Can You Tell Which Art is More Expensive?

Cheap Art vs Expensive Art

I will admit to being completely blown away by how art is priced and valued, and as such, I generally cannot tell which art is more expensive. As I was scrolling through YouTube the other day, I came across this BuzzFeed video that I found amusing. In it, artwork was shown in pairs and people were asked to guess which of the two was more expensive. In the end, I didn’t feel so badly about not being able to determine which art is more expensive since one of the participants also holds an art degree.

Their basic criteria for expensive art made me chuckle. The simpler it is, the more expensive it is. The more “low-key ugly” it is, the more expensive it is. What was amusing was how that generally panned out to be true (at least in these examples of modern/contemporary art).

What I found even more amusing was how they guessed at the value of the works shown as to being in the thousands, or even hundreds of thousands of dollars, thinking those amounts to be generous and outrageously expensive for such work. Little did they know.

Perhaps my amusement in this case stems from my…oh, shall we say…lack of enthusiasm for modern and contemporary art. I won’t go into it here, but feel free to read my thoughts in Art History: Modern Art, as well as Abstract Art.

Can You Tell Which Art is More Expensive? – BuzzFeed

Want to be blown away? I encourage you to watch this video and play along. Leave a comment as to how you did. How did I do? As I said in the beginning, I suck at this game. When it comes to me trying to determine which art is more expensive, I literally bomb every time. Perhaps I should start using the “simpler, low-key ugly” criteria…

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Further Reading:

Art History: Modern Art

Abstract Art