The OJ

As I was walking around campus the other day, I ran into my friend Robert E. Lee. (Yes, that’s his real name.)

I mentioned my new painting and the new unit of measurement that I wanted to introduce. Robert, being the mathematically gifted person he is, immediately saw a problem and then suggested a solution.

Let us suppose for the moment that a ‘cheap’ Van Gogh sells for around $4 Million. And suppose that it is 20” x 20”. Then it will be a 10,000J painting.

If I intend to trade up along the J scale, and if I trade up say 10J per painting, it will take me 1,000 trades to reach my goal. But surely that will take far too long.

What I need, Robert told me, is an exponential increase in the value of my trades. So I need another unit of measurement that will track that kind of increase. He suggested: 10 * log J.

If J = 10,000, then 10 * log J = 40. (For those who don’t remember this bit of math, logarithms track the number of zeros after a one in a number. So log 10 = 1; log 100 = 2; log 1000 = 3; and so on.) If I were to trade up by 2 of these new units per trade, I can reach my goal in twenty trades. And that, we both agreed, seems entirely reasonable.

So what to call this new unit? Well, exactly between ‘R’ and ‘L’ in the alphabet is the letter ‘O’. So in honor of Robert Lee, I will name the new unit of measurement: the OJ.

The OJ reveals an important fact about this project. 10 * log 1 J = 0. So, even though I have managed to trade up to a painting that equals 1 J, that painting has a value of 0 OJ. So on the scale I want to ascend, I have now really and truly just begun.

But will I be able to trade up along the OJ scale? That is the existentially pressing question that I now face. I have little doubt that I can continue to make incremental trades along the J scale. But to pull off this project I need to make incremental trades along the OJ scale.

Because I have only traded up to 0 OJ, however, I have zero evidence that I can do that.

And so, to put the point in somewhat dramatic philosophical language, I face an existentially angst-ridden moment: Will my next trades represent an increase in mere dollars, in J’s, or in OJ’s?

Only time will tell.

Of course, the Universe has helped me out before. So, why not ask again?

Universe:

I want someone to trade a painting for Jeanette Jones’ Dora Maar that represents an increase along the OJ scale.
I want someone to trade a painting for Jeanette Jones’ Dora Maar that represents an increase along the OJ scale.
I want someone to trade a painting for Jeanette Jones’ Dora Maar that represents an increase along the OJ scale.

If anyone has a painting to trade (especially if it is worth 1 or 2 OJ), let me know.

The J

Jeanette Jones sells her paintings for $1 per square inch.

That strikes me as a very good way to measure the value of paintings, so good in fact that I will introduce a unit of measurement called, in honor of Jeanette, the J. From hereon 1 J equals one dollar per square inch.

When I have looked at various pieces of local art, I have noticed that bigger paintings tend to demand more money. There is a painting on sale at the local bar here that is selling for $800. But as far as I can see, all it has going for it that recommends such a price is its size. It really doesn’t strike me as very good. Nonetheless, it seems as if it must have some reasonable amount of quality, since the artist is asking $800 for it.

However, if one were to calculate the J value of that painting, it would not be all that high. I don’t know the painting’s exact dimensions, but it is much bigger than Jeanette’s painting. So if one were to divide its price by its area in square inches, the result would be a value much lower than 1 J, which strikes me as appropriate. Jeanette’s Dora Maar is a far more aesthetically appealing painting than it.

The importance of the J to valuing art, however, does not stop with local pieces hanging in bars. I looked on Wikipedia and found the following list of the highest priced paintings along with the inflation-adjusted price that was paid for them.

Pollock -- No. 5, 1948 -- $150 Million

De Kooning – Woman III -- $149.1 Million

Klimt – Portrait of Adelaide Bloch-Bauer I – $145.2 Million

Van Gogh – Portrait of Dr. Gachet -- $139.5 Million

Renoir -- Bal du moulin de la Galette – $132 Million

Picasso -- Garçon à la pipe – $120.3 Million

Picasso – Nude Green Leaves and Bust – $106.6 Million

Van Gogh – Potrait of Joseph Roulin – $101.7 Million

Picasso – Dora Maar au Chat – $102.7 Million

Van Gogh – Irises – $102 Million

When I saw this list, I was at first amazed by the amount of money people pay for art. But then I became a bit depressed. True, Van Gogh is on the list three times. But so too is Picasso. And three artists have paintings worth more than Van Gogh’s. Call me petty, but I want Van Gogh to be at the top, especially if I am going to spend a considerable amount of time and effort trying to get one of his paintings.

But then I calculated the J amount for each painting, which of course depends not just on the dollar amount paid for it but also on the painting’s size. And this is the result.

Van Gogh – Portrait of Dr. Gachet 23.4” x 22” -- 270,979 J

Van Gogh – Potrait of Joseph Roulin – 25.35" x 21.73" -- 184,621 J

Van Gogh – Irises – 28” x 36.635” -- 99,436 J

Picasso -- Garçon à la pipe – 39.4” x 32” -- 95,415 J

Klimt – Portrait of Adelaide Bloch-Bauer I – 54” x 54” -- 66,165 J

Picasso – Dora Maar au Chat – 50.5” x 37.5” -- 54,231 J

De Kooning – Woman III -- 68” x 48.5” -- 45,209 J

Renoir -- Bal du moulin de la Galette – 52” x 69” -- 36, 789 J

Picasso – Nude Green Leaves and Bust – 64” x 51” -- 32,659 J

Pollock -- No. 5 -- 8’ x 4’ -- 32,552 J

Calculated in terms of the J, Van Gogh ends up having the top three paintings ever sold. And his top three are each approximately three times the J value of Picasso’s top three respectively. If the Money Thesis is true, (if monetary value tends to track aesthetic value), and if monetary value is calculated in terms of the J, then Van Gogh not only produced the three best paintings ever, but his paintings are three times as good as his closest competitor, Picasso. (I should point out that this calculation ignores the value of the great masters -- Da Vinci, Michelangelo, etc. -- since their paintings are owned by museums and are never put on the market.)

Yes, I very much like the J as a unit of measurement, since it yields the right results for ranking great artists (at least for my purposes).

I also like the J because it represents an interesting conceptual moment in this project.

Jeanette Jones sells her paintings for 1 J. Dominic, on the other hand, doesn’t sell his art for any J at all. Hence, I have traded up to a painting that has allowed me to introduce the unit of measurement by which I can now judge my future progress. And that, at least to my mind, is conceptually rather pleasing.

Dora Maar

My new painting is called ‘Dora Maar’. What a work of art! I love it.

It is by Jeanette Jones and is 30’ x 40’.

Jeanette has many other paintings. Here is a link to her work:

http://www.jeanettejonesart.com/

I could try to describe Jeanette and her art. But my description could not improve upon her artist’s statement, which is one of the best I’ve ever read.

Jeanette Jones

Please excuse me, I suffer from verbal constipation.

Most of the time I make decisions based on intuition and don't realize until after the fact just what the significance was.

Case in point, I was so struck by Dora Maar, the fact that she was so intelligent and fiery when Picasso met her, yet he broke her down and she was never the same.

I was moved by empathy to paint the portraits of Picasso's women.

The only portrait I treated differently was Francoise Gilot, because she was never broken.

I think I like underdogs, not taking something for face value.

Ok, here is the part I am really bad at... selling myself

I've shown in galleries in Florida & Seattle.

For a year I actually ran a gallery. I've been featured in a few magazines.

I was featured on a local public art showcase.

Here are links to videos that my work is in

http://vimeo.com/groups/6630/videos/10424564

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YA-fR7CKMkw

Crazy, huh. I know. I am a bit unbalanced.

It's horrible.

Thank you so much for reading.

I have so much to say about Jeanette and her art I can barely take it. But for now I will restrain myself and instead be content to note the convergence of factors that in my experience hardly ever align: the conceptual, the existential, and the astrological.

The astrological factor should be clear: yesterday at 11:23, the Earth's axis was inclined neither away from nor toward the sun. Ahhhh...I just love the equinox. And getting this painting on a day whose beginning was a mere seven minutes removed from that point surely bodes well. It is as if the Universe has blessed the painting, given it the significance of a new beginning.

And from a conceptual and existential level, this project is indeed, at least in some sense, at a new beginning. To explain why, however, will take some time; and so I will postpone the explanation until a future post.

I will, however, mention a fact that is of interest in its own right and is also crucial in understanding just how the conceptual and the existential have aligned.

In addition to creating such brilliant works of art and having such an awesome artist’s statement, Jeanette also has a characteristic that is terribly significant for this project. She has a precise description of the economic value of her art. She sells her paintings for $1 per square inch.

Ok. Enough for now. Except to say: if anyone wants to trade a painting for Jeanette Jones' Dora Maar, let me know.

Yay!

My next trade is on the way.

I shipped Take Me Home Toto on Saturday to an artist in Seattle, who shipped me one of her paintings on Friday. It is supposed to arrive in three days. I cannot wait.

Philosophers are often accused of not paying enough attention to emotion. Their critics contend: Reason -- that is all philosophers want to talk about; they completely overlook emotion.

I must admit to being somewhat guilty of such a charge. I sometimes think that with an appropriate amount of reason any problem can be solved. In my more reflective moments, I am willing to admit that such an attitude may be some sort of affliction. But it persists nonetheless.

So I found it interesting that I was emotionally affected when I shipped off Monika’s Take Me Home Toto. As I talked to the UPS agent who was about to package it, I could not help but feel sad at seeing it go. That sadness, then, turned into an exuberant pride, which led me to blurt out to the agent and two of his coworkers: this painting might be famous one day.

Will it be famous? Well, who knows? But I couldn’t help making that claim anyway. And I couldn’t help but be overcome by a feeling of loss when I saw the UPS agent remove the painting from my sight. For the brief time that painting hung on my wall, I loved it.

(Just as an aside, I will say that UPS has been absolutely fantastic so far in arranging the packing and shipping of the paintings involved in this process. So I would heartily recommend their services to anyone thinking about shipping a painting.)

The fact that I became so emotionally attached to Monika’s Take Me Home Toto made me think that I had perhaps isolated a source of the irrationality involved in art. If art stimulates emotion, and if emotion is fundamentally irrational, then of course the art world will be rife with irrationality.

But then I couldn't help but think about a view put forward by Franz Brentano according to which emotions are what track value in the world. According to Brentano, emotions stand to value as sight stands to features of physical objects. If Brentano is right, perhaps emotional experience, far from causing irrationality, in fact injects reason into the art world.

But I didn’t think about any of that for too long, since I was too excited by the prospect of receiving my next painting.

Yay!

I am once again pleased with the Universe.

So once again: Thank you. Universe.

Thank you.

Meanderings

Some news: I may have another trade lined up.

I want to thank everyone who has approached me about trading since my last trade and apologize to those I haven’t contacted. This damn thing called a job has kept me too busy to respond to everyone. So thank you.

I won’t say much about my next potential trade, lest I jinx it. But I will say that I am very excited: the conceptual, the existential and the astrological are all lining up very nicely.

I have been thinking about the nature of art lately and have been inclining to some bizarre form of Kantianism.

Kant’s view can be understood best by considering a peculiar claim he makes about genius: genius only occurs in art.

Kant’s view strikes many as strange, since most people would readily apply the ‘genius’ label to a scientist like Einstein or a mathematician like Kurt Gödel.

But according to Kant, a true genius makes the rule according to which others are judged. Mathematicians and scientists, though they can be intellectually extraordinarily gifted, nonetheless must at the end of the day respond to some set of objective facts that, so to speak, force their hands.

Artists, on the other hand, are not so constrained. That is partly the result of the elusive nature of beauty: there is no actual specification of artistic beauty that demands our assent as beautiful apart from some standard that results from artists producing their art.

That sounds fairly abstract, I know. Here is a way to think about it. Until Van Gogh painted Starry Night, nothing in the world would have recommended that he paint his painting in quite the way he did. But once produced, Starry Night itself becomes some kind of standard that defines beauty, so much so that one is inclined to think: of course that’s the way Van Gogh painted Starry Night.

Well, at least Kant’s view starts to sound good to me if I say it enough times. But then, most views of beauty are like that.

That beauty; that damn, damn beauty!

The Underbelly

Although artists may aspire to beauty, where there is money to be made, there will be people trying to make it. And where there are people trying to make money, there will be people trying to control the market.

Beauty it would seem has an underbelly.

After my latest trade, I corresponded with two different artists who talked about the underbelly of the art world. Regina Valluzzi (whose art can be seen here: http://www.nerdlypainter.com/) is both a research scientist and an artist. She made the following comments.

One thing I have noticed is that artists will protest vehemently about being sorted into categories that seem to describe accomplishment level, for example "amateur" "student" "emerging" "established" "acclaimed". Nevertheless, they (we?) do self-sort into levels.

According to Regina, the art world consists in levels of increasing perceived value. At the top are the untouchables: Rembrandt, Picasso, Van Gogh, etc. At the bottom are beginning artists. And there are several levels between.

And who controls entry from one level into the next?

This is where beauty’s underbelly begins to pop out. One might think that the answer would (or should) be beauty: an artist goes from one level to the next when he or she paints increasingly beautiful paintings. But alas, it would appear that the control rests, at least in some important instances, with the galleries.

Laura Zurowski, who has a very cool website called ‘The Lovelorn Poets’ (http://www.lovelornpoets.com/), put the point to me this way:

The art world is ripe for a dismantling just as the music industry was shaken by the likes of Napster, MySpace, and other mechanisms (like the now defunct Aimie Street) for musicians to share their work outside of the corporate controlled music/radio industry. The elite "gallery" structure, which positions itself as the arbiter of quality and value, has done nothing but make most individuals feel that art is beyond their reach both financially and intellectually.

According to Laura, the galleries have imposed a structure on the art world that artificially separates art from most individuals.

And Regina pointed to the influence of galleries as well:

I suspect that buzz and other social factors in the art world create a sort of resonance or "virtuous cycle" as somebody transitions between levels. For example, if gallery representation is the mark of a newly established no longer "emerging" artist, gallery exposure may quickly lead to critical attention and more gallery representation.

Beauty thus has an underbelly; and that underbelly apparently has an enabler: art galleries.

At some point I hope to pursue the issue of beauty's underbelly, since it presents so many fascinating questions. But for now, I am most concerned about a problem that it presents for my project.

If I am going to trade up to a Van Gogh, I am going to need to jump from one level of art to the next. But how can I do that, especially if artists and galleries are hyper sensitive to perceived status and won't trade between levels?

As Regina said:

There are a few established artists who will trade with emerging artists, but generally they want to select the work they'll receive...As you continue, purely tactical trading is likely to send you on an extremely tortuous route through each band, and I question whether pure tactics will bring you a net trade-up (case in point - BOO).

You need a strategy.

I think Regina is right: I need a strategy.

I don’t have one of those.

But I know whom to ask:

Universe:

I want a strategy that will allow me to move from one level of art to the next.
I want a strategy that will allow me to move from one level of art to the next.
I want a strategy that will allow me to move from one level of art to the next.

Monika's Thesis

Everything is art.

That is what I am now calling Monika’s Thesis.

Just to make it official, here it is again.

Monika’s Thesis: Everything is art.

Monika Blichar asserted her thesis while we were talking on the phone about the recent trade we were about to make; and I’ve been intrigued by it ever since.

(Just as a quick aside, I’m not sure that I have publicly thanked either Monika or Gregory Dolnikowski for participating in my project. So thank you both. Meeting both of you, albeit over the phone, and trading paintings with you was really an incredible pleasure.)

Now, back to Monika’s Thesis. In some senses of the terms ‘everything’ and ‘art', I think that her thesis is probably false but in other senses probably true. I like claims like that. Indeed, there is something of an art to making them.

Here is a related thesis. I will call it The Ubiquity Thesis.

The Ubiquity Thesis: Beauty is everywhere.

Like Monika’s Thesis, I think that in some senses of the words ‘beauty’ and ‘everywhere’ The Ubiquity Thesis is probably false but in other senses probably true.

Just because I’m in a thesis-making mood, here is one more. I’ll call it The Money Thesis.

The Money Thesis: Economic value tends to track aesthetic value.

Something in me finds The Money Thesis distasteful if for no other reason that that it seems to conflict with both Monika’s Thesis and The Ubiquity Thesis, two theses that I like.

But then again something in me finds The Money Thesis comforting.

But is it true?

That’s always an interesting question to ask.

That’s what I want to find out.