Could art be measured?

People’s sensitivity and response to art vary. While some enthuse over a red square painted on white canvas, others can pass by the greatest painting with the complaint that a contemporary smartphone photo is much more detailed and has a better color range. However, the attention of even the most indifferent to art is caught, when they hear the news about sums paid during auctions in top auction houses.

One of the most common approaches is to value an object on the basis of its uniqueness. Should the pot be the only of its kind, its artistic value is much higher than of the one manufactured by the means of mass production. Following this rule, the aforementioned red square painted by Malevich is a role-model work of art.

Sometimes when we see a painting or a photograph, we ask ourselves, what is so special about it? Why does it qualify as a work of art? Especially, that nowadays, every smartphone owner is a photographer. Looking at the most expensive photograph ever (Rhein II by Andreas Gorsky) it is difficult to justify the exorbitant sum of $4.3m paid by an anonymous buyer. Was the new owner the greatest fool or the smartest investor? Time will show.

As for now, to disappointment of many engineers, including me, artistic value is not a quantity and it does not have a unit defined. There is no tool to measure that Wyspiański’s self-portrait has an artistry of 1.34 picassos (should picasso be the name of the unit). I would be very much in favor of creating such a tool and it seems a good task for Artificial Intelligence.