The economic value of a work of art is dependent on a variety of factors, only one of which may be what might be described as the intrinsic aesthetic interest or value of the work. Through comparing and contrasting two very different works of art from widely different times within the Western tradition of art, I aim in this chapter to distinguish this intrinsic value in terms of each work's distinctive acuity to its own times.

Taste, judgment, and culture

In the work published under the title Lectures and Conversations on Aesthetics, Psychology and Religious Belief, Ludwig Wittgenstein is reported as saying: “The words we call expressions of aesthetic judgment play a very complicated role, but a very definite role, in what we call a culture of a period. To describe their use or to describe what you mean by a cultured taste, you have to describe a culture” (Wittgenstein 1970: Section 25, p. 8). In speaking of a cultured taste here, Wittgenstein is drawing attention to the fact that an aesthetic judgment is in some way informed or even made intelligible by the culture within which the judgment is made. But before asking what this can mean, I want first to focus briefly on the other word Wittgenstein has used here – for he speaks of a cultured taste.