Beauty or money? Statistical analysis

Abstract

There are many studies investigating relationship between paintings’ meta information (author, age, etc.) and their prices, however, there is limited research on how people’s aesthetic perception of paintings is related to their prices. To bridge this gap, we designed a website (pollart1000.com) collecting survey responses on people’s opinions regarding aesthetic values of paintings; survey and data were complemented with price information. Comprehensive statistical analysis of that data is presented, including scoring of the best and worst works, correlations between variables, typology of respondents, and more. The results quantify relationships between aesthetic values and art prices. Particularly, we showed that aesthetic preference is inclined to figurative and innovational rather than to abstract art and that relations between price and aesthetic values are rather weak except of special cases.