Value of art

Abstract

What is it for something to be valuable as art? Why is good art important? These are two of the most important questions in philosophical aesthetics. But to see how we may answer them we must delineate what kind of value we wish to capture. Artworks can be valued in all sorts of ways. I may value a work because of its commodity value, sentimental value or historical value, or because it tells me things I did not know. Yet valuing a work for such reasons is only contingently related to its value as art. I may, after all, learn something from a work that is bad art.