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The Value of Art

DATASET AUGUST 2015

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Arash Rahmani
Shahid Beheshti University
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Threshold

The Value of Art

Arash Rahmani
English Literature, PhD Student, Shahid Beheshti University

that the beautiful is as useful as the useful, more so perhaps...

- Victor Hugo

Beauty is truth, truth beauty-- that is all ye know on earth, and all ye need to know.
- Keats, Ode on the Grecian Urn

Nature has formed creatures only. Art has made men.

- Schiller

Discussions regarding the value of art have been divided into two different
groups. One group, the so-called proponents of the extrinsic quality of art,
ascribe the value of art to something outside the work. A good example might be
didactic art, or art as a means to the fulfillment of some moral good. This group
of critics focus on the influence of the work of art on an individual when, for
instance, it evokes emotions in the reader. On the other hand, the second group of
critics, the so-called practitioners of the intrinsic evaluation of art, value art in
itself rather than considering it as something instrumental. The intrinsic approach
is mostly associated with such writers as Walter Pater and Oscar Wilde as well as
the French Symbolists, who propagated the following slogan: art for arts sake.
The aforementioned individuals and groups believe that art should be studied per
se, i.e. as an end in itself; moreover, they posit that the only justification that art
needs is its own existence. They are in favor of putting aside all interests and
fallacies in favor of an interest in the work itself.
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Nevertheless, these are not the only two groups. Between the two
extremes of extrinsic and intrinsic evaluations lie other groups of thinkers who
wish to take the middle way. They believe that the audiences or critics should
appreciate works of art in themselves, but also that from this appreciation we
might get something with independent value. For instance, we read a literary
work and enjoy it on its own; however, the enjoyment also has an effect on our
life. It enriches and broadens our perspective on life.
In addition, it should be noted that such discussions of art should also
take into consideration the notion of taste because perceiving a work of art, in
general, and, for instance, reading a literary work, in particular, is primarily a
subjective process. It is actually our taste, alongside our faculty of judgment that
help us regard some works of art as worthy of our attention and discard the rest
as unworthy. These are the faculties of which we partake in order to ascribe
numerous adjectives to different works of art.
Before delving into the main concern of the present paper, one intriguing
point should be mentioned, and it is the fact that critical discussions of a work of
art can be categorized into the following groups: Interpretive and Evaluative.
Each group has its own aesthetic terms such as:

Affective Terms: moving, frightening, disturbing

Terms denoting emotional qualities: Sad, Lively, Mournful
Terms regarding the expressive or representational content: Comic,
Tragic, Ironic

Therefore, while discussing a work critically, most critics resort to their

respective resources of aesthetic terms in order to explain the qualities they find
in a given work of art.
Any discussion regarding the value of art should pay attention to the two
qualities that almost all works of art possess, i.e. what the work of art expresses,
and how the audience responds to it. Therefore, such discussions tend to be
twofold. What the work of art expresses, a problematic issue mostly because it is
very difficult, if not downright impossible, to determine what the artist had in
mind during the process of the works creation, is analyzed in the works of such
writers as Croce. Croce, alongside other writers such as Tolstoy and
Collingwood, who are associated with the Expressivism movement, believes that
art is not only about expressing the right emotion, but also about finding the right
outlet through which this emotion can be best expressed. In his work, The
Aesthetic as the Science of Expression and of the Linguistic in General, Croce
argues that order-less stimuli is frustrating and painful, (Croce & Ainslie, 1922,
p. 92) therefore, a form should be imposed on it so that the audience can
understand it. His best example is when we feel frustrated because we cannot
find the proper words to express a feeling or an emotion; in the same manner,
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artists also feel frustrated when they cannot find the final stroke that brings
about the unity of their work. Evaluating a work of art cannot be done without
taking into account these issues and points. However, it should be noted that
causing an emotion should not be confused with expressing an emotion. A
painting, a piece of music, or a literary work might be about a happy family, but
because of the subjective associations evoked in one particular audience, it might
cause that person feelings of sadness, loneliness, and depression. Discussions on
the value of a work of art should consider this side of the coin, as well as the
responses elicited in the audience when the work of art enters the public sphere
because evaluating a work based solely on the artists self-expression is a fatal
mistake, and the responses of the audience should also be taken into account; this
is because the enjoyment we derive from works of art and their enlightening
qualities are significant criteria based on which one might label a work good or
bad. Therefore, our evaluation of art is an effort to bring the two sides of this coin
together.
As Leo Tolstoy has maintained in What is Art?, evaluation should not be
the analysis of what is expressed and what is evoked, but rather a combination of
the two. He says,
Art is a human activity consisting in this, that one man consciously by
means of certain external signs, hands onto others feelings he has
lived through, and that others are infected by those feelings and also
experience them The value of art doesnt lie in the pleasure of
individuals, taken as individuals. We are social creatures, and art
connects us to each other. (Tolstoy & Maude, 1899, p. 43)

The bond that is created between the audience and the artist is also one of the
criteria in evaluating the success and popularity of a work of art.
Having talked about the ways by which works of art are evaluated, it is
time we turned to enumerating different kinds of value that they hold. According
to Michael Findlay, in his book The Value of Art, all works of art potentially
possess one of the following kinds of value: commercial; social; and essential
value. For Findlay, the commercial and the social values of art are related to
extrinsic evaluations carried out by critics who are concerned with the external
factors whereas the essential value of art, which belongs to intrinsic evaluations
of art, is carried out by investigating the artistic object in itself irrespective of any
influence it might have had on either the commercial aspect of its distribution
process or the social sphere from which it has emerged. (Findlay, 2012, p. 3).
Findlay remarks that the commercial value of works of art focuses on the
commercial success that they achieve when they are distributed, regardless of the
content. For instance, a film may not be rich in its content, but because it is
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alluring to a special kind of audience, or a special group, it turns out to be a big

hit in the box office. This, for Findlay, is the least valuable kind of value. To cite
an example from contemporary pop art, movies like Avengers lack valuable
content, but they become successful in the box office because teenagers or comic
book geeks are attracted to them.
Social value analysis considers the milieu in which the work has been
produced and distributed, and it evaluates the work based on the social influence
in can exert on the society, not to mention its role as the preserver of history.
Examples abound. One such example is the fashionable styles, or catch phrases
that become popular after a movie, TV show, etc. Friends, which was an
American sitcom had tremendous influence on its target audience during its tenyear run. The Rachel hairstyle and the overuse of so were two among many of
its effects. Another instance could be different paintings that depict a momentous
historical event. The level of penetration, as well as the permanence of the
influence are crucial criteria based on which critics can determine the social
value of a work of art.
Finally, Findlay asserts that the essential value of art, which follows the
art for arts sake slogan, is the most important of the three and also the most
difficult to determine (Findlay, 2012, p. 93). One of the difficulties for this kind
of value is the fact that works of art cannot, and must not, be studied in a
vacuum. They should be studied in relation to other works of art to which they
bear some resemblance.
Bibliography
Croce, B. & D. Ainslie. (1922). Aesthetic as science of expression and general linguistic.
London: Macmillan.
Findlay, M. (2012). The value of art. Munchen: Prestel Verlag.
Tolstoy, L. & A. Maude. (1899). What is art? New York: Crowell.

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