I... would not spend $100 for a painting of an American flag fading into a Canadian flag, or for some comparably-priced painting of a thing of more personal interest to me, because I don't tend to find paintings more aesthetically fulfilling than flat prints and the latter are a lot cheaper. But I am, more generally, in the "given a choice of what to spend money on, will spend large chunks on aesthetic fulfillment" person-cluster. So I might be able to shed some light on what the experience of being one of those people is like.
First: the value of a well-chosen piece of art or other decoration is large, because art can be looked at repeatedly, over and over. And, unlike similarly re-consumable media like books or (safely backed-up) movies or the like, it doesn't require active effort or brainpower to enjoy; sometimes, when I'm lying in bed procrastinating getting up in the morning, or when I'm sitting at my computer trying to figure out what to do next, or when I'm walking into or out of my room, I'll look at one or another of the art pieces on my room's walls and my mood will be momentarily improved. Even if the effect isn't large per instance, the sum of all those small effects adds up a lot over the years.
Second: the gap between a typical piece of art and one particularly to my taste, in terms of expected utility, is large. Most art, even if it's interesting in the short term, doesn't have the previously-discussed effect of momentary mood-improvement once its novelty has worn off, and thus the long-term compounding effect ensures that the latter is worth a lot more investment than the former.
Third: even once short-term novelty wears off, variety remains valuable to me. The majority of the art pieces in my room are framed prints; but I also have a shadowbox, and I used to have a wallscroll, and the ways in which those differ from the other pieces help increase their value relative to More Of The Same. Thus, there's an incentive for me to have good art pieces in a range of different formats, rather than just in the format whose members tend to be cheapest.
Fourth: art space is limited. This is an important one. There's only so much room in the house for me to put art in. There's far less room than that for me to put art in without it feeling cluttered and losing a large chunk of its impact. Thus, even if in some theoretical sense I could be more price-efficient by buying five $10 pretty-good pieces instead of one $50 very-good piece, in practice, the latter is far more likely to yield its full value to me than the former, while the former is more likely to end up displaced by other things. (See, by analogy, the various reasons to prefer carrying one shark over carrying ten shrimp in Runescape, despite the latter being cheaper and healing more.)
Probably there's more. I don't feel like this is a full accounting of my psychology, here. But hopefully, even in its incomplete state, this will be helpful.
no subject
First: the value of a well-chosen piece of art or other decoration is large, because art can be looked at repeatedly, over and over. And, unlike similarly re-consumable media like books or (safely backed-up) movies or the like, it doesn't require active effort or brainpower to enjoy; sometimes, when I'm lying in bed procrastinating getting up in the morning, or when I'm sitting at my computer trying to figure out what to do next, or when I'm walking into or out of my room, I'll look at one or another of the art pieces on my room's walls and my mood will be momentarily improved. Even if the effect isn't large per instance, the sum of all those small effects adds up a lot over the years.
Second: the gap between a typical piece of art and one particularly to my taste, in terms of expected utility, is large. Most art, even if it's interesting in the short term, doesn't have the previously-discussed effect of momentary mood-improvement once its novelty has worn off, and thus the long-term compounding effect ensures that the latter is worth a lot more investment than the former.
Third: even once short-term novelty wears off, variety remains valuable to me. The majority of the art pieces in my room are framed prints; but I also have a shadowbox, and I used to have a wallscroll, and the ways in which those differ from the other pieces help increase their value relative to More Of The Same. Thus, there's an incentive for me to have good art pieces in a range of different formats, rather than just in the format whose members tend to be cheapest.
Fourth: art space is limited. This is an important one. There's only so much room in the house for me to put art in. There's far less room than that for me to put art in without it feeling cluttered and losing a large chunk of its impact. Thus, even if in some theoretical sense I could be more price-efficient by buying five $10 pretty-good pieces instead of one $50 very-good piece, in practice, the latter is far more likely to yield its full value to me than the former, while the former is more likely to end up displaced by other things. (See, by analogy, the various reasons to prefer carrying one shark over carrying ten shrimp in Runescape, despite the latter being cheaper and healing more.)
Probably there's more. I don't feel like this is a full accounting of my psychology, here. But hopefully, even in its incomplete state, this will be helpful.