Regardless of what you call Art there is value in Verdult art
Tuesday, October 9, 2007 at 09:10AM 
Regardless of what you call "Art" there is value. Value today is based upon supply, demand, and marketing of the art and artist. In the past two years the Corporation has made sure that William Verdult artwork is accepted and well known at the major on-line pricing sites.
In the coming months and years our goals are set even higher.
According to Microsoft's Encarta, Art is the product of creative human activity in which materials are shaped or selected to convey an idea, emotion, or visually interesting form. The word art can refer to the visual arts, including painting, sculpture, architecture, photography, decorative arts, crafts, and other visual works that combine materials or forms. We also use the word art in a more general sense to encompass other forms of creative activity, such as dance, drama, and music, or even to describe skill in almost any activity, such as “the art of bread making” or “the art of travel.” Here art refers to the visual arts.
Defining art raises problems also in that since the beginning of the 20th century some artists have sought to challenge the very definition of art. Their art objects may lack the qualities long associated with art, such as beauty, skilled craftsmanship, and clear organization. These art objects may even be indistinguishable from consumer products. Conceptual artist Jeff Koons, for example, assembles sculpture from commercially manufactured products such as vacuum cleaners and lawn ornaments.
In addition, during the last quarter of the 20th century, critics and art historians considered many more types of objects as art. Today, these authorities often speak of “visual culture”—which may include motion pictures, television, advertising, and comic books—instead of giving special attention to sculpture, painting, or architecture.
Perhaps the major difficulty in defining art lies in the fact that art implies value—monetary, social, and intellectual. Large amounts of money may be involved when an object is regarded as art. A sculpture of beer cans by American artist Jasper Johns is worth millions of dollars, while beer cans themselves are worth almost nothing. Many critics would say that the sculpture qualifies as art because the artist intended it to be seen as art. But what if the maker had no such thought in mind? Consider, for example, blankets woven by Navajo women whose identities are unknown.
Items like Navajo blankets by anonymous weavers were long classified as crafts or as cultural artifacts (objects made by humans) rather than as art because of their seemingly nonartistic materials as well as their usefulness, the anonymity and female gender of their makers, and their origins in tribal culture. That we are beginning to consider such objects as art is a reflection of our changing social values.
Regarding useful objects made in tribal cultures as crafts or artifacts would not seem inappropriate if we did not think of these categories as essentially different from painting, sculpture, and other categories considered “high art.” Critics and art historians today often try to avoid this division between high and low art, substituting for “high art” terms such as “art with a capital A,” “art-as-such,” and “serious art.” But these terms still make a distinction. We could speak instead of “art that is displayed in museums,” “art that is taught in art history classes,” or “art that art critics can interpret.” These expressions would encompass tribal objects and give them an intellectual value, no matter who made them or what their intent may have been.
Regardless of what you call "Art" there is value. Value today is based upon supply, demand, and marketing of the art and artist. In the past two years the Corporation has made sure that William Verdult artwork is accepted and well known at the major on-line pricing sites.
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