Why we must embrace the unquantifiability of the arts

The National Gallery has recently reacquired Titian’s masterpiece Diana and Actaeon as part of a deal by which the work moves periodically between London and the National Galleries of Scotland. It was bought by the two institutions from the Duke of Sutherland for £50 million in 2009, after a mammoth public fundraising spree. But what exactly makes this painting worth that much?

Back in December 2008 – just as the fundraising campaign was nearing its final push – the Guardian art critic Jonathan Jones wrote this article attempting to explain. The thrust of the argument is apparently because of the attention Titian paid to ‘Suggestive pink velvet’ (detail number 3), ‘Mystery of the hidden nymph’ (detail number 6), and so on, the work is (a) revolutionary; and (b) too precious to be allowed to leave the UK. The weirdest thing about this is the idea that genius, on the sort of scale Jones is talking about, can be accounted for so precisely that one can list its features. Surely, Jones’s seven reasons aren’t why the painting is great? Is each of the features meant to be worth £7.14 million? What would that even mean?

There is, inevitably, something completely intangible about any canonised work of art, be it a painting, a work of literature, a piece of music, or whatever else. Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony, for example, is as highly valued as it is because of its legendary status as much as for any particular musical reasons. Musicologists, in fact, have long been bickering about the aesthetics of the work: the huge choral finale is impressive, yes, but does it fit with the rest of the piece? Isn’t the work overall a little end-heavy? And in recent years, musicological debate has even started up about different editions of it: a controversial new edition published in 1996, edited by Jonathan Del Mar and published by Bärenreiter, controversially claimed to correct a large number of ‘mistakes’ in the standard performing edition. But the point is that however intriguing both of these issues are, neither of them could possibly ever affect this symphony’s status, its popular significance, its cultural importance. The work’s value, in whatever sense you take that phrase, is something that has accrued culturally, and not something intrinsic to the piece itself.

The question of how to evaluate art is one with a particular relevance today in government funding policy. There have recently been several government reports (from the Department for Culture, Media and Sports and from the RSA) investigating this question, pressed into it in particular by the state of the economy. Perhaps, given the argument above, these reports’ emphasis on consumer experience isn’t completely wrong-headed. The DCMS’s proposed use of such methods as ‘stated preference technique’, where members of the public are asked to evaluate cultural experiences (in monetary terms) for themselves, is logical in as much as it sidesteps the assumption that art has a specific and universal value.

There are, however, various substantial problems with the evaluative methods suggested. Firstly, the task which it asks people to do is irredeemably hypothetical and actually pretty difficult. (‘Hmm, I would have paid £5.45 for that symphony’.) And secondly, it reveals a weirdly reactionary approach towards cultural programming: surely, the public are meant to be the consumers of art and music and so forth, and not back-seat curators. While art is a socially dependent entity, rather than an aesthetic absolute, this doesn’t mean that the nation’s cultural programme should be determined by sociological research. This is why we need a healthy range of independent arts organisations in the first place, so that people can be challenged by original curatorial and artistic ideas, rather than spoon-fed exhibitions of things they already have postcards of.

Ultimately what art needs is the space in which to throw out as many unanswerable questions as possible, and make us think. Art is not a place for answers. The particularly knotty philosophical question of how to evaluate art is one that can easily be traced back to the ancient Greeks. The fact that it has recently moled its way into governmental reports is, in a way, quite funny. Perhaps all the policy debate about what art is worth should be understood as one giant, hilarious work of meta-art, a celebration of the continuing power of art to provoke thought and debate.

The arts need funding precisely because we can’t ever articulate why. Their value is beyond words, let alone numbers. It may be inevitable that governmental reports into arts funding overlook this point to some degree, as these reports must ultimately output figures. But if they don’t acknowledge the basic impossibility of their task, then they’ve completely missed the point. The vagueness, the unquantifiability of the arts must be embraced, and not denied.

Throughout October and November, The Independent Online is partnering with the Institute of Ideas’ Battle of Ideas festival to present a series of guest blogs from festival speakers on the key questions of our time.

Paul Kilbey writes on music and culture for Culture Wars and Huffington Post UK. He is working for the Institute of Ideas in preparation for the Battle of Ideas session From the sublime to the ridiculous: can we measure the value of the arts?, which took place on Saturday 29 October.

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• http://www.facebook.com/people/Blue-Drummers/100001953867956 Blue Drummers

  Actually this article disappoints at the level of ideas even though its underlying intuition is somehow agreeable. It seems to us that the consensus that established public funding for arts after WW2 is fractured and has to be re-set. We could argue that you can’t re-set it unless you critique who decides during this state of exception what is in the interests of the public good?  And, most importantly, we’re with Abhijit Banerjee suggestion that unless you really engage our collective intelligence to consider how to imagine new ways in which public value for art is manifest, then we won’t deal with the indissoluble problems we now face in arts and culture.  Rather, what will continue, is that public funding of the Arts is a transfer of resources from the less well off to the better off because poor people buy national lottery tickets!

• senexlondon

  don’t know much about art but i know human have yet to produce anything compared to the wonders of the world, which are free to admire and not bought and sold by shysters who talk gibberish in order to boost sales at questionable auctions. i should have known better than read this article given the headline’s use of a word rarely used in everyday language. i thought clarity and brevity were the tools of trade for a sub-editor..but unquantifiability?

• Ogham

  Nope, didn’t understand a word.

• FreedomAndHypocrisyWatch

  “The arts need funding”

  And what funding did the greats receive? They had rich patrons and there are now more rich people than ever. Seek funding there.

• appealforsanity

  While agreeing that any attempt at dollar valuation of art is contentious, surely there are some ways of quantifying impact. There is the near-actuarial accuracy of calculating the ‘cost of display or performance’: insurance costs, maintenance and security costs, logistics etc. Then there are ‘greatest hit lists’, usually compiled through some form of institutionalised connoisseurship: UNESCO’s world heritage list, the commissioning editors of Thames and Hudson/Taschen/Phaidon titles, the works of art featured in any travelling blockbuster exhibitions, etc. There is audience counting: museum/gallery tunstiles; how may people are actually looking at a piece of art?; what is the catalogues’s sales ranking on Amazon?  And in a similar way to how academic papers bubble up in ranking, there is a basic technique of reference counting. How may mentions of a work of art can be listed in a chosen corpus? How much chatter is a work generating in the media? While some of this might appear too mercantile or bean-counting for many art lovers, these kinds of measures might be useful in arts policy, particularly in amplifying the audience for art. For example, how much budget might be earmarked upfront for a TV documentary about an exhibition? How much investment could be placed on a  parallel web presence for a work of art? For copyright-free art (e.g. the works of decomposing composers), could scores be opened up for musicians everywhere, along the lines of the Open Goldberg Variations project?

• Expatnhappy

  “What art needs is the space in which to throw out as many unanswerable questions as possible, and make us think. Art is not a place for answers.” In that case the post modernist sections of Tate Modern should be given over to something else, since the art there provokes an easily answered question namely : “Is this completely worthless rubbish ?”

• http://www.facebook.com/akkie.bardoel Akkie Bardoel

  “The arts need funding precisely because we can’t ever articulate why.” Hey, same with Science! In fact, this is a really good argument for funding essentially everything!!

• icarus_69

  If you don’t know much about art how can you be so sure that humans have yet to produce anything compared to the wonders of the world? Just because you haven’t seen it (in any senses of the word), it doesn’t mean it doesn’t exist. 
  As for unquantifiability, it seems to me quite a brief way of expressing what it means. I use it nearly every day.

• senexlondon

  well, i was a dab hand at finger painting  (pardon the pun) as a toddler but lost that touch when I grew up and was forced to make a living on freezing building sites where the only arts I ever saw much of were bricklaying and bareknuckle boxing, which weren’t really to my taste.
  i can see the beauty in many man-made things which i have seen, from the rock art in the Pilbara in Oz to the flower duet from the opera Lakme by Delibes (which may have been turned into an advert i think).
  but big art is corporatised and relies on  a raft of media twaddle to keep buyers primed.
  that said, i’d sooner see more taxpaxer money go to the arts any day than on munitions and fighting wars.
  i read the article because I like to read and it was not a bad think piece,  but the use of a word such as unquantifiability is right up there with other hard to grasp concepts such as allodoxophobia.

• icarus_69

  Well, I hadn’t come across allodoxophobia, and had to work out the meaning. It’s not even recorded in the OED (perhaps that needs to wait for the second-time-round revision of the a words). But unquantifiability is not in the same league.
  I agree with you about the corporatisation and commercialisation of art (I speak as an artist), and where public money is better spent.