Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of Contributors
- Preface
- 1 Value and Valuation in Art and Culture: Introduction and Overview
- PART ONE ORIGINS OF MEANING
- PART TWO THE CREATION OF VALUE IN ARTISTIC WORK
- PART THREE CONTINUITY AND INNOVATION
- PART FOUR APPRECIATION AND RANKING
- 11 Quantitative Approaches to Valuation in the Arts, with an Application to Movies
- 12 Confluences of Value: Three Historical Moments
- 13 The Intrinsic Value of a Work of Art: Masaccio and the Chapmans
- 14 Time and Preferences in Cultural Consumption
- PART FIVE CULTURAL POLICIES
- Index
- Plate section
- Plate section
- References
13 - The Intrinsic Value of a Work of Art: Masaccio and the Chapmans
from PART FOUR - APPRECIATION AND RANKING
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of Contributors
- Preface
- 1 Value and Valuation in Art and Culture: Introduction and Overview
- PART ONE ORIGINS OF MEANING
- PART TWO THE CREATION OF VALUE IN ARTISTIC WORK
- PART THREE CONTINUITY AND INNOVATION
- PART FOUR APPRECIATION AND RANKING
- 11 Quantitative Approaches to Valuation in the Arts, with an Application to Movies
- 12 Confluences of Value: Three Historical Moments
- 13 The Intrinsic Value of a Work of Art: Masaccio and the Chapmans
- 14 Time and Preferences in Cultural Consumption
- PART FIVE CULTURAL POLICIES
- Index
- Plate section
- Plate section
- References
Summary
The economic value of a work of art is dependent on a variety of factors, only one of which may be what might be described as the intrinsic aesthetic interest or value of the work. Through comparing and contrasting two very different works of art from widely different times within the Western tradition of art, I aim in this chapter to distinguish this intrinsic value in terms of each work's distinctive acuity to its own times.
Taste, judgment, and culture
In the work published under the title Lectures and Conversations on Aesthetics, Psychology and Religious Belief, Ludwig Wittgenstein is reported as saying: “The words we call expressions of aesthetic judgment play a very complicated role, but a very definite role, in what we call a culture of a period. To describe their use or to describe what you mean by a cultured taste, you have to describe a culture” (Wittgenstein 1970: Section 25, p. 8). In speaking of a cultured taste here, Wittgenstein is drawing attention to the fact that an aesthetic judgment is in some way informed or even made intelligible by the culture within which the judgment is made. But before asking what this can mean, I want first to focus briefly on the other word Wittgenstein has used here – for he speaks of a cultured taste.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- Beyond PriceValue in Culture, Economics, and the Arts, pp. 220 - 235Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2007