Thanks. Once the artist has determined which of their works is their best and group of experts have concurred, and have labeled said work a "masterpiece" can this guarantee that future generations of artists and experts will feel the same way? Is it possible to determine in the present, whether a piece of art will sustain the tests of time? Also, a piece of art may be ignored in the present and then as the perceptions and beliefs of those assessing art change, they may change their defintion and label it as a materpiece in retrospect.
Discussion
This to me, must be the greatest risk of the collector. How do you assess the current value of a work, when you don't know the criteria future collectors will use to assess the work you have purchased?
I think this goes back to that Ezra Pound quote above: the artist will know immediately, the patrons will know immediately, a small circle around them may know, but otherwise a wide public appreciation might take decades if not hundreds of years. But you could argue: Does this still hold true in the age of social media, where you could share these works millions of times on the Internet? I don’t know. It’s worth experimenting to find out. I’ve been wondering what would be the equivalent to livestream reactions to music videos for the visual arts, and whether there is an audience for that. I will say this: if there are enough patrons out there to get the great artists the funding they need to do their best works throughout their lives, that’s the bare minimum that should be expected for any culture. Any one patron is not going to have the definitive opinions about who those great artists are, so it’s more like a patchwork that hopefully covers all the bases.
Thank you. I think I may understand your point of view. There are certain criteria/thresholds that can met in the present, to accurately identify an artist who has the capacity to create a masterpiece. There is no guarantee that they will be able to accomplish this, but technology may be able to be used to spread the risk of funding his/her work, instead of relying on a single patron. Thereby increasing the probability that more masterpieces can be created, which would benefit humanity as whole?
Well I think that identifying artists with the capacity to create masterpieces will be a talent that patrons will already have, otherwise how would they know how to spend their money? It’s definitely not random guessing. I think there’s way too many choices of artists available for randomness to work. If that talent isn’t there, then the quality of the collection will not impress anyone. Likewise, a talented indie record label has to identify gifted bands and back them, and that music will impress, or not. For visual artists I think single patrons are necessary for unique works of art, so you would need a lot of single patrons to do the heavy lifting for lots of artists.
I would argue that there are just as many failed collectors/patrons as there are failed artists, and that patrons have to just as gifted at choosing artists to support as artists have to be gifted at creating art.
Yes, and like you said earlier it’s not just a matter of assessing the art, a good patron would have to be able to asses the artist as well.