To sell your artwork is it unproductive labor, is it useful to society?! Socialist ideas is driven out of social needs, it is the care of all individuals yet art is not valuable within this system or ideal. How is art valued? Is it through the concept? Socialist value is found within labor driven needs, it is functional. Is art not valuable since it is not necessarily functional? Does every human function have to be productive? Does conceptual ideals have any social value? According to Marx everything that is not functional is invaluable, when Marx wrote his piece it was a different time, a different structure. In the 1800’s it was a utopic ideal. Yet one might say that artist are elevated above mundane jobs, is this cultivated through the value of one’s education. Artists are expressive, and create work that evokes an emotional response; it cultivates communication that is a lost art. Artists express ideals, which my subvert cultural ideas, it may challenge what is accepted, spark individual thoughts. What is your ideal of value, how is intellectual ideas valuable. Just as the reading equate intellectual worth like drinking champagne because it does not mean that artist is not valuable, so is it just accepting the obvious it is personal choice. Marx raises issues, he does not say that art has no value, and everything serves a function. There is a underhanded implication within Marx’s writings, he speaks with “ifs’” speaking of music as a product, it maybe that he is talking of the disparity of value, due to one’s career, and such… He is questioning how things are valued, and to raise that idea it raises the question of how is art valued today? How do we value art? If you look at a broader scope value is derived through layers of cultural understanding, aesthetics’ to give some examples. Art is a product of supply and demand within the American cultural value system. Value can be a question of comprehension, if someone does not understand what performance art is would they pay to go and see it… no, for there is no value without identification. Is art valued by the connection it creates to one’s work? Value is ethereal based value, is value formed through cost of production is material value increase the value system of work? Richard Cierra’s work being huge steel forms can be valued at say a million dollars, and a small hand drawing of Picasso’s can be of the same value. What does that do to the economy? Paying for art is paying for the social contextual expression of the time.