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Where can I see Hokusai's Great Wave today?

(greatwavetoday.com)
123 points colinprince | 4 comments | 09 Jul 25 03:34 UTC | HN request time: 0.614s | source
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sharkjacobs ◴[09 Jul 25 05:31 UTC] No.44506614[source]▶
What's the advantage of seeing an original piece of art over a serviceable replica? Especially in the case where the "original" is a print, one of dozens.

Obviously "serviceable" is doing a lot of heavy lifting here, a replica might simply not be very good, might not capture some vital characteristic of the thing which makes it a great work.

But otherwise, it's basically that the knowledge of how important and significant this work is puts the viewer in a more receptive frame of mind, right?

To be clear, that's not nothing. I of course know firsthand how much that affects the impact of a painting, museums and galleries care a lot about how they display their collection. But is that it?

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1. ninetyninenine ◴[09 Jul 25 05:52 UTC] No.44506707[source]▶
Humans thrive on the illusion of that reality is better than the replica even when the replica is for all intents and purposes 100 percent identical.

In fact the replica can even be enhanced. Feed it into an LLM or diffuser and produce something better. But now we call this AI slop even when the slop is superior to most of what humans can ever produce in their lifetimes.

I think the key is not to pretend you’re above it. Don’t be that idiot in the corner asking stupid questions like “why do humans listen to music it’s just patterns of sound waves that have no intrinsic meaning and why do they sing songs and communicate in complicated ways when plain English works”

Are you human? Embrace your humanity and stop pretending you’re some genius savant who’s so above it all that he can’t comprehend human nature. You know why people want to see the real thing for the same reason why a bunch of people want to go to concerts and listen to music that is objectively worse than the recording. If you understand music then you understand art. Don’t pretend you don’t.

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2. sfn42 ◴[09 Jul 25 06:08 UTC] No.44506765[source]▶
I have some wool sweaters, home made by people I care about. I also have some store bought wool sweaters. By almost any measure, the store boughts are better. But I don't care about them.

If the store bought ones get destroyed or worn out I can just get a new one. The hand made ones are irreplaceable. They represent a huge personal time investment by someone who cares enough about me to do that work for me.

Art may be a little different but I reckon it's the same idea.

3. ◴[09 Jul 25 07:10 UTC] No.44507099[source]▶
4. MangoToupe ◴[09 Jul 25 08:44 UTC] No.44507648[source]▶
> You know why people want to see the real thing for the same reason why a bunch of people want to go to concerts and listen to music that is objectively worse than the recording.

This seems like such a blatant apples and oranges comparison I'm not sure where to begin:

1. Live music is often better than studio recordings, 2. You can record memories with loved ones there that have no analogue in viewing a static piece of art, and 3. You're supporting a living artist.

People just want to view the mona lisa to because it's an easily purchasable experience widely seen to have value. Or something like that; to be honest, I don't quite grasp the psychology and visiting paris seems like it's not worth the effort.