https://www.npr.org/2011/07/30/138800110/the-theft-that-made...
The Mona Lisa is an unusually clear example. It doesn't even stand out among da Vinci's other paintings. Another example is music. Whether a piece becomes famous, isn't just influenced by whether it sound good. It also has to hit a specific nerve in the current zeitgeist. If the best House track of all time came out tomorrow, nobody would notice, because the genre isn't popular anymore. The artwork has to be at the right place at the right time, or it will be forgotten by history.
Some are objectively in another league, but 99% of it can be swapped out for something that appeals to you more personally.
Memes don't make a Rembrandt valuable, but equally the Rembrandt name matters more than the picture. So more "branding" than meme.
I subscribe to the notion that if it takes an expert to tell the difference between a fake or real Rembrandt, then (value aside) you have a Rembrandt. Or Rembrandt-quality painting.
Agreed, but it's worth examining how branding is itself memetic. Why is Rembrandt associated with value? Because of a perpetuating idea that Rembrandt was highly skilled, and thus his paintings are higher quality. But why do we say that Rembrandt was highly skilled? Because of a perpetuating idea that tells us what skill at classical painting should look like, and then a perpetuating idea that tells us that Rembrandt was an exemplar of that artificially-defined category.
"One of the primary properties of anything with Mana is a feeling of uniqueness. That one has never encountered something like this before, and therefore it is important. The uniqueness of the thing is a property that pulls you in to focus more closely, to attempt to understand more closely why the thing is unique."