A lot of that value is in the aspect of the sketch as a historical artifact.
There's little present performance to speak of when it comes to Da Vinci.
And you don't need to go historical. I just picked da Vinci as an example. If you or I made a balloon dog sculpture, it won't be valued the same as a Jeff Koons one [0]. Even if it's essentially identical.
There's a whole subset of the art market that is valuing on provenance not the physical object.
[0] I'm assuming you're not Jeff Koons. The problem with HN is that, sometimes, you are actually chatting to a celebrity in the field without knowing.
> There's a whole subset of the art market that is valuing on provenance not the physical object.
Subset? I believe provenance is almost everything that matters in art, because it's what equips an artifact with meaning. Duchamp's urinal neatly exemplifies this.
Or to put it another way, most art sold isn't in urinal form.
I've never "understood art", but when you phrased it like that it makes perfect sense. To me, provenance just isn't interesting. So I judge the pieces as they stand in front of me.
- Do I find this aesthetic
- Do I find this historically/culturally interesting or significant
- Do I find this a good investment
The problem is that people don't always make it clear which one they are judging by and end up talking past each other.