Thursday, August 22, 2013

Picasso is so overrated!

How easy to impress are we, when art is involved?

Recently, a study shown that, at classical music competitions, judges seem to evaluate more based on the package in which music is delivered, rather than the music itself (found this at John Baez's blog). Prior to that, it was revealed that judges of abstract art don't guess so well which paintings were made by human artists, and which by monkeys. Wine tasters prefer French wines over Californian, unless the tasting is blind.

So, I finally got courage to say something I want to say for years, but I was afraid to be accused of art blasphemy. I think Picasso is so overrated! In my opinion, just in one painting, Family of Saltimbanques, “the masterpiece of Picasso’s Rose Period”, he severely broke several laws of perspective, physics, and even saltimbanques’s bones (before his cubist period). Below, I annotated a picture from Wikipedia:



The leftmost clown seems to have a problem with his shoulder, or his left humerus is way too long. The young boy carries a barrel, by holding it with a hand which is in front, from its bottom, which is behind. Probably he is using the force, like the lady in the right, who makes her hat levitating, while she probably trains her left hand for a contortion number. And like the overweight red clown, who holds a bag which doesn't hang under the point where it's held, even though he obviously doesn't have the right leg! Although I am by no means an expert, I think that these are elementary mistakes.

Picasso's paintings, together with van Gogh's, are the most expensive paintings in the world.

Monday, August 5, 2013

Magnetic Perpetuum Mobile



Is this a Magnetic Perpetuum Mobile?




The law of conservation of energy forbids perpetual motion. On the other hand, the small magnets in this image seem to be attracted / repelled by the large magnet, producing motion. As a child, I imagined this machine, and for a while I was perplexed, since on the one hand I knew it can't move forever, because it would break conservation of energy, but on the other hand, it is not that obvious what exactly happens that makes it stop.