> there is very little connection between "aesthetic value" and "market value."
Wait, so how do you determine this "aesthetic value" if not by how much people are willing to work to acquire it?
Your personal opinion? Some authority figure? Maths?
Wait, so how do you determine this "aesthetic value" if not by how much people are willing to work to acquire it?
Your personal opinion? Some authority figure? Maths?
Truly answering your question would take a long time, but a short version might be something like: the collective opinions of a diverse group of highly informed and experienced (not necessarily educated as in a university) individuals. But that's just one approach and there are many others.
Even then, anything is probably superior to using monetary value as equivalent to anything other than what the market currently prices it as. I certainly don't think the most expensive painting is the most beautiful one, although it may be not be totally uncorrelated.
If you're interested in these kinds of questions, definitely look into the philosophical field of aesthetics.
And no I wouldn’t say you have no taste. Most aestheticians throughout (global) history would likely dislike that building. It’s only a recent phenomenon that such styles became so prevalent, largely out of ignorance or rejection of previous things.
Since the modern web is terrible, I was confronted with a pop-up dialog in Swedish (I assume) which prevented seeing the image
A sibling comment to yours pointed out a critical flaw in using price as a measure: it gives different people very unequally sized votes.
Measuring instead in something like logarithmic uttiles would instead give all people a similarly-sized vote.
My problem with all measures of aesthetics that do not give everyone an equal vote (like your proposal for a committee of experts) is the fat selection bias inherent.
I can think of no way to produce that committee that doesn't involve self-reinforcing feedback loops that bias the committee toward a local optimum that doesn't actually reflect the standards of all of humanity.
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But. Then again, maybe this is one of those situations Weisberg talks about where trying to find the "main effect", i.e. the aggregate opinion of all humans, is meaningless.
Maybe it's more interesting to find out what specific groups of people think, and then I'm sure a committee of such people works. But one has to be up-front about what is then measured.
If you don't mind reading a dictionary, The Dictionary of Aesthetics by Dabney Townsend is also a good overview of many different ideas and terms.
Otherwise, I am a big fan of Japanese aesthetics, which is much more "in the world" than the more abstract Western philosophical approach. For this, I really recommend the short essay A Tractate on Japanese Aesthetics by Donald Richie.
Also, one of my favorite novels is My Name is Red by Orhan Pamuk. It is about Ottoman miniature painting and has extensive discussion on aesthetics, painting, and similar topics.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/My_Name_Is_Red
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On your other comment, I might agree with Weisberg that we aren't really going for an aggregate opinion of everyone. Instead, we need a way to measure the opinions of a diverse group of experts, whatever that might mean specifically.
A good analogue might be military strategy. If we were to ask "Who was the best general of all time?", we'd likely want to ask military historians (academic experts), actual generals (experiential experts), as well as amateur enthusiasts that are extremely knowledgeable but don't have the right credentials. We'd also probably want various other groups of people like soldiers, politicians, (resurrected) great generals like Napoleon or Hannibal themselves, etc.
As long as we had a decent method for validating membership of these different groups, I think we'd get a reasonably decent answer.
In terms of architecture, this expert-only approach might have some limitations and we would need to add the townspeople and library readers to our analysis. But this is more because buildings are something practical used in the world and not just art in a gallery.
I realize this is unsatisfying to many, but there really is no other choice. A strict empiricist has no way of knowing whether or not art is good. In fact, a purely empirical worldview will find it hard to have art in it at all. There's no way to distinguish subjective from arbitrary.
If you do accept that taste exists and that subjective != arbitrary, we can move forward and discuss it without expecting externally verifiable tests for it. If you can't, maybe you shouldn't believe that art exists at all... or that we can gain any knowledge of it if it does.
Substituting price or popularity for quality is redundant. Just think in terms of price or popularity, and forget about quality. Calling popularity quality just because it's easier to define or measure muddies things up, whether or not you believe in taste.
Moreover, it doesn't even work as a relative scale. If Jeff Bezos spends half his fortune on one art piece, he is still one of the wealthiest individuals on the planet. He won't be materially affected by this in any way. If I spend half my savings on an art piece, that puts me at a substantial risk (2 catastrophes and I'm broke).
Basically, Jeff has little opportunity cost to spending 50 billion, while I have enormous opportunity cost to spending 50,000. But Jeff doesn't work 1 million times as much as I do for that.
The art world is notorious for being a tax avoidance scheme, on top of money laundering and all sorts of other related activities. Tying market value and aesthetic value in the art world makes about as much sense as introducing the concept of "aesthetic value" when talking about Apple's stock price.
What about introducing it when talking about GameStop's stock price?
Yes, what's wrong with that? With a little katharsis mixed in, of course.
Because that's how art is sold today.
Over what time period?
> Your personal opinion?
Of course. It’s entirely possible to value something you personally cannot afford.