It's kind of depressing that art can be owned privately and stored away. If this was never donated to NGS then I doubt any private owners would have had it x-rayed and the self portrait would never have been discovered.
Also part of the problem is that art is fragile and showing say: a painting can degrade it, as light breaks up pigment. Even in storage, certainly paints/mediums change their physical characteristics. Many "hidden" paintings reveal themselves underneath the oils that make up the final painting as the medium becomes more transparent.
Maybe it should be more clear to the public if the idea that art isn't so much given to museums, rather that artwork is used as a speculative investment by a private party until such a time it makes financial sense to transfer it to a museum. There is also the fact that if one is powerful/influential, you can influence the value of the artwork just by owning it and keeping it out of circulation. The whole private buying and selling of the artwork from gallery owners to auction houses works to raise the value of the artwork through hype, really.
It can be a hell of a grift.
van Gogh wasn't very good at playing that game, even when his brother was an art dealer - that's such a leg up and he blew that advantage. van Gogh isn't known to be all that easy to work with. Attempted murder doesn't help with this. We know him know since we celebrate his mental illness.
Museums acquire work through purchase and donation, the ratio varies among museums and divisions within a museum. Several years ago a collector donated several thousand pieces to the major museum in my region. Fortunately a few of my pieces were included and are now part of the museum's "permanent collection".
Obviously museums prefer donations but only if the museum gets the kind of work they're seeking. It's a lot like academia, very competitive among curators to have the "right" high-valued work in the museum's possession.
And it's true that an artist's success is largely a marketing game. Artists who are good self-promoters will do the best. Those who aren't typically remain obscure. Of course success doesn't necessarily indicate artistic merit. That's often not decided until much later, like 50 or 100 years down the road.
Conservation of work is a complex subject. Oil-based paint was the only real option from the 1400's until ~1960. Oil paint dries by polymerization of fatty acids, problem is it doesn't know when to quit.[0] A paint film continues to harden, eventually the film integrity fails and the paint flakes off the substrate (canvas, etc.). Oil paintings are very likely to require restoration after 100 years if not sooner.
Worth noting: unlike works on paper, oil paintings are less affected by light exposure. That's why museums often display paintings in brighter areas (200 lux) vs. drawings, prints, photos being exhibited in dimly lit galleries (50 lux).
Interestingly many great artists were lousy technicians. Da Vinci is said to have experimented with various additives to paint which affected stability. Fascinating subjects indeed, and certainly contribute to keeping conservators employed.
[0] https://justpaint.org/aspects-of-longevity-of-oil-and-acryli...
What is the difference between art and products when money becomes the sole focus of creating art?
Should an artist just be creating art for the buyers?
Michelangelo was commissioned to paint the Sistine Chapel. The School of Athens was commissioned by Pope Julius II. You'll find that a massive number of famous art pieces were commissioned, and I don't think you'll find any serious people who think less of them because of it.
Art and the freedom of art have often been used to critise society.
Now if art becomes a product, where is the critical function of art? Critical art is part of healthy and diverse society, without we're one step closer to an orwellian utopia.
You're tapping into a single category of art -- art that is critical of society -- as if that's the only purpose of art.
The purpose of and the person who commissioned the piece of art is just part of the context and history of the piece. It says nothing of its impact and importance.
My main point is that the commoditization of art should not be detrimental to its critical purposes.
Artists should not be forced to create art that makes money happy.
Someone valuing art doesn't have to change the meaning or devalue the artistic merits of the art. Conversely, not allowing art to be private/bought doesn't increase the meaning or artistic merits of the art.
> What is the difference between art and products when money becomes the sole focus of creating art?
This doesn't have to happen. Artists often have works of love, and works of survival. And, is art still valid if it has more meaning, unintentionally or not, to the buyer than the artist? In the end, it's all personal interpretation. I think there's also value in an artist commissioning work, being able to help someone achieve what they can't by themselves.
In the end, artists need to eat, and, I believe, live a life that could fit some reasonable definition of "comfortable". If you remove the monetary aspect, doesn't this require that the state/society sponsor artists, almost certainly without merit or qualification, since anyone can produce meaningful art? If anyone can be an artists, at any time, wouldn't this have to extend to the whole population?
I think this is an interesting idea, but I think it would require a monumental shift in society, with either an "artist class" of citizens, who were treated better than the general public, something like UBI, to guarantee everyone can make their art for free, and most definitely tyranny, to remove the freedom from the artists, in doing what they wish with their art.
Every member of a society should have the right and freedom to intellectually critise that society. So an artist class might just be as successful as an journalist class (that we already have since journalists do enjoy certain rights that other classes don't).
What is important, IMHO, is that we don't lose sight of the fact that art also has a critical role to play in society.