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> He is, by some measures, the most famous artist in the world, with many millions of social media followers. "Some measures" being a key phrase here. As is al

> He is, by some measures, the most famous artist in the world, with many millions of social media followers. "Some measures" being a key phrase here. As is always the case with counts of followers, subscribers, watchers, likers, commenters, views, etc. there's rarely if ever any mention of the relative value of a single unit of the above, and perhaps more importantly the cost of any single follow, subscription, watch, like, comment or view and its relative value. The social media platforms where these things are posted are practically cost-free for a viewer, save for perhaps paying for a subscription to replace advertising, but without any real cost to view or follow it's impossible to determine the value that a viewer places in the thing-to-be-viewed. I wonder what percentage of the millions of followers would pay $1 a month for ongoing access to view Rodriguez' work, and of those how many would keep that payment going. This is nothing to say about the actual quality of Rodriguez' art of course, just musings on the value placed in things that are practically costless to a viewer.

jeroenhd 3y ago
Being known for anything by millions of people is a perfectly valid indication of popularity. If I had to pay a dollar a month to keep seeing Van Gogh paintings, or Andy Warhol, or any artist for that matter. I don't care about art and I doubt the vast majority of humanity would consider spending money on access to any particular artist's work, excluding bands and such. The art world professional artists and art critics see isn't the art world most people see. Some look at a banana taped to a wall and see a strong message about the state of the art industry, or see the peanut butter floor as a daring exercise in discovering the boundaries of art, but I just see pretentious idiots scamming rich people into giving them money. There's a lot of value to art, but that value isn't necessarily based on what the art industry considers valuable.

jeroenhd 3y ago

Being known for anything by millions of people is a perfectly valid indication of popularity. If I had to pay a dollar a month to keep seeing Van Gogh paintings, or Andy Warhol, or any artist for that matter. I don't care about art and I doubt the vast majority of humanity would consider spending money on access to any particular artist's work, excluding bands and such. The art world professional artists and art critics see isn't the art world most people see. Some look at a banana taped to a wall and see a strong message about the state of the art industry, or see the peanut butter floor as a daring exercise in discovering the boundaries of art, but I just see pretentious idiots scamming rich people into giving them money. There's a lot of value to art, but that value isn't necessarily based on what the art industry considers valuable.