ok, we take a van gough,which is “worth”, say…$40million, and offer it for sale at,say…$1million.
the only snag, is that its hung in a room with 40 other fakes,and you dont get to use x-rays etc to examine them, only your eyes.
if the “value” of the painting, is really able to be appreciated by the prospective (rich) buyer, based on his attraction for the “art”, how many so called “art collectors” would offer to buy simply on their own perception under these conditions? would the refusal to buy under this system prove that the whole art industry is the heap of shit we all know it is anyway?
Original art is valuable not only for its aesthetic appeal but as a historical item. If an original copy of the Declaration of Independence is worth more than a photocopy of it, does that mean original copy the Declaration of Independence has no intrinsic worth? Would you go to a room filled with a dozen perfect replica t-rex skulls and one real one and be willing to pay the same amount whether it was real or fake? I highly doubt it.
On the one hand it is considered that many of the paintings attributed to Van Gogh while he was in Arles are fakes. Many experts don’t believe that he had enough time to paint them all.
However a few years ago I read an article about a couple who have the best private collection of modern art in America. He is a taxi driver and she (I think) does house cleaning. The collection that they have gathered is worth millions but they bought every single work when the artist was a nobody.
hi gaudere – my point is that the valueable part of the declaration of independence,is surely WHAT it says, and not the paper it was written on, so whether it is the original or a copy,is not so important.
its when the money comes into the equation that the fun begins --- the art itself is always aloof from the criticism i make. my point is just in pointing out the absurdity of the way someone can be willing to pay millions for something which they cannot distinguish from an identical object, which can fulfill its purpose equally well, ie --hang on a wall and be looked at.
hi gaudere – my point is that the valueable part of the declaration of independence,is surely WHAT it says, and not the paper it was written on, so whether it is the original or a copy,is not so important.
its when the money comes into the equation that the fun begins --- the art itself is always aloof from the criticism i make. my point is just in pointing out the absurdity of the way someone can be willing to pay millions for something which they cannot distinguish from an identical object, which can fulfill its purpose equally well, ie --hang on a wall and be looked at.
There’s a joke in the collecting world, about three guys who were stranded in the middle of the sea, and became millionaires by trading their hats back and forth…
The “value” of a thing is what someone else is willing to pay for it…
I remember the boom and bust in comic book collecting. There, on my shelf, a comic book went from $2.25 cover price, to over $2,000, and back to about $20. The same physical object, which never changed a whit!
Van Gogh is valuable, solely because of a consensus in the collecting world. Weird, innit?
Trinopus
Trinopus is right on the money.
Even money itself, cold cash, has very little intrinsic value. You can’t eat it, live in it, or wear it efficiently. But it can be reliably exchanged for food, shelter, and clothing.
Art has value because people are willing to pay for it. That doesn’t mean the "whole art industry is the heap of shit " as the OP so eloquently put it. It means that the whole art industry has developed a consensus concerning the value of art, and that concensus is reliable enough to produce a reasonably steady market.
The OP should read about speculation, tulips and Holland sometime.
- Rick
The average collector may not tell the difference, but an educated art critic could. The collector is not buying the art, he is buying the esteem of the conniseuer, or (even better) the illusion that he is one.
The creasote kid is right. Rich bastards are phony. If these jerks were at all interested in the intrinsic artistic value of a painting they would hire a competent forger to paint them copy of a masterpiece for ten bucks an hour and then they would sit back and enjoy the painting that the forger had painted. What does it matter, dear artlover, if only a chemical analysis can determine the difference? Huh?
And historians, your time is short too, in times ahead replicas will fill your museums and the money saved by your much reduced budgets will feed the poor or go towards the space program for the benefit of all of mankind, not just for those who can hype pretence. 
It’s called an investment, dumbass. Why don’t you work real hard and make a lot of money. Then you, little one, can spend your money however you see fit.
Haj
Excuse me. I thought that this was a Pit thread. I take that back.
Haj
I was thinking about this recently when reading about Teri Horton. She paid $5 at a thrift store for a huge and ugly (to her, at least) painting in a thrift store as a gag housewarming gift for a friend who had just moved into a tiny camper. It turns out that it could be a Jackson Pollock.
Art experts say that it is definitely painted in Pollock’s style and is qualitatively as good as Pollock’s work. If it IS a Pollock then it could be worth as much as $25 million at auction. If it’s NOT a Jackson Pollock, then it’s essentially worthless (though somebody may pay a few hundred or even a few thousand for its aesthetic value, so it’s still a good return on a $5 investment). It seems idiotic: the painting is just as good and just as odd and just as unique either way, done in the same style and in the same era and of the same materials, but a completely arbitrary matter of origin could make it worth the price of a 20 seater private luxury jet or the price of a used sofa.
Rembrandt was furious in his own lifetime that copies of his work sometimes sold for more than the work itself. Today a genuine Rembrand outsells a copy made by another artist the same year (some of them signed by Rembrandt himself) by hundreds of times. Total postmodern madness.
Even as technology makes it easier to detect faked paintings, the fakers have gotten more sophisticated. Take the dutchman Hans van Megheren-he had a flourishing business faking “Vermeer” paintings. His forgeries were so good that they fooled the Netherland’s foremost Vermeer expert (Dr. Abraham Bredius). What tripped him up: he sold some fake paintings to the Nazi art collector Hermann Goering. After the war, a Dutch court charged van Megheren with treason, and his defense was that he had painted the "Vermeers"in question. What the forger had done:he scraped the paint off of old paintings and repainted scenes in Vermeer’s style. He used pigments that were used by Vermeer, and used subjects that Vermeerwasknown to have painted.
I would guess that a competent forger could duplicate ANY artist’s work,given enough time and money.
The monetary value of “the great paintings” is something that I don’t have to concern myself about. I can’t own or invest.
But I know what it is like to value a Van Gogh for other reasons. I’ve had my own searing yellow Remy. And I’ve loved Wyeth enough to walk the rooms of the Olsen House and realized the beauty of common things. I notice what light can do to faces more often because of Rembrandt.
I would be happy to have a forgery in my house, but I wouldn’t mind admitting that it wasn’t the original. But the idea of someone being able to recreate a master’s work for $10 an hour is extremely funny to me.
Look at Andrew Wyeth’s Helga pictures. You can count the hairs on her head.
Aw shoot, Haj (May I call you Haj?), I don’t mind at all. I want to be your friend. I added you to my Buddy list. I bet I will learn a lot from a smart guy like you, Haj. You know, like investing and all.
Catch you on the flip-flop, Haj goodbuddy.
Let’s suppose that one day you inherit the original draft, written by Abraham Lincoln, of the Gettysburg Address. (I imagine you could sell it at Sotheby’s for mucho dinero.) A collector offers to take the paper from you and give you a photocopy in exchange. He’ll also pay you ten bucks for your trouble. Would you go for it?
Why should art escape from the normal market forces? What’s so special about art that it must retain financial purity? Why shouldn’t it be tossed to and fro on the waves of capitalism, like anything else that’s traded for money?
The value of an original artwork (or any other work) lies in the fact that it is the original.
Since you show as example a painting, I shall use that to clarify.
- The artist used canvas and colour to make appear his view on an object, landscape, person, whatever.
- To be able to do this, the artist uses his talent.
- That talent helped the artist to become skilled in whatever is needed to be able to reproduce what he wants to become visible with use of materials like canvas, paint, colours (and how to mix them).
- All of this makes it for the artist possible to develop and show his own particular style when reproducing what he wants to become visible on the canvas.
- Nobody but the artist himself can ever possess that same combination of talent and skills that leads to devellopment of his own particular style which has led to this particular painting being created.
- Nobody but the artist himself has the brain where all this talent and skills reside and which makes it possible to make the painting.
An original painting thus gives us the original talent, skill, style (and all the work and time that was needed to develllop them) of an artist.
That artist gives us with his painting a creation of his unique mind and how that mind uses his talent and skills :
How he views the object,
how he uses his talent when mixing the colours to come to the wanted effect,
how he uses his brush to bring the colour on the canvas,
his view on perspective (or non),
his view on reproducing the lightfall on the object (or non).
and so on…
Everything that is needed for a canvas to become upgraded from an empty white piece of cloth to a work of art that catches and represents the whole personality of the one who painted it, can only be found in the original work made by the original artist = the creator.
Those who make a copy - how skilled they may be - only do just that:
They copy what the creating artist painted
= They only follow his example and bring nothing new to life at all
= They don’t create.
They copy a creation.
It is quite possible that the work of the copyist is just as beautiful as the original.
But it is not the original = It is not the creation of the work itself but a reproduction of what was already created.
If a copyist creates something that is uniquely a product of his own talent and skills, he becomes himself the unique creator of that work.
Nobody can compete with that, others can only try to copy it if they feel such an urge to copy. That copying can be succesfull, yet the result has no other value then that it delivers a beautiful copy.
If you print a book that was originally handwritten by someone else, or if you are able to make an exact copy of the original handwritting and then make a copy of the original, does that mean that you wrote the book?
Does your copywork becomes suddenly what was born out of the talent and mind of the original writer? Are you by making a copy all of a sudden the creator of the story?
From your OP one can deduct that you have something against:
- people being rich and (rich bastards???)
- being therefore able to invest some of their money in original artworks.
Why is that?
Replicas are OK to study on when the original is out of reach or has disappeared. They are in many cases even extremely important because they provide for unique sources to gain insight in a past that would be lost without them.
But they can never replace an original since they aren’t the original.
I fail to see what your rather condenscending remarks on “feed the poor” or “space program” or “hype pretence” has to do with the work of historians.
Or do you belong to a category of people who pretend that history is “only the past” and has as such no importance let be influence on the present?
Do you have a cold shower where you live?
Salaam. A
Good grief. I agree with Aldebaran. Has Hell frozen yet?
This reminds me of a popular refrain sung widely back during the sixties…
- The end I fear is near my dear
All things have jumped their phylum
Ducks climb trees and cats swim seas
And facts agree with Milum.*
“Ah yes, the value of an original artwork (or any other work) lies in the fact that it is the original.” said Andy Warhol to his team of twenty silk screeners screening twenty-four dozen original prints of Elvis Presley in various pastels with two guns drawn, as he prissed through the room late for his midday tea.
Jeez! Don’t you folks read? The Fine Art Painting Market is a joke. Jeez!
(by the way the term “Rich Bastards” is a term of derision. All rich people aren’t bastards and all rich people don’t have the need of the ostentatous display of wealth through pretentious paintings that may or may not be authentic. All pricesless painting have now been painted and painting as a vibrant artform is on its way out.)
____________So there!