At one point in my novel, The Last Train from Paris, my hero, the unknown artist Jean-Luc Beauchamp, has some of his paintings stolen from him.   The thief was under the mistaken impression that the paintings were Miró’s.

By the time the paintings are recovered, they have been appraised under that same assumption: that they were painted by Miró, and so gained a wider audience and enjoyed no small amount of demand.  Of course, when Miró was contacted about them, he properly attributed the artwork to Jean-Luc, and thus Jean-Luc’s professional reputation was born.

And that leads to the question: would the paintings have been appraised differently, or would they even have enjoyed any kind of audience if they had never been mistaken as Miró’s?

Unfortunately, I fear not, for more than one “experiment”/experience says otherwise.

If you don’t believe me, watch the reaction of passerby to this virtuoso violin performance:

Would it surprise you to learn that this was no ordinary subway musician, but one of the finest classical musicians in the world?  Or that he was playing a Stradivarius?  Or that he was performing some of the most acclaimed and beautiful classical music available for the violin?

The test was whether or not any of the 1000 or so people passing by would recognize genius on it’s own merits, devoid of any superficial trappings.

It makes you wonder when you hear about it, doesn’t it?  Would anyone stop to listen?  Would anyone recognize that this was no ordinary subway musician?  Would he make more money than an ordinary musician?

Well, here are the results, as quoted from the Washington Post write-up of that experiment:

“In the three-quarters of an hour that Joshua Bell played, seven people stopped what they were doing to hang around and take in the performance, at least for a minute. Twenty-seven gave money, most of them on the run — for a total of $32 and change. That leaves the 1,070 people who hurried by, oblivious, many only three feet away, few even turning to look.”

Now, just for contrast, let me say that the musician, Joshua Bell, normally sells out music halls, and can command $1000 a minute for a performance.  But of course, that’s with the trappings of success and genius.

But, I hear you say, those are ordinary people and not connoisseurs or experts.  If you’d had classical music lovers passing by – and had it not been rush hour – the results would likely have been different.

To answer that objection, let’s move on to an area where it really was connoisseurs who were being tested.  And were those experts were at their leisure to make an unhurried, critical judgment…

I’m talking about the infamous Paris Wine Tasting of 1976 wherein well-known French judges blind tasted finest quality chardonnay and cabernet sauvignon wines from both France and California.

Now, it may be hard to imagine just how much lower prestige California wines had four decades ago, but suffice it to say that most wine snobs would have held the French wines to be far superior had they been able to view the labels before tasting them.  And that would have been American wine snobs, let alone the French!

And yet, in this tasting (and in many others afterwards) California wines rated best in each category!

The resulting shock to the wine industry finally legitimized California wineries ability to produce world-class vintages.  A drama that’s recently been documented by the independent film, Bottle Shock:

To me, this is a situation largely similar to a Jean-Luc’s painting being appraised as a Miró – the quality is there, but it would unlikely ever be given justice under its own “label.”

I mean, the Napa Valley wines from the previous year were likely just as good as the year after, right?  But no one was proclaiming them as world beaters until “The Judgement of Paris”

And if you’re looking for a more scientific appraisal of this, a recent psychological study shows that we really do appraise wine – and I’d guess other works of art – differently when we can see the label (and the price tag).

So what do you think?  Does the cream really always rise to the top?  Are unknown artists capable of making it big purely on the merits of their work?

Or is there really no substitute for some savvy marketing, the proper context, and a great label?