It’s difficult to discuss what makes art valuable and whether that value is natural or artificial, because there is no broad consensus on what art is, or how we determine what is art and what is not. The physical value of a painting is nearly nothing beyond the cost of the canvas, wood and paints that go into making it, and the financial cost of producing art is principally in the formal instruction and sheer time expended by the artist, both required to ‘pass’ various gatekeepers. Tertiary education will teach an artist how to hold a pen, a brush, a chisel; but principally it is a token of credibility and an opportunity to exhibit at lower levels, a stepping stone to break into the circle of galleries which cater to wealthy art collectors and prestigious museums. But what is it that transforms a hundred euros of supplies into a hundred million euros of art? And what makes one painting priceless and another one cheap?

Meaning isn’t a useful metric for value, nor is it synonymous with being able to understand the message, assuming one is intended. Can we truly identify the message of Kazimir Malevich’s Black Square or what Rothko meant with his untitled colour-blocked canvases? It’s also not synonymous with anti-capitalism, anti-corporatism or being created purely for the sake of creating art. Some of Rothko’s most famous works in the Tate Gallery were originally commissioned for a Four Seasons restaurant; Andy Warhol’s Campbell’s Soup series relies on the branding of the soup; and virtually all fine art in the medieval period in Europe was commissioned by the Catholic Church or rich patrons with explicitly Christian themes.

Technical refinement isn’t a decisive criterion either. Is Rembrandt or Jan van Eyck more refined than Paul Gauguin or Willem de Kooning; and if so, does that make Rembrandt or van Eyck ‘better’ than Gauguin or de Kooning? Elías García Martínez’s Ecce Homo was a more skilled though frankly boring representation of Christ, but Cecilia Giménez’s amateurish ‘restoration’ has created a lucrative tourist industry and provoked more discussion than Martínez’s original fresco ever did.  Aesthetics become even more troublesome in abstract art. If a Franz Kline painting is similar to a painting by Congo the chimpanzee, do they have the same value; or is there some intrinsic quality added by Kline, a 40-something college-educated human, that Congo, a 3-year-old chimp, can’t replicate?

by Franz Kline

by Congo the chimpanzee

Perhaps the most meaningful and telling division is between ‘fine art’ – that is, what is approved of by a self-styled intellectual elite, which purports to judge its refinement, aesthetics and meaningfulness – versus ‘kitsch’ and decoration, designed for mass production or popular appeal, with the aim of being attractive and recognizable. Roger Scruton of BBC News sniffs, “Kitsch is fake art, expressing fake emotions, whose purpose is to deceive the consumer into thinking he feels something deep and serious.”  Kitsch is art which isn’t; art is definitely aesthetically refined, except when it isn’t, and meaningful, except when it isn’t. Kitsch is labelled “fake” art, but the reality or fakeness seems to be entirely within either the observer or the often-inscrutable intentions of the artist.

Shakespeare, himself a writer whose value has waxed over the centuries, claimed “A rose by any other name would smell as sweet,” but the fact that a painting can lose its monetary value instantly if found to be a forgery — without possibly losing any intangible worth it might have in its expression or skill — suggests that value is connected to the market forces of scarcity and reliable branding. This also explains why prints, especially open editions, are nearly valueless in comparison to the original, despite the fact that the print may be a completely faithful replica; anyone can buy a print, but there is only one original. The trickle-down effect of popularity, the attempts of the lower classes to ape the cultural signifiers of upper-class intelligentsia, and the rise of inexpensive prints means that artists’ works may inadvertently jump the shark into ‘kitsch’ territory. Van Gogh’s The Starry Night, a painting he described as a “failure,” has become inescapable, an acceptably-sophisticated but accessible touchstone which crops up in everything from tattoos to shoes to mousepads. The Creation of Adam, a panel of Michelangelo’s Sistine Chapel ceiling, is so instantly recognizable that any two hands reaching can evoke it. Frida Kahlo occupies a uniquely feminine niche in the transition to kitsch, in that it is her person which has become a kitsch icon instead of her work.

While mainstream popularity (or obscurity) should have no impact on a work’s intrinsic worth, it definitely impacts its social cachet. Writing for the Telegraph, Alastair Smart declares, “… Van Gogh’s art isn’t enough any more. Yes, it was unique, and brilliant in its day, but those boots, sunflowers and cypress trees have become rather old hat. They’re fit for greetings cards, fridge magnets and hotel-wall reproductions, but no longer for inspiring the wow factor.”  That is, Van Gogh has become too popular to be good ‘art’.  Ironically, over-exposure itself breeds popularity.  A study by psychologist James Cutting showed people preferred artwork they were exposed to repeatedly, simply because they were shown it repeatedly, which suggests that the ‘canon’ of art must cyclically generate kitsch as the most celebrated and popularly-embraced works become passé.

Fine art, like precious gems, is valued through an opaque, dealer-controlled market wherein a small group of wealthy collectors determines what is collectable. Art dealer Marla Goldwasser agrees that while it’s possible to buy paintings of equal quality outside the price-manipulated gallery system for vastly less, you “miss the investment value and social prestige of building a collection.” Essentially, the root of artistic value is in wealthy people possessing something others can’t, by virtue of rarity or cost. Perhaps, then, it would be more honest to acknowledge the role of consumerism and of class stratification in the distinction between ‘art’ and ‘kitsch,’ and to distinguish between the intangible ‘worth’ of a piece and its monetary ‘value’.  While the ‘worth’ of an artwork may vary in subtle ways over time, its ‘value’ is definitely a product of fashion, strategic investment and what a small group of influential galleries and collectors decides merits collection.

Damien Hirst epitomizes this cynical, money-oriented, branding approach to art: his famous ‘spot’ paintings are valuable because they bear his name, but he doesn’t paint them.  Robert Hughes has criticized him, especially regarding the now-infamous diamond-encrusted skull and the formaldehyde-preserved shark, for “‘functioning like a commercial brand'” and suggested “both Hirst and his shark prove that art has lost all meaning separate from its price tag.”  Germaine Greer praises Hirst for this in response: “His undeniable genius consists in getting people to buy them. Damien Hirst is a brand, because the art form of the 21st century is marketing.” Caleb Larsen’s 2009 sculpture A Tool to Deceive and Slaughter takes this to its logical extreme. A featureless black box, it “perpetually attempt[s] to auction itself on eBay. […] If a person buys it on eBay, the current owner is required to send it to the new owner. The new owner must then plug it into ethernet, and the cycle repeats itself.”

The works which trickle down to bourgeois collectors and mass popularity have value because because the upper-class collectors, auction houses and galleries have assigned them value. This value is divorced from the worth of the work as art, because the value of art as a product is in its branding, marketing, exposure and prestige. Influential galleries give art value by setting high prices without a clear logic, by manipulating the prices at subsequent sales and auctions, by strategically limiting who can buy them – Daniel “Harry Potter” Radcliffe was an inadequately-prestigious collector to buy a Jim Hodges work despite having the cash – and by blackballing anyone who won’t play by their rules. Whether art makes a sensible financial investment, it also serves a secondary function as a pass into increasingly exclusive social circles: “Jackson Pollock paintings essentially serve as the admissions ticket to one of the world’s wealthiest and most exclusive clubs.”  The art people value is the art people are told to value.

Then the only comprehensible choice is to either acknowledge that art has precisely the value that a commercial entity says it has, or to embrace the fact that no one truly knows how to value art and that the price of art has no bearing on its worth. The only thing that transforms a hundred euros of art supplies into a multi-billion euro industry is what you can get away with, the smoke and mirrors that convinces people to pay the number on the tag.