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Comment by smallnix | Hacker News Reader

But why do we have to rely on experts to experience 'proper' art?

My naive thought was, that Art is not like a bridge, which would collapse if built by amateur's.

But perhaps art has effects on us which are beneficial and these would actually 'collapse'.

We don’t need to rely on experts to experience art - I think that is a fundamental part of art- within the limits similar to free speech, anything is art. (But don’t block rush hour traffic with your interpretive dance troupe)

Is a painting by AI art? Sure

Is a painting by Monet better than one painted by me? Most people would say yes.

Can some people explain why? Yes. They are not “experts” in the same way the Oxford Professor of nuclear physics is an expert but it is on the same scale.

Or possibly I am just hallucinating the argument because you prompted me to…

Experts can help frame and understand an art piece. They can provide information regarding the craft, how the piece fits with other work from that time, what were the cultural influences, how the life of the artist influenced the work, etc. but you never had to rely on experts to experience or identify what proper art is. However at the end of the day art is a social concept, it’s something we negotiate between us, humans, and people are attracted to what they believe is considered good and important by others

Thanks … nicely put

That helps me frame the experts vs science idea.

Science is just the parts that evidence does not disprove.

Expertise is understanding how the various explanations we have with science fits together, framing it as it were, and using that understanding to make sensible directional choices. Of course those predictions may later be proven wrong (light is a wave, waves need mediums, ether must exist) but they are more likely than guessing

Science is interesting, because it is at the same time the method and processes, and I think also a vision of what search for truth should be? An expert in that case is (always?) a scientist. When considering art, experts aren't always artists, they can be pure researchers (for some odd reasons I was at a point familiar with people from the art history academic world in my hometown, they weren't artists at all but had a lot of context to provide when discussing an art piece). But maybe it is just different types of expertise.

In any case I do think there is value in the link you're making

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