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Essay / An Analysis of The Invention of Art by Larry Shiner
Are objects created for profit physically different from their “authentic” counterparts? At the atomic level, perhaps, but the untrained eyes of most tourists would probably find no difference between a mass-produced mask and a more “authentic” one. Yet as a society we treat economically motivated primitive art as different from the primitive art actually used in rituals, indicating that economic motivations can certainly influence our perception of art. This realization, however, brings us back to the question posed in the last paragraph: why would people view Renaissance art as valuable and advertising as insignificant if both have economic motivations behind their action ?