Which is a reason why I somehow dislike Antiques Roadshow and similar programmes. The experts are always very eager to tell the owners of things examined how much they are “worth”. In my opinion nothing has any value at all until the moment when a buyer and a seller agree on a price.
Makes sense. I think something concrete to take away from this is next time I decide to spend $45 million on a painting, I should either really like it a lot or I’d better read up first and make sure the artist is an actual somebody.
I really have nothing to add about this particular artist, but I agree with needing to see abstract (and impressionist) art in person. All 3 panels of Monet’s Waterlilies were at the Nelson-Atkins last spring and if my viewing partners hadn’t been getting restless and bored, I could have stared into that painting for hours. There are also some wonderful abstract pieces there that the younger me didn’t get, but now I see them and have actual reactions to them, some good, some bad, some still meh. My decorating style is most definitely not skewed toward abstract art, but my appreciation for the style has risen.
But I would still not pay $44 million on piece of art.
And now I want to take the afternoon off and go to the museum.
Usually the artist would be dead by the time their work is considered worth that much. Scarcity is part of the valuation process. If the artist isn’t going to make anymore, then the value can go up.
Excellent write up Professor.
I have never seen this nor will I ever see 44 mil… but I have to admit, that is an amazing piece of art. Money aside, it is gorgeous. On a continuum from “complete hype” to “true art” where do you place it? Money aside of course.
Okay, from the art history point-of-view, it’s the youngest sibling to the famous older brother. It’s the same artist making the same point. But, since he’s the originator of the concept, he’s allowed. After all, how many haystacks did Monet paint? So, it’s true art, and most major art museums would be very happy to have it in their collections. Personally, I prefer the Impressionists.
First of all - sure; thanks.
Second of all - value and the iconic/seminal status of some artists and works: Sure, to WIDELY varying degrees, context matters a big deal. If a work/artist is held out over time as having added to the “ongoing conversation of art” in a big way, that adds a lot. I suppose a classic example would be Duchamp’s Readymades - e.g., the famous Signed Urinal (links to wiki:
Readymades of Marcel Duchamp - Wikipedia;
Fountain (Duchamp) - Wikipedia ).
Duchamp’s Readymades are a Big Deal in the Ongoing Conversation of Art because Duchamp challenged the definition of Art as Thing (a painting, a sculpture, etc.) vs. Idea (you can choose to look at something with an Art POV). Signing the urinal demanded that you at least consider it as art - so the idea exists even if you reject it. Whoa*.
*at least, from the perspective of the Big Game Art World.
…and yet…it’s a flippin’ porceline urinal worth a small bit - but I bet if it came up for sale, it would go for millions. The…totemic value of Duchamp’s Idea is in that silly-ass pee-sink.
Pulling back a bit, Objects that qualify as First Appearances typically matter. I have a number of First Edition books - I have sold many, and given my choices and some luck, done very well. You can read To Kill a Mockingbird online - but there is a big enough group that feels value in that First that it continues to climb in value. Will it for a long stretch? Ah, that’s where risk comes in 
Human response to physical objects is undenialable - Proust got 7 volumes out of the smell of French cookies from his childhood. It is not surprising that Big Game Trophy Art Hunters will place a premium on works recognized as Significant - even if only in an insider-baseball sorta way. So it goes.
I really don’t know squat about art, but I am going to try to make a good faith effort to explain why it can sell for $44 million anyway.
I think the reason why this piece, or any piece, would sell for such a huge amount of money is because it is the work of a critically acclaimed artist. If, hypothetically, I (a complete unknown) were to go out and paint exactly that painting today (in some counterfactual universe where I had the ability to do so, and where the painting hadn’t already been painted by someone else), there is zero chance that I could sell it today for millions of dollars.
Why is an original copy of the Declaration of Independence worth millions? Because it’s hard to get (due to rarity), and because there are some rich people who really like U.S. history. It’s the same for any kind of valuable collectible, from fine art to Star Wars memorabilia. Just replace “U.S. history” with “Star Wars” or “the works of artist X” or whatever.
So then, the question you really need to be asking is not “Why is this worth $44 million dollars?” It’s “Why do people like Newman’s work and consider him a notable artist to begin with?”
Why do people like this stuff? Well, for one thing, [some] people find it evocative. And the fact that it is able to be evocative while being so minimalist is impressive. Also, at the time Newman and Rothko were creating works like this, the idea of making art out of basically just color and nothing else was creative and original.
I’m sure there are other reasons too, but like I said, I know nothing about art. But my point is, asking “What about this painting’s artistic merit makes it worth $44 million?” is the wrong question. The price tag is not a measure of artistic merit (which can’t really be quantified anyway). It’s worth that much because enough rich collectors like it and it’s hard enough to get. If another painting sells for $22 million, it doesn’t mean that it was half as good a work of art. The price is determined by economics, not artistic merit. Artistic merit is one of several factors that can affect demand.
For what it’s worth, I think this painting is beautiful and evocative. If I were a super rich person with a strong desire to own the paintings I like, then maybe I’d pay millions for it. But neither of those things are remotely true, so forget it.
I still feel the emperor has no clothes. These artists can say that their paintings symbolize something but I look at the painting (and I have seen originals in museums) and I don’t see any connection between what they’re claiming is the subject and the work itself.
Barnett Newman or his supporters can claim that a line represents the way that life is both physical and metaphysical but how does that line do this? How does any line do that? If Newman claimed that a line represented the concept of man’s inhumanity to man or the illusion of free will or laughter is the best medicine, it would make just as much sense. He just painted a line, came up with a philosophical concept, and said this equals that.
And if you subtract the meaning, what do you have left? At least with Mondrian or Pollack or Still, you can find some aesthetic merit. Their paintings are pleasant to look at even without meaning. For lack of a better term, they’re pretty pictures. With Newman or Rothko, you don’t even get that.
Totally cool - YMMV. Artists can pile up words that don’t help - they’re freakin’ artists. Look, either you stand in front of a Color Field-type painting and experience the quasi-hypnotic effect I mention above - and find that interesting - or you don’t. Some folks do. And some folks found that art that impacted the viewer based on this approach Significant.
I could create a pretty exact copy of Hamlet, but that doesn’t diminish William Shakespeare.
One reason why artists still do art, old fashioned brush on canvas art, is that much of art comes alive only if you are in the same room as it. You’d think that with the high-tech color reproduction systems we’ve developed that seeing a good picture of art would be enough. But it’s not. And in many cases, especially in these types of abstract paintings, a reproduction kills it dead.
The size of the work matters, for one thing. A painting larger than your body can’t be reduced to a thumbnail and retain the power of its size. If you can’t see all of it as a totality, your eye is drawn to sections, or aspects, or colors, or divisions, and that creates a feeling that is different than seeing it whole. And that feeling changes every time you look at it, giving the work a living history of viewing.
The gradations of the color can be immensely important in flat art, in ways that simply don’t show up in any picture. The color is not the same as the painting of a wall. It’s far subtler and deliberately controlled. And the brushwork matters, the texture created by the paint matters, the directionality of the strokes matters, all the aspects of creating a dimensional and moving sheen to a flat piece of canvas matters, matters as much in a seemingly solid wall of color as it does when looking at Renaissance masters. Art historians make whole careers from studying paintings by their technique (here’s an analytical papers with lots of equations on how Van Gogh wielded every stroke from the IEEE!). Abstract artists deserve to be given as much recognition for their brushwork.
Art is valuable because you have to be there to appreciate it. Just you and the canvas, one-on-one and personal. And therefore unique, something that cannot be replicated, even when part of a series of similar works. They may lack the unique elements that make this particular piece of art not just work, but work outstandingly.
That piece of art still might not work for you, even if it were in your living room (although that’s probably not a good place to display an eight-foot painting, but that’s a side issue). The point is that you can’t dismiss a painting because you saw a 2"x4" picture of it on a computer screen. You haven’t actually seen it at all. Whether it’s good or bad, great or contemptible, valuable or rubbish is something you can’t comment on in any meaningful way. You’ve never seen its reality. And its reality is everything.
What does a symphony mean?
Art doesn’t have to be interpretable. Sometimes, it can just be a thing you experience. If I stand in front of a Rothko, I experience something. It makes me feel interesting things. Whether or not these things are the same things you experience doesn’t make my experience any less valid.
There’s this weird idea floating around that works of art are just mechanisms for passing messages in secret code. This has a couple of corollaries:
- That there’s a correct way to decode a work of art.
- That a work of art is reducible to its encoded message.
But this way of thinking about art misses the point entirely. If you want to send someone a message, you write a memo. You don’t paint a painting. You paint a painting to structure an experience for the people who will later stand in front of it.
I am glad that this discussion took such an interesting turn.
One probably has to have a reasonably good understanding of modern art history to really appreciate that piece. I think that I understand now. He extended what others were doing at the time in an interesting, intelligent and unique way.
The price paid for the piece never bothered me or, I think, most of the posters here. The OP was asking about the artistic merit, not the monetary value.
I have stood and stared at Rothkos; I get no meaning from staring at them nor do I get lost in them or feel hypnotized. No more than I do staring at a wall. This Newman looks exactly the same as any Rothko I have seen. They are all literally the same painting, with different colors or numbers of zigs or whatever.
The worth of these paintings comes entirely from who painted them. These guys were doing something that had never been done before, and that makes it art. And the first and best of what they did is going to be worth millions because that’s how art works.
You can’t be serious! It’s impossible that you should have the experience you describe! You must be deluding yourself!
This might help, indirectly… perhaps:
Pretty good essay if you ignore its obvious Marxist connotations.
Thanks for making this point. This is something that’s not often understood about art. The average person could re-create a lot of famous art but it would be meaningless because of who they are, the fact that they didn’t create the composition and lack of context. The same can be said of music.
Okay - you are not someone who responds to Color Field paintings. Are you saying that no one else responds to them?
Yes - it just so happens that for the people who DO respond to Color Field type paintings, this painting and others by Rothko, etc. are Significant. Because of when they appeared and how they influenced the Ongoing Conversation about Art…
So, at it’s core, the Modern Art crowd revolves around snobbery and snootiness then. I figured as much, but it’s nice to hear it confirmed.
I think for the most part, the outrage about paintings like Newman’s selling for so much is that technically (as in painting, line, shadow, light, etc…) they don’t seem to be very demanding, as opposed to say… a Caravaggio or some other more conventional painter, and people say, rightly so, that “their kid could do it”, because they probably could.
Whether or not your kid has the purported vision to paint a blue canvas with a kind of uneven white stripe down the middle is a different story, and I suspect that even if thousands of kids did it in elementary school first, theirs would only be refrigerator fodder, while this Newman guy’s are worth millions, because some snooty art crowd is willing to pay that for them.