In software development I tend to believe that the idea is not particularly valuable. The real value is being able to implement an idea effectively. That is what makes a great product work.
It is striking how differently the art technicians in this article think. They see the idea as having all the intrinsic value. More cynically I wonder if it is really the marketing value of a big name rather than the quality of ideas that count. A great idea by an art student is far less valuable than a great idea from a famous painter or sculptor.
“Very little is actually about execution, because the execution's primary purpose is to represent the idea. It's the actual idea that contains the values.” This quote from the article is a strange reflection of what the world of software development teaches.
My take on it is that it is the artist that brings the idea and make it come to light, they do this by letting other people do the work but they are still the visionaries and in charge of the execution of art.
Good examples of ideas and execution is plentyfull in both software and art, just because you get both of them right doesn't mean you will succeed.
This just doesn’t represent reality of contemporary art. It’s a bullshitters game. These artists almost never even have a vision that is important to them. They behave as such, but the project motivations are consistently reflexive. They are just a response to what they thing will help their recognition. This is just not about expression.
Historically, this is extremely wrong. Renaissance artists were the technicians of course. That’s what they were known for.
This is the rot of an industry built on extracting funds from overly wealthy patrons with no limit to the amount of dishonesty.
"Renaissance artists were the technicians of course. That’s what they were known for."
That's only partially true.
While Renaissance masters usually had the skill to execute a fully finished work, and probably did so during their own apprenticeship, by the time they became masters they often had workshops of dozens or even hundreds of assistants who did almost all of the work for them. After the work was almost complete, the master might come in and put on some finishing touches.
There's lots of art out there these days that's misattributed to the master when it was actually done by one of his assistants in the workshop, whose training was usually centered around creating art that looked just like the master's.
The difference is that software has to be functional. You can literally call a urinal or a can of soup "art", and if your "idea" (i.e. social status) is good enough then people will believe you.
Emin's "Unmade Bed" - pretty sure that, eg from the title, was cocking-a-snook at the establishment in a "let's see what crap I can make them buy". Though it does have a place in an area of art that intrigues me, that of "uncreated" or "unconsciously created" works.
If you think Duchamp was pulling a fast one you'll probably think Emin to be some sort of queen of hustlers.
Although I am not an Entrepreneur, I have read some books and blogs around Entrepreneurship. The conses seems to be that Entrepreneurs almost universally put way to much value and weight into their idea. In business the idea isn't worth shit, the execution is.
In a capitalist system, the economic value of anything is whatever the market is willing to bear. That economic value is largely uncorrelated with any particular assessment of intrinsic value.
Like many businesses, the art business is primarily driven by marketing. The act of painting is largely orthogonal to the act of persuading an oligarch that your painting is valuable.
Is there a better way of assigning/determining value? Make everything equal? Randomly pick one? The first one to market wins (essentially what we have right now)?
It is striking how differently the art technicians in this article think. They see the idea as having all the intrinsic value. More cynically I wonder if it is really the marketing value of a big name rather than the quality of ideas that count. A great idea by an art student is far less valuable than a great idea from a famous painter or sculptor.