...Something Between You & Art

Everybody knows Pablo Picasso. But what turned him into the Picasso you know today? The same may be said about Andy Warhol.

- Diego Mantoan

Surely you would recognise his printed Campbell Soups hanging on the wall or a stack of Brillo Box replicas lying around. How come they are regarded as masterpieces, though? You could definitely tell the difference between common urinals in a public restroom and the urinal turned upside down by Marcel Duchamp. He signed it “R.Mutt” on the side and ironically titled the piece Fountain. However, it took time for people to see an artwork, where there only was a displaced toilet piece. So there must be something between you and art, in order to recognise it as such.

Market rules are very clear. Where offer and demand meet, you have a deal. This meeting point determines price and quantity in the transaction, whichever the product. It is a little more complicates in the case of art. As a collector you may want to fix the price, but it could likely be a different figure from what an artist has in mind. Those who create art have put all their mastery and life into the works: can you seriously ask them for their value? An artwork is much more than the addition of the time spent for its production and of its material cost. There is something more than monetary value, something that neither the artist nor the collector can really tell. It is called symbolic value and it is art’s true content. So there must be someone between you and art, in order to determine the significance of an artwork.