Arbitrary Value of Art

An interesting example of some contemporary artists' opinion of the value of their art is heard from British rapper The Streets in his song "Hotel Expressionism" in which he sings about checking into a hotel, filling the iron with brandy and letting it out in steam, pouring shampoo and soap all over the carpet and upholstery etc. explaining that it is only done in big hotel chains which ca afford or are insured against damage. He also explains that in the end his credit card is charged for the damage anyway, thereby assigning his "art" it's own value, also claiming that the albums he puts out are intended to fund this. The Streets real name is Mike Skinner, he is heavily interested in western philosophy and psychology but his first album, as one of my former supervisors at Borders put it, "is great if you like hearing someone rap about smoking weed and playing playstation."

Cezanne seen by Burroughs

"A painting tells a story but viewed from different time and positions simultaneously. Cezanne shows a pear seen close up, at a distance, from various angles and in different light... the pear at dawn, midday, twilight... all compacted into one pear... time and space in a pear, an apple, a fish. Still life? No such thing. As he paints, the pear is ripening, rotting, shrinking, swelling."(p.15)
- from My Education: A Book of Dreams by William S. Burroughs
Written in 1990, it is obvious to see the lasting effect of art on artists. William Burroughs often melds together past, present and future in his writing which would explain why he wold gravitate to this interpretation of Cezannes style. William Burroughs and Kurt Vonnegut (Slaughterhouse Five) are both contemporary writers (Burroughs wrote up to and died in 1997, Vonnegut until 2005 or 2006) who were very interested in time travel in a sense that everything that was and would be already existed in some way, just that we were unable to access it as an alternate reality or universe. Burroughs explains that anything painted by Cezanne, such as the pear, expresses in itself its own creation, destruction and everything in between. I think that because of this Burroughs had a similar view to that of Nietzsche that through introspection and self discovery one could understand more than through outside observation alone.