It's an old expression, but a goodie. Separating the wheat from the chaff--the valuable from the worthless.
But with art, it's not always clear what's the valuable, and what's the worthless. And for the sake of being extreme, I'm going to go so far as to say that it's the actual, physical work that is worthless--or nearly so--and that the value really lies in the story behind it. The story about who created it, how they created it, the times they created it in, the story of the person in the work...
This notion hit me when I read a story about ocean treasure hunters recovering a huge cache of gold doubloons from a sunken galleon. Turns out, to collectors, these little pieces of history are worth a lot more than their weight in gold. And that only makes sense. If someone just wanted gold, they would go buy some generic bars. And Pieces of Eight were, at one point, just such generic gold. But by now, those lumps of gold have been transformed into objects that magically hold within them romantic stories of pirates and navel battles and sunken ships. People, for whatever reason, like their stories anchored in physical objects.
But we don't always need 300 years to pass before this story-into-value happens. The dynamic, I think, comes into play in the here and now as well. When a photographer--or any artist--really commands high prices, it's his or her story that people are paying for. Dismiss it as hype or salesmanship or marketing instead of talent if you want, but maybe first consider some of your favorite artist, and why you like them. You may merely like plenty of anonymous works, but I'll bet the ones that you truly love got that way mostly because of things outside of the actual piece of art.
So maybe it's not a matter of separating the wheat from the chaff, but of creating wheat while creating the chaff. Or something like that.
But with art, it's not always clear what's the valuable, and what's the worthless. And for the sake of being extreme, I'm going to go so far as to say that it's the actual, physical work that is worthless--or nearly so--and that the value really lies in the story behind it. The story about who created it, how they created it, the times they created it in, the story of the person in the work...
This notion hit me when I read a story about ocean treasure hunters recovering a huge cache of gold doubloons from a sunken galleon. Turns out, to collectors, these little pieces of history are worth a lot more than their weight in gold. And that only makes sense. If someone just wanted gold, they would go buy some generic bars. And Pieces of Eight were, at one point, just such generic gold. But by now, those lumps of gold have been transformed into objects that magically hold within them romantic stories of pirates and navel battles and sunken ships. People, for whatever reason, like their stories anchored in physical objects.
But we don't always need 300 years to pass before this story-into-value happens. The dynamic, I think, comes into play in the here and now as well. When a photographer--or any artist--really commands high prices, it's his or her story that people are paying for. Dismiss it as hype or salesmanship or marketing instead of talent if you want, but maybe first consider some of your favorite artist, and why you like them. You may merely like plenty of anonymous works, but I'll bet the ones that you truly love got that way mostly because of things outside of the actual piece of art.
So maybe it's not a matter of separating the wheat from the chaff, but of creating wheat while creating the chaff. Or something like that.
