Art Reboot

59 Joe slips into obscurity. Finding objective, intrinsic value in art is a largely futile exercise, as the following thought experiment may illustrate. Imagine hanging the top ten most expensive paintings in the world alongside a hundred carefully selected and well-painted works of similar types but by unknown or less well known artists. Throw in a Van Meegeren forgery of a Vermeer if you are feeling mischievous, or a Wolfgang Beltracchi fake of a Fernand Léger. Now erase the memories of the world’s wealthiest collectors so that they have no information whatsoever about the works or the artists, or their standing in the art world, their history of publi- cation and exhibition, their provenance or sales history. Then ask them to select the paintings they would be willing to pay fifty million pounds for, or even a mere million. I doubt that there would be a need for them to form an orderly queue to write a cheque! It is not the paintings alone that determine the value; it is our response to them. Artistic fame and value come from many sources: sociological context, biography, art history, exhibition, major museum and private collection ownership, sales records of both the individual work under consideration and other works by the artist. All contribute to cultural and commercial value.