What Is Art Worth? From Bananas to NFTs

     A single banana taped to a white wall with duct tape. Is it worth $6.2 million? In 2019, Maurizio Cattelan submitted “Comedian”—a banana worth a mere 30 cents taped to a wall— to Art Basel in the U.S.

What is Art?

     The definition of art has constantly evolved over time. The ancient philosopher, Aristotle viewed art as an activity that imitates the “Ideas”—universal truths—and explained that through this process, humans experience the purification of emotions, catharsis. This perspective bears a resemblance to 19th-century Realism. Realism sought to reveal reality as it is through art and to denounce social issues such as industrialization and poverty. In contrast, Surrealism, which emerged after World War I, completely overturned this trend. Led by André Breton, artists of Surrealism rejected reality and reason, bringing the world of the unconscious and dreams into art. René Clair’s experimental film, Entr’acte (1924), an early work of Surrealism, embodies a system of unconscious imagery filled with illogicality and fantasy. Men firing cannons for no reason, matches dancing atop a man’s head, a man resurrected from a coffin... Furthermore, just as Marcel Duchamp, a pioneer of conceptual art, titled a urinal “Fountain,” art became a realm that could no longer be defined by specific forms or criteria.

The Economic Value of Art

     In the late 1930s, Breton, the founder of Surrealism, expelled Salvador Dalí from the Surrealist movement on the grounds that he was obsessed with worldly success. Wasn’t the very act of breaking free from any logic or norm—even when it involved the commodification of art—and irrationally justifying anything in the name of art itself surrealistic behavior? Active against the backdrop of World War II, they were unable to overcome ideological conflicts. Perhaps we view the commodification of art negatively because we still hope that art can remain pure under capitalism.

     Karl Marx viewed art not as existing independently, but as a superstructure formed upon the foundation of the economic base. On the other hand, he also recognized that autonomy, such as individual creative activity, exists. Therefore, the fact that art is evaluated in the market in terms of price and exchange value can be understood as a form of “alienation” in which its autonomy and ideological function are diminished. A prime example of the extreme commodification of art is the October 2018 work by British street artist Banksy, Girl with Balloon, in which the bottom of the painting was destroyed by a shredder installed inside the frame by the artist immediately upon its auction sale. The winning bid for the painting, depicting a girl holding a balloon, was approximately 1.04 million pounds, equivalent to about 2.1 billion won. However, after the painting was shredded, its price at a re-auction in 2021 reached approximately 18.6 million pounds—an increase of about 18 times compared to the initial auction price. Amid the shock of the market and the incident, the value was reconfigured, and the painting, in its destroyed state, acquired a higher exchange value.

Beyond Supply and Demand: Pricing Art

     The process by which art is converted into monetary value varies by genre. While literature and film have relatively clear market structures, the visual arts exhibit a unique pricing mechanism that cannot be explained only by supply and demand. In the primary market, where artists set prices through museums and galleries, prices are determined unilaterally. In the secondary market, however, prices are determined at auctions where existing and new collectors meet, leading to a consideration of various factors related to the artwork. Boris Loesberg, a professor at Harvard Business School, argued that a work’s value is determined by fixed factors—such as the artist, subject matter, and technique—and variable factors— such as provenance, historical context, and the venue of the transaction. Recently, as auctions have expanded to online platforms, the auction process has become even more streamlined. In March 2021, digital artist Beeple’s work Everydays: The First 5000 Days began at about $100 in the Non-Fungible Token(NFT) market and after intense bidding, eventually sold for around $69 million. In the NFT market, anonymous investors purchase ownership of digital art remotely using cryptocurrency. Initially, the market was criticized for being a bubble driven by both artistic value and speculation.

     Now, as the digital art and art merchandise industries have become highly developed, the very essence of art has become something that may or may not exist. Meanwhile, it is difficult to regard prices as perfectly objective, since they inevitably reflect the subjective judgments of artists and collectors from the outset. Furthermore, in a situation where art is already indefinable, evaluating it based on specific elements is akin to forcing it into the box of past evaluation criteria.

Aesthetic Value and Disinterested Pleasure

     In Critique of Judgment, Immanuel Kant viewed the value of art as fundamentally distinct from economic exchange. He argued that the appreciation of art possesses “purposeless purposiveness,” finding its value in pure enjoyment unrelated to practical utility. For example, classical art expresses universal human emotions and experiences (such as sadness, joy, and anger), evoking timeless empathy. We also experience artistic value in our daily lives. A street busking performance encountered on a gloomy commute home, a painting gifted by a friend, or the emotion felt at a free exhibition—all hold meaning even without being traded. Ultimately, the true value of art is not determined by its market price but is generated within the viewer’s experience. We live our lives consciously or unconsciously selecting art that holds value for us, based on our individual tastes and sensibilities.

Seo Jun-hee(PR Editor)

20231933@soongsil.ac.kr