/lit/ - Literature

>>11884655
>Art has never had objective value
This is true for everything in a capitalist society. Value is (theoretically) determined by the market, which consists of people with subjective wants and desires.
>always been a vehicle for personal expression.
This is not. Artists depended on commisions. Commisions depended upon what the market wanted (portraits and religious stuff, mostly).
>that the artist has either some arbitrary, preconceived level of skill or time investment into it because it challenges their misguided conception of a capitalist society in which success is "earned".
This sounds like the labour theory of value, not a capitalist philosophy. Maybe they don't like modern art because it's ugly and reeks of bullshit? Or maybe they themselves value effort and feel like they're being cheated by some snot nosed brat who makes some scribbles and then tells them it represents 'suffering'.
>"objective" skill
I think you could probably measure skill objectively by determining how many hours of training would be required to reproduce something, or how rare you would expect any particular talent to be in a population. That's obviously separate from originality.

At the end of the day people will like what they like, but I can't help but feel the art market is currently being propped up by subsidies from know nothing bureaucrats and from tax schemes run by billionaires and not a lot of people genuinely give a shit about what's being pumped out by modern artists. That's just what happens when the gentry cease buying portraits and the church isn't commisioning gigantic triptychs. Stop the public funding of modern art museums and the house of cards will probably crash down, just like opera is currently being kept alive on life support.