30 things "The Scream" is screaming, 6 (Is This Art?)

Hallelujah! Hallelujah! Hallelujah...

That's right.  They formed a choir.  I was going to have more of those -- I planned on 100-- but my Paint program is impossible to figure out with Mr Bunches sitting on my lap.

Also, Andrew was right about that baseball in his comment on number 5; it became worthless, but everything becomes worthless if nobody's willing to pay for it.  Look at housing values right now; they're falling because people aren't willing to pay as much for them.  The intrinsic value of the materials used to build the house have nothing to do with housing values, while what someone is expected to pay for them has everything to do with the value of a house.

Likewise with The Scream, which no longer is worth $119,900,000 -- at least not until someone else offers the new owner that much money.

There's another measure of value, though: psychic benefits, something I learned about when Malcolm Gladwell wrote about the NBA lockout on Grantland.com:

Psychic benefits describe the pleasure that someone gets from owning something — over and above economic returns.

Gladwell was writing  about the psychic benefits of racism in the ownership of the Red Sox; the entire article is worth reading.

Do you suppose The Scream's new owner will get $119,900,000 worth of psychic benefits from owning the painting?  Will I diminish or increase that value by talking about it so much?  Does the psychic benefit come, as the Red Sox owner's did, as a side effect of hurting others?

Probably that last one.  Classist hoarding isn't as pernicious as racism, but it's still bad, Mr Scream Owner.

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Caption 5.

Caption 4.

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Caption 1