It's Art, baby! But really what is Art? And how do you know it's Art?
At the beginning, the value of an Artwork (and implicitly the value of an Artist) was given by the Artwork itself, a value justified by mastership and canons.
Then, a time came for the Artist to have the heaviest word on Art: Art is what I, the Artist, declare to be Art.
Now slowly, but surely, we migrate towards a new zone, where neither the Artwork, nor the Artist has anything to say regarding the value of Art. The decision is in the eyes of the viewer, no matter if he or she is an art collector, a member in the board of some important fair or contemporary art center, a judge who decides the name of the winner in the race for some life changing award, a simple visitor who peruses an exhibition, or a hopeless ignorant whose eyes stop on Art as if they stop on a stone down the road.
Thus, the value of a contemporary artwork may register significant fluctuations, from absolute zero to figures with multiple zeros, with multiple commas between them. Hence, the whole scandal!
Then, a time came for the Artist to have the heaviest word on Art: Art is what I, the Artist, declare to be Art.
Now slowly, but surely, we migrate towards a new zone, where neither the Artwork, nor the Artist has anything to say regarding the value of Art. The decision is in the eyes of the viewer, no matter if he or she is an art collector, a member in the board of some important fair or contemporary art center, a judge who decides the name of the winner in the race for some life changing award, a simple visitor who peruses an exhibition, or a hopeless ignorant whose eyes stop on Art as if they stop on a stone down the road.
Thus, the value of a contemporary artwork may register significant fluctuations, from absolute zero to figures with multiple zeros, with multiple commas between them. Hence, the whole scandal!
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