>It's the only objective measure there is.
No, approval is not "the only objective measure there is." And isn't approval a subjective measure anyway?
If the "Mona Lisa" was pus that was removed from Da Vinci, is it "great art"? No, since standards exist on what is art or not. You might say it isn't great art because it has no approval, while ignoring that it's not a piece of artwork to begin with.
>There are principles we can identify, yes. But ultimately these principles just reduce to approval.
Maybe aesthetics reduces to approval, but art means something made with skillful creative activity. Like another user said, art is a category, but people also seem to use it as a value judgement of quality.
As for markets, many people can't afford the best quality of goods, which are often not mass-produced anyway. Which reminds me of how a painting by Mark Rothko might sell for $82 million, but a postcard version might sell for mere dollars.
When people look at the "art" made by Mark Rothko, that's what makes them wonder why it would sell for so much, since their child could make the same thing. But the Rothko painting doesn't merely have use value and exchange value, but also sign value (the status that having the thing grants the owner).
Jean Baudrillard:
>Theoretically the exchange value of an object is supposed to be derived from its use value. In actuality the use value and exchange value of an object are split into a dichotomous relationship that requires an artificial scale to establish a system of value and equivalence
>It is not the fact that cultural goods become a market and a marketable product, that is dangerous, it is not the fact that aesthetic values become an exchange value or a speculative value, that is pernicious. What is dangerous, we might say, is the fact that economic values, market values, prices, money, speculation, become an aesthetic value, the source of judgement, of pleasure and of aesthetic fascination.
