What makes some art good?

Consider this state of affairs: Higher price 'makes wine more enjoyable'

January 15, 2008 - 3:31PM
Source: ABC

The wine study is the first to show that marketing has a direct effect on the brain (File photo). Photo: AFP

The more wine costs, the more people enjoy it - regardless of how it tastes, a study by researchers in the United States has found.

Researchers at the Stanford Graduate School of Business and the California Institute of Technology found that because people expect wines that cost more to be of higher quality, they trick themselves into believing the wines provide a more pleasurable experience than less expensive ones.

Their study, published on Monday in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, says expectations of quality trigger activity in the medial orbitofrontal cortex, the part of the brain that registers pleasure.

This happens even though the part of our brain that interprets taste is not affected.

The researchers say that “when 20 adult test subjects sampled the same wine at different prices, they reported experiencing pleasure at significantly greater levels when told the wine cost more.”

Is that strange or what?  Here you thought you had discriminating taste buds when, if the truth be known, your brain is modulated by the price of your purchase.  Your expectations dismiss or fog up your critical evaluation.

Now here is the stinger. Chances are ‘expectations of quality’ is not limited to wine tasting.  It will emerge whenever you rely on others to determine the quality of what you purchase or admire.  In other words the price tag reflects quality.  We all knew this didn’t we?

No doubt the appreciation of art is also susceptible to the marketing gurus who inflate both the quality and price of art works.  If the price is appreciable the quality of the painting is enhanced.  Consequently this work is the finest of the fine.

                                                    

This is  No, 5  (1948) by Jackson Pollock  which sold in 2006 for US140 million dollars. This work must reek of quality.  Forget about Velazquez’s Las Meninas or Vermeer’s view of the Delft this is the supremo work.  This brings up another problem for art lovers.  Chances are Las Meninas or the Delft which are now owned by museums, will never be sold so the price they would fetch will never be known.   To describe them as priceless undermines the quality seekers whose brains need a price to fully activate their pleasure neurons.

                                                           

Second in priceful quality is this work by Gustav Klimt; it's Adele Bloch-Bauer and sold for 135 million in 2006.  Doesn’t this just tickle your fancy?  

But anything governed by neurons and synapses of the brain must have a down side.  After all not every day is a great day for art lovers.  A Japanese collector purchased Vincent van Gogh’s Portrait of Dr. Gachet in 1990 for 82.5 million. 

                                                           

It has since been sold for a little over 10 million.  Whoops, it has lost something of its quality. Obviously the collector suffered an expensive bout of the black dog and his investment waned. 

So there you have it, your brain makes decisions of quality for you.  All you have to do is insert the price and your neurons do the rest.  It is not unusual for persons to describe a work as good because it gives them pleasure but when you have a bad day don’t expect your art work to give you a little pick-me-up. It has no color in the dark and no quality when your brain is shroud in a cloud.

Launt Thompson
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