"This is no chicken feed" , by Erik Pevernagie, oil on canvas, 80 x 100 cm

Let us look at the things we don’t see, let us listen to the echo of the sound behind the clamor and discern the crackling in the brushwood of our emotions, so we may recognize the tokens of the heartbeats we might miss and value the quality and the bite of our life story.

Many people often wonder what value signifies and what it implies. What is the value we give to things? If something has no value, “it’s peanuts.” If it has value, “it is no chicken feed.”

The value depends on offer and on demand. It may change, increase or decrease. If it is seen with individual or cultural interpretations, it is to be considered as a relative value.

If value remains constant without depending on collective or personal interpretations, we deal with absolute value or intrinsic value. The object has no relational characteristic and no relative value.

When intrinsic value depends on external elements, the object or artifact is not an end in itself and has, in fact, no value on its own. It is contingent on external preoccupations and represents an instrument in the hands of the owner(s): good investments. It becomes an instrumental value.

Gerhard Richter reproves this kind of situation in March 2015 in “Die Zeit.” He denunciates the exorbitant prices his artworks achieve at auction. This is proof of how “insanely the art market has developed," and how the prices have nothing to do with the work. He sees it as a “frightening development." and notes a significant disparity between quality and price in the art market.

In actual fact, if we want to understand whether things are chicken feed or not, we must learn to distinguish instrumental value from intrinsic value and recognize the difference between relative value and absolute value.

Be it as it may, if we are not ready to break new ground and get to grips with the recurrent challenges of our daily reality, we will never, ever be able to recognize the uncharted and colorful pictures on the canvas of our life, nor sense the pounding rhythm in the core of our being.

Phenomenon: Intrinsic and extrinsic Value