Around this time of year, we receive various end-of-year reports from the State and National galleries.
Below, unaltered, is a page from the NGV Annual Report (here). It serves as facing page to the report titled : Five Year Financial Summary. The speculative caption given to the image is:
Visitors enjoy the exhibition A Golden Age of China: Qianlong Emperor, 1736–1795
Once again, the use/value of such as this has the Accountants, Economists, Philosophers and -oLogists of every mask at Theatre of the Actors of Regard all in a spin, debating how the Value of our Acts of Regard might be calculated and weighed.
Use value : Origin of the concept
The concepts of value, use value, utility, exchange value and price have a very long history in economic and philosophical thought, from Aristotle to Adam Smith, and their meanings evolved. Adam Smith recognized that commodities may have an exchange-value but may satisfy no use-value, such as diamonds, while a commodity with a very high use-value may have a very low exchange-value, such as water. Marx comments for example that "in English writers of the 17th century we frequently find worth in the sense of value in use, and value in the sense of exchange-value." With the expansion of market economy, however, the focus of economists has increasingly been on prices and price-relations, the social process of exchange as such being assumed to occur as a naturally given fact.
Marx emphasises that the use-value of a labor-product is practical and objectively determined; that is, it inheres in the intrinsic characteristics of a product that enable it to satisfy a human need or want. The use-value of a product therefore exists as a material reality vis-a-vis social needs regardless of the individual need of any particular person. The use-value of a commodity is specifically a social use-value, meaning that it has a generally accepted use-value for others in society, and not just for the producer. ( from Wikipedia )
detail
A Person Looks At A Work Of Art/
someone looks at something...
LOGOS/HA HA
someone looks at something...
LOGOS/HA HA