New Hill violins

[PhilipKT]

31 minutes ago, JohnCockburn said:

I reckon a mud pie made by Damien Hirst would cost several orders of magnitude more  than an apple pie made by my mother (which would, of course, be peerless) .

Yes indeed, but Mr Hirst has “a certain skill”

[Rue]

Just now, PhilipKT said:

Yes indeed, but Mr Hirst has “a certain skill”

Called 'self-promotion' and 'friends in high places'...

[deans]

3 hours ago, David Burgess said:

Have other business actually bought them, or have they accepted them on consignment? The two would be very different financial and investment risks, I would think.

I would expect that they are placed in the shop and cash only flows when the end user plops it down.  But I'm sure there are all kinds of business models.

[HoGo]

4 minutes ago, PhilipKT said:

Yes indeed, but Mr Hirst has “a certain skill”

It's called marketing skill. He found a way to sell rich folks s#!t and still make them feel like they made good business. This world is confusing...

[PhilipKT]

19 minutes ago, HoGo said:

It's called marketing skill. He found a way to sell rich folks s#!t and still make them feel like they made good business. This world is confusing...

Yes...and go look up Thomas Kinkaide...

[Michael Szyper]

On 12/16/2019 at 12:13 AM, VicM said:

That was a retorical question. A trauma Surgeon learns thousand of times more than a person making violins and his/her work is so much more important it is not even to be compared. That means the amount of time took you to "learn" has no value by comparison. Also, when trauma surgeon makes a mistake you are in very deep trouble. When you make a mistake it is just a piece of wood of no value BY COMPARISON. If it takes you one moth to make a violin and one month (sic!) to varnish it then maybe you are slow or not competent enough. Sure, it can not take 200 hours to varnish small piece of furniture. To me it looks like violin makers want to be payed for their ineficiency  or just because they exists.

Seldom read so much nonsense at a time.

From my experience I don’t think that making violins is easier than surgery. 
 

[David Burgess]

15 minutes ago, HoGo said:

It's called marketing skill. He found a way to sell rich folks s#!t and still make them feel like they made good business. This world is confusing...

The banana duct-taped to a wall has also been interesting in the "art world". My first inclination would be to consider it a satire of "the art and collectibles" world.

[deans]

25 minutes ago, Michael Szyper said:

From my experience I don’t think that making violins is easier than surgery. 

I might be inclined to believe that. But the stakes are higher. A crappy violin job and you wasted some nice wood, thats it.

[PhilipKT]

 

44 minutes ago, David Burgess said:

The banana duct-taped to a wall has also been interesting in the "art world". My first inclination would be to consider it a satire of "the art and collectibles" world.

Perhaps I am a Philistine, but I think exactly the same thing about Jackson Pollock. A multi million dollar thumbing of the nose.

[Rue]

Not quite.

Visual Art, like music, has different facets. If you are a "real" artist - and you've done all you can to explore 'inside the box', the next logical step would be to explore outside of the box. So you are building on a sound foundation.

That exploration can take many forms; 

- colours

- media

- application 

- subject matter

- size

- political, societal, etc. commentary, and so on.

No one has to like the outcome, but it's valid.

That's not remotely the same as someone who wakes up one day, with no background or foundation, and says "I think I'll copy what someone else is doing - but it will be different because I'm doing it."

1 hour ago, PhilipKT said:

Perhaps I am a Philistine...

*giggle* Phil...short for...get it? *hahaha* 

[PhilipKT]

19 minutes ago, Rue said:

Not quite.

Visual Art, like music, has different facets. If you are a "real" artist - and you've done all you can to explore 'inside the box', the next logical step would be to explore outside of the box. So you are building on a sound foundation.

That exploration can take many forms; 

- colours

- media

- application 

- subject matter

- size

- political, societal, etc. commentary, and so on.

No one has to like the outcome, but it's valid.

That's not remotely the same as someone who wakes up one day, with no background or foundation, and says "I think I'll copy what someone else is doing - but it will be different because I'm doing it."

*giggle* Phil...short for...get it? *hahaha* 

 My own feeling is that something that is random cannot be art because even the artist does not know what is going to be the result. Aleatoric music is not music. It may be MusiCAL, because in a sense all sounds are musical. But it can’t be music, because the composer doesn’t know what he’s going to get, and he can’t repeat it. He does not know himself whether he will like the final results. 

Last season to Dallas opera performed a loathsome opera called “the sunken Garden” I think in one of the reviewers referred to the music as “generic atonality”

He omitted the fact that it was extremely difficult to count, but my own feeling was that if the composer himself did not care what notes I played, I wasn’t going to either.

So Pollack is a charlatan, And the people who pay millions for his inkblots are fools. I was astonished that Salvador Dali’s  iamazing painting Of Lincoln from the five dollar bill was easily purchased by the Dali museum in St. Petersburg for only $1 million.

Thomas Kincaide also had fame without merit, But it was a different kind.

[Three13]

Having seen film of Pollack working, and having observed some of his paintings closely, I’m not sure that I’d say it’s fair to characterize his work as random.

It may not be to one’s taste, and the method of paint application may not have been typical, but he certainly was working in an organized fashion. 

I would also suggest that the Abstract Expressionists were hardly satirizing the art world in the way that the aforementioned banana clearly was.

[jacobsaunders]

6 hours ago, David Burgess said:

The banana duct-taped to a wall has also been interesting in the "art world". My first inclination would be to consider it a satire of "the art and collectibles" world.

Duct-taping a violin to the wall would have been much more sensible, since it wouldn’t go rotten after a week or so

[JacksonMaberry]

18 hours ago, PhilipKT said:

You’re not paying for the labor. You are paying for the skill. If I understand correctly, Marx equated time with labor. An hour to produce a mud pie equaled the hour spent making an apple pie, so to his mind it was equal.

He was mistaken. It takes a certain skill to make a violin. And it takes a certain skill to make a fine violin. The two are not equal.

That's actually a pretty poor reading of Marx, but otherwise we agree. 

[PhilipKT]

58 minutes ago, JacksonMaberry said:

That's actually a pretty poor reading of Marx, but otherwise we agree. 

I’m welcome to be corrected. One of the things I constantly tell my students is that saying something is bad is negative without any benefit. Saying what is bad, Why it is bad, and sharing what is not bad is very beneficial.

[Michael Szyper]

Disliking someone’s work usually has different reasons. 

1. It is really bad work

2. The work does not fit your taste

3. You don’t understand the work

4. You actually would like it if your own work wouldn’t compete with it

 

honestly guys, how often no 1 applies?

[vathek]

13 hours ago, jacobsaunders said:

Duct-taping a violin to the wall would have been much more sensible, since it wouldn’t go rotten after a week or so

And less likely to be eaten.

[JacksonMaberry]

15 hours ago, PhilipKT said:

I’m welcome to be corrected. One of the things I constantly tell my students is that saying something is bad is negative without any benefit. Saying what is bad, Why it is bad, and sharing what is not bad is very beneficial.

That's a good point! I regret the dismissive tone of my prior message. Marx (and other economic philosophers) are so often misrepresented that I get a little snippy about it, but it's not worth getting worked up over. 

In a nutshell, the idea you attributed to Marx, that time=money is not true, but it is a pretty common misconception. The concepts of the Labor Theory of Value and  Socially Necessary Labor help clear up the confusion. If you are interested in talking more about it at any point, let's take it to private message so as not to detract from the topic at hand further. 

[PhilipKT]

17 minutes ago, JacksonMaberry said:

That's a good point! I regret the dismissive tone of my prior message. Marx (and other economic philosophers) are so often misrepresented that I get a little snippy about it, but it's not worth getting worked up over. 

In a nutshell, the idea you attributed to Marx, that time=money is not true, but it is a pretty common misconception. The concepts of the Labor Theory of Value and  Socially Necessary Labor help clear up the confusion. If you are interested in talking more about it at any point, let's take it to private message so as not to detract from the topic at hand further. 

Thank you very much, I will look up both of those concepts and probably disagree, but at least I will be clear about what I am disagreeing on, ha ha. Thank you again.

[David Burgess]

18 hours ago, jacobsaunders said:

Duct-taping a violin to the wall would have been much more sensible, since it wouldn’t go rotten after a week or so

Possibly, but a violin wouldn't have produced the cloud of fruit flies, which may have contributed to the artistic merit

[matesic]

Can anyone figure out what went on here? 

https://app.amati.com/en/auction/1062-amati-specialist-29th-january/168-a-violin-for-the-workshops-of-w-e-hill-sons-london-1934

"Made in", "from" or "for" the Hills workshop?

[David Burgess]

3 hours ago, matesic said:

Can anyone figure out what went on here? 

https://app.amati.com/en/auction/1062-amati-specialist-29th-january/168-a-violin-for-the-workshops-of-w-e-hill-sons-london-1934

"Made in", "from" or "for" the Hills workshop?

From the documents, it appears that in 2012, a violin "made for" the Hill shop was traded in on a violin "made in" the Hill shop, and that the violin currently for sale is the German violin "made for" the Hill shop.

[matesic]

I see it pretty much the other way up!

Unfortunately the two invoices aren't dated but I think the first transaction of £1800 involved the purchase of a German violin c.1880 for which an unidentified violin was traded in part-exchange. In 2012 (possibly immediately after the sale?) Guivier's valued the German violin quite reasonably at £2000 for insurance purposes. The second transaction of £4000 involved the purchase of the illustrated violin which Guivier's described as "made in" the Hills workshop in accordance with its label, presumably taking the German violin in part exchange but allowing just £700! Then in 2015 Guivier valued the Hills' violin at £4500, but described it only as "from" the Hills' workshop! Now Amati have depreciated it further by their description of it as "for" Hills'!

Nullius in verba.