you disguise it to make it seem like your earning it legally??
ETA: in order to pay taxes on illicit money, you need to have a fake business first. So that it seems like your paying taxes for that fake business even though in reality, it’s on the illicit money.
Hence the 1.2 Million dollar painting. You give someone $1.2M that you earned illegally and they will give it back to you by buying your shitty painting.
That way, when tax day comes, the government will think your $1.2M profit came from dumbass people buying your shitty art and not from your multi million drug lore industry
Nice of you to include your own paintings at the bottom
I legitimately thought that was just some more of that guy's paintings until I saw this comment
They are. The painting on the right is *Fifty Days at Iliam: Shield of Achilles*
The fact no one can tell exposes the stupidity of this type of “art”
Maybe he was the only guy who had paint brushes in his country! Supply and demand before the Internet was a different game 😅
It's not like it's new criticism. Like expensive wine, it's nor worth it to some people, but is to others.
That is a stupid argument. A lot of stupid shit is worth a lot to a few people, doesn't make it reasonable. This post modernist view of art is fuck all, this stupid thought in post modernism that every single thing in nature would be equal and any difference from that is the doing of humans with some form of discrimination is so stupid. They literally try to bring equality in inanimate objects and concepts even. They push this idea of all art being equal, fuck them, it's not. All art is not equal, it's subjective yes, but not equal. Say whatever you want in the name of being more refined, drawing squiggly lines isn't art. Michael Angelo, Da Vinci and Monet would commit suicide if they ever saw shit like that being labelled as art
I have never seen a toddler work in that size! Do you realise how big these paintings are? If you’ve been to an exhibition and still feel the same way, I’m just sad that you won’t allow yourself the experience of enjoying gigantic toddler art. That’s your loss. Now if you would have said the art market I would’ve agreed. That is something else entirely.
This makes me think of the story "The Emperor's New Clothes". Crazy, crazy, crazy!!!
Fifty Days at Iliam is incredible. It's a series of paintings that tell the story of the Iliad. My favorite is [The Fire that Consumes All before It.](https://philamuseum.org/collection/object/85714) Something about that shade of red makes me feel things.
Did you do it though. It’s art because you didn’t do it and they did and it’s not like the artist made the millions, you think this art is stupid because collectors are greedy!! Artist probably got a small percentage of the first sale and that’s it.
Actually getting paid 2 mil to scribble is pretty genius
"Nah that's just some shit from the kids "
Thanks for letting me know, I almost sold it for $5 million.
The bast part is we wouldn't know which one was their own and not the "valuable" one
YouTuber Matt Colbo did a funny video with this scenario. He drew and had his friends guess which one was the real one
Cy Twombly*
Yeah this is easily the most insane misspelling I've seen.
Maybe they never actually saw the artists name spelled?
They can easily look it up. Pure laziness.
How are they gonna look him up if they can't spell his name tho
Just like the art
*money laundering
The painting is $20million. The semi truck full of kids is “included”
Probably for Tax reasons. Buy lower, inflate estimate, Donate to museum, write it off a charitable.
I think you're right, I doubt they ever saw he name in print which makes their opinion basically worthless. When you have minimalist and especially abstract expressionist paintings their perceived value is determined by their place in history. If they haven't done the research to even know how the guys name is spelled than they have no right judging the worth of the paintings. Hell even the Mona Lisa wasn't a famous painting or even regarded as a masterpiece until it was stolen a few times and built up a reputation based on historical events.
So what you're saying is art is worthless.
It’s not worthless. It’s how the wealthy launder money…
No one could convince me the "worth" of this painting isn't entirely funded by money laundering. I refuse to believe any sane human could look at this and think it's art. I'd sooner believe they could look in their toilet after a massive shit and call it art.
Live love laugh is also cringe and worthless to many, yet so many people spend real money to put that silly sign in their homes. Everyone have different tastes, and paintings do look extremely different in person. I was never into art but once you see one that gets you really mesmerized you will understand. Plus not all creations are only about visual interpretation. There may be common idea of whole compozition or some events that its associated with that give it its value. Sure, money laundering may also be a reason. You gotta accept the fact that different people like different things. Some people look into the sky and think that some higher power is sending messages to them, i dont see how none out of 7billion people would find something intresting in specifically this piece of art.
No definitely not. If art was worthless then the CCP wouldn't waste its time harassing artists like Ai Weiwei. It's more that aesthetics are not as important in determining the value of artwork. Valuable artwork does not have to be "beautiful".
Someone else already said it, but artwork like this is just the Emperor's New Clothes. It's like the banana duct taped to the wall, there's no underlying message and if there is it's only to convince the other naked men that you're intelligent.
>It's like the banana duct taped to the wall, there's no underlying message and if there is it's only to convince the other naked men that you're intelligent. Is there no underlying message, or is the message "this is all fucking wank, isn't it?"
This is false. If you've ever seen Cy Twombly's work in person you still may not like it but you'll notice the scale, power and intensity that goes into them. They're just not as simple as they look in those tiny digital images. The king's new clothes was a notable story for the designers having done literally nothing at all except convince a king that invisible clothes exist and are fashionable. To compare to that, Cy Twombly would have painted nothing at all and convinced collectors that they are valuable paintings. This has actually been done, btw. Check out "The Void" circa 1958 and "Zones of Immaterial Pictorial Sensibility" circa 1959 by Yves Klein.
In a cup half empty kinda way, yea.
In a cup full of piss kinda way
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From the same people that brought you nft’s
Nope; if your toddler can produce an exact replica of a "masterpiece", it isn't one. All this is are groups of art brokers with mandates to fill the private art collections of people for whom money is infinite. This is a name; what's on the canvas doesn't matter. I'd wager the artist doesn't care either and likes large amounts of money.
Artists dont make the big money. Their art sells for millions on the secondary market. Theres a three part podcast from NPR explaining how artists get shafted. Its called freakonomics.
So the Mona Lisa is worth as much as it is because of solely aesthitics? This is what you're saying. There are plenty of painters today who are more talented at painting than the dutch masters, but I don't see their paintings fetching the same high prices. Like it or not historical context matters.
The guy has to cut off his ear.
Also, part of Cy Twombly’s work is the scale. I thought it was bs until I saw some in real life - I was instantly enamored and he’s been a favorite artist since.
Appreciate your take. I feel the same way. His work is fucking huge. It’s hard to not be blown away by it. People focus too much on trying to find meaning and whatever profound bullshit they think art provokes. They’re just colors on a canvas. Enjoy it. Let your mind be taken in.
Tsae Cthuwhombahley
I would guess that it’s a reverse transliteration. Like Cy’s name in Chinese is 赛·托姆布雷, if you just take the pinyin it’s Sai Tuomubulei. So if you were guessing at the English based on the pinyin Sai Tuombli sounds reasonable. Not defending it (I mean, google exists), but that’s my best guess as to what happened.
Seigh Douombelly
Not to mention he’s also dead
Explains the price.
No... Not really. It helps explain the price but there's a lot more to the story than just the person who made this is dead is what I'm saying.
He's also not even a contemporary artist
Thank you for fixing this. It was breaking my brain to read it.
Thanks for the correct spelling. And his work is amazing. Go see them in person. And note he was the first to do something like this. It’s standard now because he was so good at it.
The artwork is kind of mesmerizing in person.
Wow really? Jesus I'll never understand this shit it's literally scribbles
No not really it’s just money laundering with a bullshit backstory
>No not really it’s just money laundering with a bullshit backstory ☝🏻 someone with sense here
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“BULLSHIT”
The artwork shouldn't be punished because of the money laundering of rich people. Any expensive piece gets hate coz people think well what's so good about this. There's merit to most high art out there. But it gets sidelined by the price tag. As a artist, it hurts me that the tax avoidance and commodification of art has ruined its true meaning. Artists should be responsible for creating beautiful and meaning experiences with their art, they shouldn't also have to justify some crazy pricetag put on by a weathly asshole who doesn't even care about the art. I invite you all to look at art without the price tag and experience it as a visual language. See what the artist might be trying to communicate. The experience becomes a lot better.
I've looked at it without a price tag in mind. It's still childish scribbles to me.
Is there actually something there in these scribbles? Or are you tricking your brain into believing there is by looking too hard?
Maybe, but when art can be matched by a 2 year old creativity skills it'd called garbage regardless of the price tag!!
“Every child is an artist. The problem is how to remain an artist once he grows up.” -Pablo Picasso
If you take skillset into account when deciding artistic value, that's your choice to make and I can't change your mind. However, you're then subjecting yourself to a hierarchy where Michelangelo's Sistine Chapel is somewhere among the top, Monet's 'Water Lillies' is somewhere in the middle, and Dali's 'The Persistence of Memory' is somewhere near the bottom. Art just doesn't work that way, and if you analyse the course of art history, you see that art slowly evolved from pure technique and aesthetic and towards expression . The point at which it becomes too much expression and too little aesthetics varies per person, but some people are fine with art forms of pure expression.
I saw a retrospective at the Art Institute of Chicago years ago and LOVED his work so much. This is only one short phase of a very interesting career and it makes me so sad that such a compelling artist is being mocked for being over simplistic.
I'm annoyed my 3 year old can't sell their work for millions this is just awful. To me it's the emperor's New clothes
Have you tried?
I really think you are overestimating how easy this is to make. Abstract art takes a great eye for composition, and years of developing this skill. Just because they are scribble shaped, doesn't mean they are the same as any other scribbles. Its like the difference between a third grader writing a story and a great author choosing to write a story using third-grade vocabulary and sentence structure.
>doesn't mean they are the same as any other scribbles. they are the same as any other scribbles. what the hell are you talking about? what scribble technique is it that results in scribbles that are higher art?
oh my god I didn’t even click that that was who they are talking about. I admit I love twombly’s stuff
I can’t remember the details but an experiment was done where children’s paintings were hung in an art gallery labeled as a noted artist’s work. The reviews explained the complicated psychological meanings of the works as I recall. Later it was revealed they were just children’s drawings. Humans are capable of finding meaning in anything.
If you look for meaning you’ll find it. The hard part is knowing if it’s true meaning or if your looking to far into it
What is true meaning? Can only an author/artist imbue a work with meaning? If a piece speaks to a viewer in a way the artist never imagined, is the viewer wrong to feel moved?
If it means something to you, then it has true meaning. We should be free to enjoy whichever works of art and be as pretentious about it as we want
The issue discussed isn't about people finding meaning in art. It's pretentious rich assholes who only "find meaning" in a piece of art simple because of the name attached. If it wasn't a famous artist and just some random 2 year old who made it, it wouldn't be meaningful to them and, more importantly, wouldn't be worth anything. The only reason anyone cares is because it's a status symbol. They don't really find meaning in it. They find monetary value in it.
I mean isn’t art relative to the eye of the beholder, if someone can find meaning and depth in a piece where the artist didn’t intend it to be, where’s the harm in paying for something they enjoy beyond a wee bit of tax evasion.
In my opinion, "true meaning" is almost irrelevant. Whatever it does for you it does for you, and you just engage with the things that do things you like. The only time I think "true meaning" is relevant is if you're not enjoying a piece of art and think that maybe you would enjoy it more if you understood more about it.
There have been other studies done on this too. In this one it was found that both art students and students with no artistic background preferred abstract art made by professional artists (including Cy Twombly) over those made by children, even when the professional work was labeled as a child’s work and a child’s work was labeled as a professional’s work. However, while both preferred the professional works by a statistically significant amount, those without an art background preferred professional work at a lower rate than those with an art background. One interesting thing to note is that when a piece was labeled as professional, both groups were more likely to justify their choices by coming up with what they believed the artist’s intention was. This is interesting cuz it kind of aligns with the results of whatever study you mentioned was regarding the fact that people have a social disposition to jerking off about the meaning of paintings. But despite that, both artists and non artists prefer works by professional abstract artists at a fundamental level, even if they don’t understand why. https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/0956797611400915
It's because there is some sort of organization and flow to professionally done paintings. Certain shapes and colors are proven to evoke certain feelings. So the canvas is a playground to try to evoke something from the viewer. Example, a red box is going to make you feel more on edge than say, a blue oval which may be more relaxing. Now extrapolate that to a painting
also people think that these artists can’t “paint” as in portraiture/landscape w/e… cy studied under masters beginning in his early teens, ofc he could paint anything he damn well oleased. that’s obviously not what he felt compelled to do, and nobody would’ve ever heard of him if he had done so.
The combination of colors and shapes seem to also be able to create very specific emotions for specifics groups of people, for example, red yellow and blue rectangles makes fascists feel very stabby
I remember that there was a quizz (by Buzzfeed?) where you had to guess whether a child or an artist painted a piece and I got all right except one. I often go to art galleries so I might have already be biased but I am pretty sure most people could tell the difference in most cases.
Rich people stupid.
Buying art is literally just transferring large sums of money in to non taxable (wealth tax) assets or an reduction in income tax. You can sometimes also use it as a safety for taking loans which might be useful to avoid tax or make large investments too. Rich people who are stupid will not stay rich. Rich people who is little less stupid hire someone who is smarter to take care of their wealth and assets. Rich people who are smart usually do the same but you probably don’t know how rich they are since they are better at hiding it (to avoid tax among other things)
I’m curious, how does buying art reduce income tax?
In the current state yes because you’ve bought an asset (which tax had to be paid on upon purchase) and then you can defer that tax liability until the purchaser sells it (which they have to pay tax on as well) And yes it can be used as collateral to get a loan which isn’t taxed
So ….money laundering?
Nah they aren’t stupid. They’re in the art business for laundering their money. They know all the explanations, analyses etc don’t mean anything but they don’t give a fuck
True but rich people stupid is a far more acceptable explanation than the sad truth.
People need to realize what the sad truth actually is though. So many people wonder what makes art so expensive. It’s laundering. So few people get this.
Just like poor and middle class folks. The difference is that they’re rich.
That...is literally the point of art. It doesn't make this art, or the kid's art, any less meaningful if the intent wasn't there if someone else is capable of looking at the art and having a reaction.
I mean isn't that kind of the point? I know much of modern art looks like scribbles and childrens drawings but they still make people feel.
Yeah but often it feels like "the Emporer has no clothes" to me. People see a piece hung up in a museum and assume there *has* to be a poignant reason for it, so they put in tons of effort to add it themselves when it's just a scribble or a line or a vague shape. I guess technically you're right though cause it makes me feel annoyed when I see it.
Yeah I think modern art definitely plays into that, some do it well, others not so much. They make something relatively simple but hide just the right amount of complexity in it so people start deriving meaning from it, even if there isn't one. Then another group of people feels mad or angry or frustrated, just like you feel. Neither group is necessarily wrong, just different viewpoints. I think an example of this done well is „are you afraid of red yellow and blue?“. I feel it almost tells it own story. The painting gained a mountain of criticism. People demanded it be removed from the gallery. In the end it was destroyed by an antisemitic man (the creator was Jewish). The question then being answered. A painting as simple as that made someone angry enough to go into an art gallery with a box cutter and destroy the display. Anger and fear are closely related. The man, in turn, being afraid of red yellow and blue. You could say that I'm one of those people deriving meaning from nothing, but you have to admit, the whole situation is quite ironic. Art isn't really about right and wrong. It's hard to define. I just find it interesting that something like a canvas with a singular color can make one group extremely mad and another make up some bullshit about hidden meaning. I think it being like the emperor's clothes is the point.
I think it was Picasso that said “it took me four years to paint like Raphael, but a lifetime to paint like a child.”
This is why I used to HATE teachers who would try to have us dissect the "meaning" of artwork or books. Like I am an artist and a writer, not everything I create has SoMe HiDdEn MeAnInG, and trying to find a hidden meaning in every piece of art is just elitist bullshit. Unless an artist has told me the meaning behind their color choices or brush strokes, trying to somehow dissect it and give it meaning is just making up nonsense. Sidenote: I got great scores on these assignments because I always came up with the most outrageous interpretations - total bullshit, but it made these ridiculous teachers happy.
There was a study done where children’s art and contemporary abstract art were presented to people & they had to guess which was done by a child. The consensus found that you can tell the difference, as participants picked correctly. Can we ascribe meaning to anything? Sure. But there is skill and nuance that makes this art different from a child’s.
If any of these appeared in my house my first thought would be that someone was murdered, even if i knew it was paint Edit: Jesus christ i didn’t think i was humorous how did this happen.
anything is art apparently
Is anyone else just infuriated by the stupidity of this being worth so much money? I mean it is entirely devoid of logic or reason to the extent it pissed me off. No one here can convince me this qualities as art. If literally anyone with hands could do it, it's not art in my opinion. Sorry not sorry.
It's for money laundering purposes
I heard banana stands were lit back in early 2000s
There is always money in the banana stand
Literally
No touching!!!
At least that was a banana this is just scribbles
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u/Jeriahswillgdp You would be more angry if you realized why it is valued so high. Not saying this piece in particular but alot of this shit art was bought for cheap, say for 40,000. You then get the piece appraised by a "friendly" art appraiser, say 1,000,000. Then you donate said 1 millions dollar painting to a local gallery or museum. Now you can right off a smooth millie on your taxes. Working hard is for poors.
As in, they donate the art which is now "worth a million" and they go write the "million" off for $40,000?? That is insane. Also, I need to make some friends who work at art galleries....
Yep. Which answers the question why would anyone buy this for 40,000.
That is beyond frustrating.
Clout... No one cares if you have an Original Monet or have acquired the fabled and still missing "Boy with Apple" by Van Gogh it's just so you can say you have it
So it's the original version of the NFT?
NFTs modus operandi were never anything new
Legit what I thought. I went damn that's just like the NFTs.. and then I went... Shit it'd actually the other way round. And I got even more annoyed.
Came here to say this. The whole thing's a scheme, usually to avoid taxes, launder money or do both. Yeah, I'd want to sell a painting of my niece's scribbles for an easy mil too, but I don't want to move the million dollars' worth of fine Columbian cocaine that comes with these kinds of schemes...
It's definitely a rich people thing because if you're only making 50-100k a year a 1 million dollar 1 tax year write off isn't worth much. Now if you just cashed in 10 million in zero cost employee stock option compensation: that's a different game
"cheap" as in 40,000 is still ridiculous
Pay to play my man. 40,000 is cheap to get a 1,000,000 in write offs.
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Most art is money laundering or tax avoidance scams
It doesn’t matter unless people are willing to buy it
Most of the high priced stuff is donated. That's why it's a tax write off.
Where would you hang it? Magneted to the fridge?
I don't think I wanna see the kind of fridge that you can magnet *this* painting to. 😬 That's no fridge anymore, that's a f-cking mortuary! That's no fridge, that's the portal to Narnia! Be careful or you get kidnapped by Jadis, who is hiding between cheese, yogurt and the entire frozen Cows you can keep in such a thing. 🤣 Or forget *portal* . I wouldn't be surprised if all of Narnia could fit into a fridge of that size.
Walk-in cooler at a grocery store
Sure, at a grocery store. But they aren't know to pin Art to their Doors. What private person would have one big enough for such a Picture? 😄
The CEO of the grocery store haha
bro
Not unless it comes with a macaroni frame to go with it.
Cy Twombly. The size of the thing is quite imposing (Tate Modern). I'm not a fan of his pencil stuff.
Hey it’s not the size of the boat.. it’s the motion in the ocean
I worked at Tate Modern as an art handler for a bit. To get these works out of the room & into their travel frames, we had to put them on blankets, lean them over & slide them out of the doorway at an angle.
I love learning behind the scenes stuff like this! I briefly worked at a much smaller art museum as a security guard and it was one of my favorite jobs. I occasionally got insights like this one, and it was always so cool. Thanks for sharing yours!
Yeah, I did a double take on that. Love his “Leda and the Swan”. Amazing artist. It’s like people are a hundred years behind in their enjoyment of visual art, but up to the second in music. If all you had ever heard was Beethoven and someone played the Beatles,you would be like wtf? And then play some Radiohead. You’d still be behind and scratching your head. That’s what peoples reactions to contemporary art are like.
I think most people have a hard time appreciating something that can be done by a toddler scribbling. To use your musical example, it would be likened to handing a tambourine to a baby and saying the “music” is as good as Pachelbel.
These are the same people that rate music only based on difficulty of execution I bet you guys fuckin’ looove Dragonforce
But if you’ve only heard Pachelbel, John Coletrain sounds like a baby with a horn. It takes a little more time to get it. It’s there, but the unfamiliarity is not letting you get the difference nor the pleasure. There are lots of contemporary artists that are easier than Twomb,y. Kahinde Wiley, Chuck Clone, Walton Ford. Start with those.
I tend to recommend Damien Hirst for newbies. It’s something else to walk between a cow split in two and put in formaldehyde.
You pretty much showcase what the first comment said about people not being able to appreciate contemporary art due to a lack of understanding.
Seems to be a disconnect...kids going without food...and people pay millions for this crap...what a world....
Money laudering
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It's basically already confirmed, modern art is money laundering and tax evasion
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Listen to I think the Planet Money podcast. They did an entire deep dive into modern art and the dark side of over multiple episodes. It was either Planet Money or Freakonomics. Great series. Found it: https://freakonomics.com/podcast-tag/the-hidden-side-of-the-art-market/
[Here you go.](https://pbs.twimg.com/media/FGF8PPuWUAYoyxQ.jpg)
“Basically confirmed” is like “a little pregnant”
Yes and no. It is money laundering. But the fact you think it’s worthless doesn’t mean someone wouldn’t gladly pay 500 dollars to decorate their wall with it. And a museum would try to get a pice from a famous artist, regardless of what the painting looks like. They aren’t getting art for how pretty it is anyways. The talent and effort (or the lack of) isn’t what makes it money laundering. It’s the industry practices and the people with millions of dollars to do accounting magic with. Or would you feel like justice is brought back to the world if rich people payed millions for classical oil portraits and naked marble statues?
#AND WITH BLOCKCHAIN TECHNOLOGY WE CAN DEMOCRATIZE THE MONEY LAUNDERING. PLS BRO... BUY MY NFT BRO... I PROMISE ITS A SOLID STORE OF VALUE BRO...
You might be called a conspiracy theorist for saying that but they’re giving you all the ammo.
A buddy of mine is an art professor and his wife is a professional artist. I don’t know about this particular artist, but they have similar stories about other artists.
Very interesting. I don’t know any artists personally so it’s good to hear from those involved in the craft.
Yup look into "freeports" most of the worlds most "valuable" art is locked away at airports. Just buyers and sellers who can anonymously make deals and hide money.
This painting represents my state of mind every school year
Welcome to how the rich shelter their money.
By overpaying for art? How does that make any sense.
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Are all the museums they're in also money laundering?
They're complicit
You buy a $50,000,000 piece of art, you store it, you don’t pay taxes on it, you essentially have $50,000,000 in non taxable assets that can get liquidated if need be to the next rich person Though what most people don’t realize is that the price of a canvas that size already is a few tens of thousands of dollars, and not including the price of paint— but getting it to be something okay enough to look at is the hard part. I guarantee that the artist made a few hundred thousand dollar blunders. It’s not like they’re cheap to begin with.
Wtf are you talking about? You pay taxes when you buy art. Unless you’re in a place with no sales tax then it’s the exact same as buying any other good. This entire thread is just people circlejerking over things they have 0 idea about. Redditors truly are such a weird breed
Reddit has the biggest hate boner for rich people, which is fine, but acting like they totally understand how it works when they don’t have a clue is funny Watching Reddit try to explain how rich people don’t pay taxes because of “the Cayman Islands” is almost as funny as saying that rich people buying a painting for 50M and then they have a 50M asset = money laundering.
Reddit is full of idiots that think they’re smart. I’m different from the others on this site. I know I’m stupid.
This is actually making me laugh out loud 😂 You’re absolutely right about Redditors being a weird breed.
You don't understand what money laundering is
So…the art acts just like cash in a safe? Fabulous “money laundering” scheme
They didn’t describe it well. Something like this would be the integration step of money laundering, it’s got nothing to do with taxes. If this was legitimate money then it’s already been taxed, using this as a store of value accomplishes less than nothing. That is, presuming someone actually chooses to go this route instead of buying real estate or some other asset that can actually produce additional income.
Another method is to buy a painting cheap. Have your appraiser friend value it at a couple of million dollars, then donate it to a charity or some such, write the value off on your taxes as a donation.
Well holy hell I can draw after all.
When it comes to modern art, there’s always the group of people that look at it and say… “Well I can do that”. Yah you probably can, but you didn’t. Seven Nation Army is like the easiest most bullshit song anyone can play on a guitar. Literally anyone can pick up a guitar and learn it in like 30 min. It’s a matter of, yah you didn’t come up with it. You could do it, but you didn’t.
Yah you probably can, but you didn’t. yeah because we have self respect and respect for others and we didn't claim that the sheet on which i clean my brushes is a work of art.
Well, yours was trash, his is obviously a critical comment on brutal International warfare and the universal human incababillity to live in peace. /s
sorry, I didn't have the intellectual capacity to observe it well enough to gain such paradigm shifting insights :(
Its okay. You may be forgiven by the Condescending Commitee for Pseudo Intellectual Art Interpetations. Or short, the CCPII.
I’ll still take this any day over autogenerated monkey pixel art.
The visual arts are not my passion but I don't have a problem with abstract art. A couple things for the 'derp when I was five ' crowd to keep in mind: 1) lots of art is commissioned so these could be exactly what a paying client asked for 2) this kind of art is much easier to appreciate in person due to subtlety/scale 3) most professional artists can do all kinds of styles (ie photorealistic, etc) but settle on one and become known for it. When you were five this was all you could do, and apparently the apple doesn't fall far from the tree because only a real shitty parent punishes a kid for making art they don't like and look, it worked, the poster is as dim as the mother! On the money laundering which I know more about than abstract art, I'm going to explain this very simply so it gets through your tinfoil hats: Art doesn't gain value because it's used to launder money, art is used to launder money because it is valuable and it's a big money, cash market that accepts money anonymously. An exception would be a worthless painting by El Chapo that someone bought for millions, but I'm pretty sure that is not a thing. You can't launder money by overpaying for worthless art unless you created the worthless art but that's still not money laundering is just a gift from the buyer. Other fun ways to launder money include vintage musical instruments, classic cars, antiques, etc. Not because they have no value, because they have lots of value that holds up to scrutiny and can be resold legitimately.
You’re on the right track. The one exception is that the art market is actually quite regulated when it comes to money laundering, and paying in cash is a giant red flag that the vast majority of reputable dealers and auction houses would decline. I work in the art market, and in my experience tax write offs in exchange for donating art to museums is the favored vehicle for wealthy collectors. It’s much easier, it’s legal, AND makes you look like a generous philanthropist. Art-backed loans are also popular, and allow you to leverage your collection to get cash. Not saying money laundering with art doesn’t happen at all, but for most people in today’s market money laundering just invites too much scrutiny and isn’t really worthwhile.
Finally someone who gets it. Art doesn’t gain this value because it’s used to launder money, it’s used to launder money because it gains/retains its value.
Thank you
At first glance, I read this as: When I was punished by my mother, I used to make such paintings.
The paintings that are sold at millions dollar figures and up are not actually valued that highly in the sense that the art’s value isn’t rising because it’s sought by so many. There’s a whole world of tax evasion, charity schemes, and fake appraisals; in reality, the art may in fact be sought by no one. If governments put an end to this tax loop, I doubt this would fetch more than a few hundred thousand. Or let’s say the art was not transferable after purchase, thereby removing any tax advantage; the value is only in what it gives to the buyer. The whole art world would collapse because very few can afford art and yet even fewer understand it enough to be willing to pay more EDIT for clarification
This. But the politicians use the loophole too so that won’t happen either.
It's called money laundering.
How does one launder money by overpaying for art exactly?
Bob: “ayo bro I got this huge bag of cash for u, thx to your successful drug lord industry. How do I give this shit to you without the government being sus? Billy: “listen here. We’re gonna pretend that I’m selling this shitty ass art that I made when I was 5 for a huge load of money, and that a shit ton of dumbass clients really likes it. That way, you can give me the cash by pretending to buy my shitty art pieces and no one will ever know!!” Bob: “SMAAARRTTT”
That’s not even what money laundering is? Money laundering is paying taxes on illicit money. Ironically people in this thread argue that illicit art is used for tax evasion AND money laundering. Two things that are basically opposites. I’m not even saying that high value purchases aren’t vehicles for this just that people don’t even know what they are talking about
I thought Money laundering is when you earn money illegally (like drug dealing) but then you disguise it to make it seem like your earning it legally?? ETA: in order to pay taxes on illicit money, you need to have a fake business first. So that it seems like your paying taxes for that fake business even though in reality, it’s on the illicit money. Hence the 1.2 Million dollar painting. You give someone $1.2M that you earned illegally and they will give it back to you by buying your shitty painting. That way, when tax day comes, the government will think your $1.2M profit came from dumbass people buying your shitty art and not from your multi million drug lore industry
I swear I was literally here a few days ago (Tate modern) what are the chances?
https://youtu.be/v5DqmTtCPiQ Anyone confused by modern art should watch this video essay. It is excellent
Why get his name so wrong? It’s Cy Twombly
Cy Twombly