Experimenting with the boundaries of modern art, in 1989 David Hockney reduced the value of his drawings to nothing by faxing his pictures around the world. The ability to deliver limitless copies to the masses – on thermal paper that would fade with time – suggested that the essence of the work was bound not in its permanence, but in its fleeting nature and wide distribution. A decade later, an old kitchen blind covered in photocopies of those same faxed images was sold for 11,000 pounds to a surrealist gallery of ‘fictional art’. In response, Hockney faxed a fresh set of the drawings directly to them in protest, attempting to invalidate the sale. “The point of the faxes is that they were given away,” he said. “They cannot be sold – how would I be paid?”
This raises a bigger question: who gets to decide what a piece of art is worth? If not the artist, then surely the buyer – but when one man’s Monet is another’s glorified finger painting, can there really be such a thing as intrinsic artistic value? In a similarly subversive act, Banksy famously shredded his painting ‘Girl with Balloon’ as soon as the hammer fell at auction and the piece sold for £1m. Ironically, this destruction only increased the work’s value – renamed ‘Love is in the Bin’, the piece fetched £18.5m three years later. Even flawed prints can become the most prized of a set, precisely because they offer something the others don’t: uniqueness. Is owning art really about the art itself, or is it about owning something no one else can?
These are the kinds of questions that preoccupy Dylan Kempster-Smyth, an artist influenced by both the work and ethos of Jean-Michel Basquiat. “What defines success as an artist in the modern era?” he asks. “My work isn’t commercial – it’s me. If you like it, you like it. If you don’t, you don’t. I don’t want to create for money’s sake. What’s the true value of my work? If someone is willing to pay thousands, and another only a hundred, who’s right?” He continues to question the link between artistic prestige and financial value. “If a famous art collector bought my work,” he says, “suddenly people would be willing to pay more. But if my friend wanted to buy a painting for sixty pounds, that wouldn’t boost the value of my work at all.” For someone in search of an objective standard – something constant and beyond influence – the question of value, and by extension success, lingers like an echo without resolution.
Dylan’s frustration with the art world crystallised during his time at Central Saint Martins, where he studied for a year before leaving. “In our very first lecture, they said 90% of your time here will be spent networking, 10% working,” he recalled. “It was crazy – basically saying, go out, party, meet people, exhibit… It gave me a glimpse of just how cruel the art world is. Ninety-nine percent of artists don’t make it. Is that just because they don’t know the right people?”
For an artist disillusioned with the commercial system, the most natural response is to find meaning in the process itself – creating for personal satisfaction rather than financial return. “A good artist depicts the world around them in a way that’s true to them,” Dylan asserted. “For me, success is when I finish a painting and I’m happy with it. That’s rare – I often don’t see the beauty in my work until time passes. Then I can come back to it and appreciate what it is, and the headspace I was in when I made it.”
This shift in mindset freed Dylan from chasing conventionally ‘marketable’ art. Instead, he began producing work meant to challenge, provoke, or simply please himself. But that, too, came with complications. “The first critique I got at Central Saint Martins was: ‘Be careful what you create,’” he said. “If you aim to make something people won’t find visually appealing, you’re setting yourself up to fail. You might achieve your goal at first, but as soon as people start buying your work, you’ve just gone against your own principles. So then… have I failed?”
There’s also the question of whether placing value solely in the artist’s perspective is enough. While someone might choose to create purely for themselves and keep their work private, the moment art is made public, it becomes a conversation. “I realised I was contradicting myself,” Dylan reflects. “On the one hand, I’m saying I don’t care what the viewer thinks. But if a writer published a book without considering the reader, it would just be them shouting into the void. There’s no dialogue, no audience – only themselves.” He pauses, then adds, “It made me feel like I was sabotaging myself by being so single-minded.”
If neither the artist nor the audience alone can assign absolute value, maybe the answer lies somewhere between them. Maybe it’s less about ‘exclusivity’ on either side, and more about connection. An artist puts their perception of the world on display and asks the viewer – do you feel this too? “There are so many expressive painters out there – and I connect with their work beyond words,” Dylan says. “It’s that instant feeling of, ‘holy shit, that’s incredible.’ Like you’re feeling what they felt.” Putting a price on that kind of resonance – in one individual, let alone across a wider group – is a near-impossible task. But calling any version of that connection a failure would certainly be wrong.
Instagram: @dksmyth
