Art and authenticity: The importance of originals in judgments of value.

Abstract

Why are original artworks valued more than identical duplicates? The present studies explore 2 mechanisms underlying the special value of original artwork: the assessment of the art object as a unique creative act (performance) and the degree of physical contact with the original artist (contagion). Across 5 experiments, participants were exposed to hypothetical scenarios in which an original object was duplicated. The type of object varied across experiments (e.g., a painting vs. a piece of furniture) as did the circumstances surrounding the creation of the original object and the duplicate. Overall, the results support assessments of performance and contagion as key factors underlying the value of original artwork, and they are consistent with the conclusion that the discrepancy in value between original artworks and perfect duplicates derives from people's lay theories about the domain of art, rather than from associations with particular kinds of art or certain cases of forgery.

Putting the art in artificial: Aesthetic responses to computer-generated art.

“…This can be set in the context of Newman and Bloom's (2011) proposition that the value of an art object depends upon whether it is seen as a unique creative act and is supported by the fact that aesthetic ratings for the robot drawings were positively correlated with responses to these two questions. This represents a remaining barrier to valuing a robotic work of art on the same level as a man-made one.…”

“…aesthetic preference; Hawley-Dolan and Young, 2013). Newman and Bloom (2011) found that the financial value of an art object is determined by the degree to which it is viewed as a unique creative act and by the amount of physical contact that the original artist has with the art object. Similarly, Kruger et al (2003) and Jucker et al (2013) demonstrated that artworks that appeared to take more time and effort to produce were rated highly for quality, value and liking.…”

The Charity Beauty Premium: Satisfying Donors’ “Want” versus “Should” Desires

“…More attractive children and adults are considered to be healthier and fitter, to have greater social appeal, to have higher academic competence, and to be more confident and better adjusted than their less attractive counterparts ( A second explanation proposes a more instinctive connection between beauty and favorable judgments. This account suggests that people simply have a taste, or predilection, for beauty even when fitness or beliefs about fitness are unrelated (Becker 1957;Hamermesh and Biddle 1994;Mulford et al 1998;Newman and Bloom 2012). Such a taste-based preference for beauty has been posited to be automatic and affective at its core (Reimann et al 2010) and to …”

Institutions and the Artworld – A Critical Note

“…If institutional settings affect our aesthetic appreciation, we need to turn to social psychology (Bloom 2010). There is now evidence that the institutional setting in which an object is placed, knowledge of how it was produced and who produced it, can permeate the aesthetic experiences people have when they contemplate particular objects -when they know or believe that they have a candidate for aesthetic appreciation before them (Newman and Bloom 2011). These are important psychological findings and perhaps show that there was, after all, a grain of truth in Danto's statement back in 1964 that we need theory to appreciate art.…”