from Paul Mattick's "Art In Its Time"

Paul Mattick, "Art In Its Time", from the introduction. . .

"With no apparent use-value, the work of art seems to acquire its exchange-value simply by the expression in money of the art-lover's desire. The miracle is that these objects can achieve prices higher than those of any other human products. This well-known paradox suggests a problem with the distinction of the aesthetic realm from that of the everyday. And a moment's thought suggests that art as actual thing exists nowhere but within the "everyday life" from which its cultural construction separates it. The artist must pay rent on the studio, buy paint, seek dealers and buyers; his or her product, if it succeeds in entering the stream of art, will find a place in a home, a museum, a reproduction in a book or postcard. The work of art, to have a chance of entering that stream, must show its kinship to other things called art and so to the social world in which artists and art have their places."

So much of that is of interest to the ZSAP, especially the very last sentence.