I don’t think I can put a price on the way a story or particular piece of art moved me or changed me. Mind you, not every piece of art. But you know the ones. The feeling of having gone in one way, and come out completely different. I’m constantly chasing the dragon’s tail, trying to find the thing that will make me feel that feeling again. Chasing metamorphosis. It’s something that drives me to try and see if I can do that trick as a writer and artist. Inherently, I know that those pieces that moved me were created by other people (they had to have been). Over time, I followed specific artists and sought out certain kinds of art, developing my tastes, as one does.

And it is also implicitly understood that usually, with rare exception, the artist has honed a craft over a long period of time. The occasional “overnight success” apparent to the rest of us is usually the result of a consistent practice and hours of unseen work. We respect masters. We appreciate the effort of the artist. We develop a preference for certain perspectives. At least I do.

I believe that, on some level, everyone has been moved by an art-related experience. Whether it be through the joy of watching a big blockbuster action film, or reading a poem that moved them, everyone has experienced the joys of art. Whether they consciously acknowledged this relationship or not is another question. Consumption of art in any form can change you. There have been tons of scientific treatises on the subject. This is not one of them.

Let’s assume that the world is a spectrum of individuals though — the “caring about art” spectrum. Perhaps the most extreme person is the starving artist who has separated business from their work. They live for their artistic endeavors. They live to create and to consume their art, and they do not let the market move them. Their puritanical rules drive them, though, they also might be their biggest hindrance. On the other end of the spectrum is Joe Average. He claims to not have an artistic bone in his body. He likes 80s action movies (who doesn’t?) and fart jokes. His idea of fantasy is a fantasy football lineup (likely meaning he is neither good at football nor fantasy) and he loves to rock at a tailgating event to the songs of Nickelback (no offense to them, they know who their fanbase is).

Either way, from the most puritanical to the most casual, the individual does have some relationship, consumer or otherwise, with art. Most of the population, including other artists, are somewhere between the two polarities.

The Manufacturing Model

When first approaching the value of art, I decided to take my pretense out of the equation. Taking away the artistic, subjective filter, and my personal relationship with creating, and going to another subject that I know well — manufacturing.

How much is a good painting worth in this model?

Well, the artist (manufacturer) might view their variable (consumable) costs:

1. Paint
2. Brushes
3. Acetone
4. Canvas

And their one-time costs factored in (tooling):

1. Brushes
2. Paint tray
3. Eisel

Then we might eventually zoom out to fixed costs:

1. Rent
2. Electricity
3. Climate control

From these factors, they might attribute a flat fee cost to the price of a painting. This is what the market might do with lesser subjective value. There may be a labor cost associated. If there is, the artist will have to attribute a value to their labor (usually X dollars per period of work).

Later, we might add an element of quality control. 

Subjective:

1. Is the work representative of the artist’s style or a particular style of work? 
2. What is it saying?
3. Is it any good?

Quantifiable:

1. Size specifications.
2. Appropriate amount of material used.
3. Material quality (kind of brush, paint, canvas material)

Artist’s level of mastery.

The Master Artist

An artist who is a true master of their craft has honed a set of skills over countless hours. Often the most successful artists generate a style, a way of doing their craft that will immediately distinguish them from others. And though you may scoff at Picasso’s work thinking it simple, know that he could still draw a fruit bowl way better than you could. A “master” as it were, or someone who has established their form or style and generated (consciously or otherwise) demand for their work (often posthumously, has generated value through rarity/scarcity). Other sources cannot generate what they would think up. The value of their style (and even their imperfections) is not easily quantifiable.

The Artisan Model

As far back as history goes, patrons have paid top dollar to have great works of art produced. Famously, the Renaissance saw aristocratic families (like the Medicis) taking interest in artists of repute. It was fashionable to discover and sponsor a new artist.

As an artist’s reputation increases, or their style becomes en vogue, they are able to overcome the manufacturing model as increased market demand for their product drives a higher price point. They are a rare and sought after commodity.

I’m sure at some point you’ve seen some giant piece of modern art that befuddled you. You found out that someone paid an absorbent amount of money for it and thought, “what the heck? Why would they pay for that?” The answer is the artisan model.

Mass Consumerism

At some point we made the move to mass consumerism. The average, non rich masses, also wanted to have nice things. To be surrounded by art that was pleasing to them, if only to complete the look of a room. Even if it means having a reproduction of a painting, rather than the original.

Large businesses started doing deals with artists and purchasing their work on contract, to be machine reproduced and printed en masse. I often wonder if an artist felt terrible about the fact that their seashore picture is now sitting over three hundred toilets in the tri-state area?

The recording industry was the first to modernize this, first through broadcast, then through ownership of physical media (and now back to broadcast through streaming). The point being, that in every medium, the general population can now consume the same art that used to be limited to the private viewing of the wealthy.

Cognitive Dissonance

In the post industrial world, where mass consumerism is the norm we will sometimes entertain the value of a thing. We acknowledge the value of the handmade and the original. But we also value the convenience and price point of the industrially manufactured.

Rolls Royce vs Honda — most of the middle class can afford one and not the other and the reason is price point sensitivity. The value of the dollar creates a window for what quality means. The window shifts depending on market demands. If another manufacturer introduces a far superior product at a better price point, even the most staunch brand loyalists will eventually be swayed.

This economic reality also gets passed to other, more common purchases. We, the socially conscious public, often decry the injustices of foreign factories but would not be willing to pay the price of the same product in a factory that we would deem to be “ethically and morally” sound. In this way, we are, as a group, often dissonant as it relates to these goods. Out of sight, out of mind.

Everyone has a certain level of dissonance, depending on your individual awareness and mindfulness on a given topic. Most people forgo thinking about how the average meat factory works when they shove a hamburger into their face. The reason is convenience. The reason is price point. I’m not proselytizing. I’m merely making a point that we all do it with something. To stop and take all of it on at once would be debilitating and the system must move forward!

Transference

The law of conservation states that matter can neither be created nor destroyed, it merely changes into energy (or vice versa). Simply put, in a closed system, energy (and value) and resources maintain an equilibrium, even if you don’t see the cost. You don’t pay a high price for the teeshirt here, but there is a cost to the environment and labor of individuals far away.

Did you get an electric vehicle? The air quality is better as a result (locally) because you’re not sputtering fumes wherever you are. But the tradeoff is simple. At least at this point, refueling will take longer. And that energy no longer is produced locally from combustion, it’s now produced centrally at a power plant (where the air quality probably isn’t getting better unless you have nuclear power but then the disposal of nuclear waste and potential catastrophe takes the place of the tradeoff).

This isn’t a value statement to say what is better. It’s simply a matter of acknowledging the tradeoff. Lowering dependence on fossil fuels means better air quality, but there is a long-term convenience tradeoff. Want something fast? There is usually a quality tradeoff. Want something fast and good? Then you need higher energy and a higher price point.

The old adage, “There’s no such thing as a free lunch,” rings true. 

Someone, something, always pays.

Generative AI

The advent of AI has done interesting things in business. One of the fastest growing sectors is generative AI. Generative AI is improving by the day and in true Moore-like exponential technological development, is going to continue to increase in quality and inevitably become indistinguishable from human generated content.

My first personal awareness of it was twofold. First, acknowledgement of an impressive technological feat. And the initial naive, “Wow, neato.” People can say things, and it will generate the ideas into the requested digital medium.

My second feeling and counterpoint to the initial awareness was immediate  personal disgust as people came out of the woodworks likening themselves to artists because of their ability to prompt. People have started making foolish (and insulting to people with disabilities) arguments about it being “ablist” to talk down to GenAI “artists”. All of the sudden people starting claiming expertise in things they had no expertise in because they got generative AI to spew forth content that the people then took credit for.

I, a writer, pouring my heart and soul into books that I wrote, was now surrounded by a bunch of people who weren’t doing the work, but claiming to be what I worked so hard to become — pretenders. 

Okay. Deep breath. This is not meant to be a rant about AI. It’s about the value of art. 

Right now, Gen AI still looks like AI, sounds like AI, and writes like AI. 

But I have to, despite my personal loathing, acknowledge the fact that in the coming years, AI work will be indistinguishable from human work. We can split hairs, but every argument I’ve heard about the “human element” has presupposed that you could tell the difference between the best human made and generative AI.

Generative AI is cheap. It’s infinitely available. It works incredibly fast. Therefore, the convenience factor is off the chart. The actual costs of it are out of sight, out of mind. The population and big business at large seem to turn a blind eye to the environmental harm. We all know about the massive energy and water use. But it’s not here. It’s not apparent. It doesn’t hurt me right now. Massive cognitive dissonance ensues.

Artists vs. World

So the question becomes, once again. What is art worth?

We live in mass consumerism. I’ve bought as many burgers and teeshirts as the next guy. So why is it that I’m so vehemently against generative AI? It may be simply my personal bias and fear of replacement. I can yell into the face of destiny that no one can replace me, my view, my individual, special “certain something” that is apparent in my work, until I’m blue in the face. But what about when it simply isn’t true?

And assuming the inevitable indistinguishability, I have to think about how much of the world actually cares about whether or not a person or a machine makes the art that they consume. I do, but do other, non-artists?

It makes me sad. I care. I hope that my art is made by other people.

But what about when I see something that tricks me? When the day comes that I consume and go, “Hm, that was good.” We already see it replacing copywriters, eventually graphic designers. It’s ripping through video editors.

And yes, humans are still better, for now, but the price point is too much for big business to ignore. So they’ll keep going and replacing people.

The general population at large, when they consume something they enjoy, I think most don’t think about where it came from and who made it. They just regard whether they liked it, whether it was entertaining for them. So I face the very real possibility that much like the teeshirt and the hamburger, human-made art will go the way of the cognitive dissonant masses generated by mass consumerism, a symptom of the system.

I’m not very religious, but I do believe that there is something to great art that moves us. Some spark that is ineffable, and unquantifiable. And I worry, that when we’re all supplanted and given art that is made by machines and we can no longer tell the difference. And we’ve been so numbed to the costs (environmental and otherwise), and the convenience is the norm and we can no longer live without it as a culture (as new conveniences quickly become the standard). I worry that perhaps the biggest cost of all in our consumption of the art, will be our soul.

But soul too expensive. And we want it now. And we don’t want to spend ten thousand hours mastering something. And pass me another french fry to jam in my face