Vaughn's View of Art, Challenged by Banksy

Reading Robert Vaughn’s piece “The Age of Great Cities” and its specific section titled “On Great Cities in their Connection with Art,” I instantly connected with one of the author’s closing sentiments regarding taste and aesthetics in city culture. He says, “It appears, then, that the ornamental arts owe their existence to the same causes which give existence to cities; and that society becomes possessed of the beautiful in art, only as cities become prosperous and great.” Vaughn, a clear advocate for the ever prospering urban metropolis, believes that the truly beautiful and worthy pieces of art can only be recognized by those who have attained the ability to know what real beauty is. More specifically, he thinks that those able to do so are the city dwellers, as they have cultivated a taste for art through his acute, intelligent, and enlightened character. The author associates this elevated state of mind with the city subject, as opposed to the country farmer who thinks purely in terms of utility and function. There is clear binary that Vaughn is proposing, and I find it interesting how such an abstract idea as beauty can be qualified through this train of thought.

This stereotype has maintained its influence over the years, as ideas of art, taste, and culture still seem to be determined by the dominant city dwellers over the less represented rural folk. Even today, we still seem to link high art and culture with thoughts of Renaissance artists, impressionist painters, architecture of the 20^th century, and postmodern visual artistry. Yet we never associate the rude works of necessity with subjects of beauty or “embellishment,” as Vaughn says. Think of the pyramids or Stonehenge, two things constructed particularly for burial purposes and religious significances. Of course we admire the sheer awesomeness of these monuments. The fact that they were constructed using prehistoric technology is mind-blowing in itself. However, we don’t necessarily think of these things as beautiful, nor do we feel they are ornamental in any way. Therefore, they constitute a historical value, but in terms of aesthetics, their value is not as high as, say, a Renoir. We might see a flea market on the side of the road in Poolsville, Maryland (as I did this weekend), and we could possibly find delight in the local art available for sale, but for some reason, we never seem to put these pieces on the same level as those from a prolific New York City street artist or a credited fashion designer.

Yesterday, the British street artist Banksy set up a stall along New York’s Central Park, selling his art for $60 per piece. If you’ve ever seen the street vendors camped alongside Central Park South, you’d know that the art for sale is not anything incredibly valuable – portraits of Marilyn Monroe and John Lennon, picturesque representations of the New York City skyline, and faux street signs depicting Broadway or Times Square. These souvenirs are everywhere in the city and can usually be purchased for a negotiated price of $30. Banksy’s canvases, therefore, were overlooked, and by mid-afternoon, only one of his pieces had sold at a thirty percent discount. This Forbes article states that Banky’s canvases “could be worth £20,000 each ($32,000), but the day’s takings from the stall came to $420.”

So this begs the question – Do we really have an idea of what is valuable in terms of beauty? To what extent of beauty does a subject need to possess in order to be considered worthy? We’ve been indoctrinated into this binary system of thought regarding aesthetics and value that we rarely challenge or explore the notion. Banksy’s experiment shows that art, therefore, is completely subjective in its idealistic representation of beauty and that artistic worth is only recognizable by comparable sales of similar pieces.