Mmm ... art

What I read

According to "Hockney painting breaks auction record for living artist" (2018), the reputation as a great modern artist of 81 year old David Hockney, whose work has become so well-known that it is even laughed at in cartoons, has been confirmed by the sale of his 1972 painting Portrait of an Artist (Pool with Two Figures) for $90.3 million US dollars at auction, which set a new record for a living artist. It is said to be "one of the great masterpieces of the modern era" by auctioneer Christies, who sold the work, which depicts two figures, one swimming in a pool with the other looking down at him, and is known to be based on two photographs. 

This summary paragraph is 119 words in three sentences, which is safely within the word and sentence limits. 

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My response 

Hockney has long been an artist whose work I admire, so it was a pleasant surprise to see this recognition of his talent. Still, it's hard to believe that a painting, any painting could really be worth quite that much, and other works have commanded even higher prices in recent years. I largely agree with the art market's relative valuation of works of art. For example, Picasso's work now attracts prices of over $100 million, and I think they really are better than both Hockney and old masters like da Vinci, whose Mona Lisa, for example, whilst very good, is not nearly as great a work of art as man of Picasso's masterpieces. I think that the Mona Lisa is famous more for its place in history than for artistic excellence. And sometimes the art market makes mistakes: I don't think that Andy Warhol's work is really all that great, just radical and controversial. Being controversial is no bad thing, but it is not the same as artistic greatness. 

But then what does make a piece of art great? What is art? These questions have been around for at least two thousand years, and I don't think I have any final answer. I think it is in part to do with arranging the elements in a strong composition that gets everything in the right place to best connect them, which is also something we worry about when we write, where coherence (logical organization) and cohesion (connections between ideas within and between sentences) helps readers to easily follow the ideas that we are trying to communicate. But the best philosophers have been arguing for millennia about these questions. I think we make progress, but just as with science, it's perhaps safer not to claim to have finally got the perfect answers that will never be proved false or otherwise not good enough. 

In the meantime, I'll continue to love Picasso and Hockney. I also like da Vinci, even though he isn't as great an artist as the later masters, who were less limited by trying to make accurate copies of reality. 

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My question

Can any piece of canvas, metal, or other art really be worth $90 million dollars? 

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Reference

• Hockney painting breaks auction record for living artist. (2018, November 16). Retrieved from https://www.bbc.com/news/entertainment-arts-46232870