Written on March 19, 2026
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In early January, I came across a subreddit where people ask you to draw them. I was so bored, so I took out one of my index cards and my pencil, and sketched someone. It was really fun, so I continued this for the next two weeks. Over the next two months, I sketched randomly, adding up to another week.
One of my favorite movies, that I wrote an article on, is Our God’s Brother, based on a play by a Polish philosopher, where the first act is entirely about the nature and purpose of art.
In fact, I want to do a petition to get the Siskel Film Center to show this film, so I can take all my friends in Chicago there and force them to watch it with me. Please remind me in person to do this one of these weekends.
Art is deeply important to me, because fundamentally, it’s just the way we express our own internal human experience, and the subjective significance of them to us, to other people, objectively. It’s really an impossibility, yet we do it successfully all the time.
So, today, I had the idea to tape my 50 sketches to a poster, as an ad hoc art exhibit, and charge $100, no, $200 per sketch. Prices, of course, were negotiable.
All the while, I was wondering: what is the value of art? Why do people want it? Why do people need it? So I did this sign today for a few hours.
If the sketches were from a child prodigy, they would immediately have value from their uniqueness, and the ability to resell them later if the child is successful.
If they were found in the artifacts of Andy Warhol, having sketched them on his deathbed, they would have no value to people who don’t know who he is, significant value to people who love his art, and moderate value to people who plan to resell them.
If they were sketched by a monk who lived in a cave next to an active volcano for a year, while he lived in that cave and ate nothing but pears, they would have significant value to people who value the story.
There are certain subjective experiences that I have had, which were so intensely powerful, so moving, so beautiful, that I felt compelled to spent hours learning a skill, for instance, drawing, or piano, in order to provide myself with the equipment to recreate that experience within others.
I would almost pay them to experience that art, simply because of how desperately my heart longed to recreate an experience it loved within another heart.
There is so much more to life than money. Being evil is a quick an easy way to make significant money, and money does not improve the quality significantly. Yet we’re here in this world, “and the laborer deserves his wages.” So there is value in art.
I did this sign for about 2 or 3 hours, which was enough time to think of my answer:
- Aesthetics. No one will buy something they find hideous.
- Meaningfulness. When the art speaks to the viewer’s heart.
- Significance. When the art’s creation has a meaningful story.
I think it’s just enough for one of these to be present to give art value. The more are present, the more the value increases.
I almost added #4 as “Significance of the Creator” meaning, for example, if your favorite singer drew it, it would inherently have more value to you, but that’s really just a specific variation of #3.
What do you think? What gives art its value? How do you know how to price your art? How do you decide what to pay for art?