Whether something is art or can be defined as ‘art’ or has artistic value is questionable and supposedly relative. It seems to me that the question of ‘artistic value’ is an economic and historical one. We could call this the historoeconomic theory of art (or the capitalist’s valuation of art).

An artwork always has an economic value, from being worthless to being highly valuable. This value changes and fluctuates over time. For instance at one point, during his lifetime, Van Gogh’s paintings were worth merely cents. Today they are worth tens of millions of dollars. The 19th century French artist Bouguereau, in his time his artworks fought over for what today would be worth millions, are now possibly equivalent to the today’s value of the price paid for them in their time (several thousand dollars).

This begs the obvious question, is an artwork’s artistic value equal or directly proportional to its historicized price (i.e. some historical and current averaging of the work’s price)? The market would say yes. If that is the case, then the greatest artists or artworks are listed here. Non- and anti-capitalists would argue otherwise, but they will have little compelling evidence to support this.

posted by rowanp at 6:08 pm & filed under culture, art, philosophy |