Most of us have looked at a work of art and noticed something, then wondered if that’s what we were meant to notice. We look for an expert to tell us, to calibrate our experience, to refine our taste.
Over a lifetime in the arts, I’ve often asked a similar question: what separates art that impacts and endures, both in our homes and within the art world, from art that doesn’t? I found my answer to both questions in an unlikely place: Ancient Greece, and it guides my advisory practice.
In his book on Rhetoric, Aristotle said oratory is about persuading the audience, who are listening with at least one of three lenses: logos (logic), ethos (credibility) and pathos (emotion). According to Aristotle, great communicators speak to all three, in slightly different ways.
Whilst reading his thesis, I realised art is a form of communication. And that looking at art this way provides a simpler and deeper experience. It explains both the artists many people struggle to get, like Duchamp, Fontana and Cattelan, and the artists people find easiest to love, like Turner, Van Gogh and Banksy.
To apply this approach to art, I’ve distilled Aristotle’s rhetorical ideas into ‘3 N’s’ which reflect creative concepts from the arts.
Great art doesn’t have to excel at all three, just like great speeches don’t always use all the three building blocks of rhetoric. But when we study the greatest orators, and the greatest works of art, they tend to be pretty strong across them all.
Question: How original is the work?
Aristotle used logos to describe a speaker’s appeal to reason, the part that answers, “Does this make logical sense?”
In creative work, the rational lens is Novelty: placing the work
in historical context, understanding what artists have made before, and assessing whether this piece adds something to the field.
Novelty is not (always) about shock. It’s about intellectually positioning
the work in relation to others. Like many fields, being a pioneer in the arts matters. This often produces conceptual art that people outside the art world struggle to appreciate, like Cattelan’s banana, ‘Comedian’. And whilst that may feel aloof, it carries intellectual consistency.
Question: How difficult would this be to make?
For Aristotle, ethos was credibility, the authority of the speaker earned through character and competence and reputation.
In art, that credibility appears as Nuance: the visible evidence of skill, acquired through hours of disciplined practice, that enables subtlety with intention. That’s what skill is. When we score Nuance highly, we’re acknowledging the deft touch, the practiced flick, the thousands of hours that make a mark individually brilliant.
For those who appreciate the disciplined artist, Chuck Close is a shining example of a contemporary artist who personally made incredibly beautiful work.
Question: What does the work say?
For Aristotle, pathos was the emotional dimension of persuasion, the ability to move an audience by touching something human.
In art, this becomes Narrative: how the work moves us with a sense of story, feeling or truth. An artist like Banksy immediately springs to mind. We get it. Other artists may use abstract symbolism and metaphor that’s harder to decipher but no less gratifying once we appreciate what’s happening. I call this art which ‘rewards the curious’.
Personally, Narrative is the most important characteristic, so whilst artists like Frankenthaler or Newman are not my cup of tea, I understand why they’re important.
We can use the N’s to identify art which will stand the test of time in our homes, and in the art world, with a simple scoring system. From our own subjective experience, rate each piece out of 10.
The scoring is a conversational device. We’ve all scored things out of 10 all our lives. It’s a shorthand. The N’s don’t tell us what to think. They give us a structure for discussing what we already think.
Personally, I tend to prefer art whose combined scores exceed 20 out of 30. Over time, this is art people continue to love. I also like to apply The Nugget Test.
In the broader art world, this metric helps to explains the art which confuses a lot of people. If conceptual art gets a low score on Nuance, but scores highly on Novelty or Narrative, and crosses the threshold of 20, the art world raises an eyebrow.
The 3 N’s have nothing to do with how art is valued, and how it might be valued in the future. For that, we need a fourth N: Network.
In almost every creative field: art, music, fashion, the quality of what is made is separate from its value. The fair selling price is determined by the network of relationships, reputation and influence that surrounds an artist.
Van Gogh scored extraordinarily on all three N’s and died without a Network. Late-period Damien Hirst scores lower on the N’s than his market suggests; his Network might have outrun his work. These are entirely different issues. Confusing them is one of the most common mistakes made in the art world, by collectors and critics alike.
I call it the Fourth Wall because, like breaking the fourth wall in theatre, naming it means stepping outside the fiction and speaking honestly about how the whole thing actually works.
As Network is vital to assessing the value of art, it’s useful to understand how artists build Network. And I have to admit, I love a good mnemonic, so here’s the 3 P’s.
The Prodigy builds Network through social intelligence disguised as vulnerability, the eager learner who asks the right questions of the right people, drawing them emotionally into their story. Kusama is an archetype: arriving in New York with almost nothing, writing letters to Georgia O’Keeffe, transforming outsider status into an irresistible narrative of becoming.
The Purist builds Network through the force of the work alone. Francis Bacon didn’t seduce the art world, he captivated it. Isolated, famously dissolute, he built no Network in the conventional sense. Yet collectors and curators orbited him because there was no choice. The work demanded it.
The Producer combines creative vision with commercial and social fluency. They know the tastemakers, show up in the right rooms, and make gallerists, collectors and critics feel like collaborators. Warhol is the archetype, artistry and infrastructure growing together, each amplifying the other.
Philosophers have long argued about wisdom. It’s not the accumulation of knowledge, that's expertise. Wisdom is something closer to knowing what we don't know, and remaining curious rather than anxious it.
Imagine each person’s life wisdom as the air inside a balloon. The bigger the balloon, the more wisdom. But the edge, the surface or membrane, is where our wisdom meets what we don’t yet know. And the bigger our balloon, the larger that edge becomes.
The person with a small balloon sees how little they don’t know and assumes they’ve nearly figured it out. In times of change or stress, they often react defensively.
The person with the large balloon, full of wisdom, sees how much they don’t know and delights in it. In times of change or stress, they respond with humour and curiosity.
In the arts, our wisdom is our taste.
And like wisdom, taste is not what we know. It's what we're willing to explore. Finding art that not only sings to our soul, but will do so over decades, requires cultivating one’s taste. Exploring. To also find art that increases in value requires patience and discipline. It’s not the confidence of knowing, but the courage of both looking, and learning how to see.
No. And I’d go further: the idea that you need permission to engage with art is one of the things that keeps people at arm’s length from it. The 3 N’s exist precisely because taste is personal and expertise is not. You already have responses to art. The framework gives you a language for them.
Three. How original is this work? How difficult would it be to make? And what does it actually say? These are the 3 N’s: Novelty, Nuance and Narrative. Score each out of ten. If the combined score doesn’t exceed 20, think carefully. If it does, you’re probably looking at something worth living with.
It’s a lens for looking at art, drawn from Aristotle’s theory of rhetoric. Novelty asks how original the work is. Nuance asks how difficult it would be to make. Narrative asks what the work actually says. Score each out of ten. Art that scores above 20 across the three tends to stand the test of time, both in your home and in the art world.
They’re asking different questions. Buying for passion asks: does this work move me, and will it continue to? That’s answered by the 3 N’s. Buying as investment asks: will the market value this in ten years? That’s answered by Network, which has nothing to do with the quality of the work. Confusing the two is one of the most common mistakes made in the art world, by collectors and critics alike.
These are not as opposed as people assume. Art that genuinely moves you, that scores well on Narrative, tends to keep moving you over time. That’s the foundation. Value is a separate question, and it lives in Network, not in the work itself. Confusing the two is one of the most common mistakes made in the art world, by collectors and critics alike.
Not by the quality of the work. In almost every creative field, the fair selling price is determined by the network of relationships, reputation and influence that surrounds an artist. Van Gogh scored extraordinarily on Novelty, Nuance and Narrative, and died without a Network. Late-period Damien Hirst scores lower on the N’s than his market suggests; his Network may have outrun his work. These are entirely different issues, and understanding that distinction is where serious collecting begins.
Two things are happening at once. The work may score very highly on Novelty, placing it at a genuine frontier in art history, even if the Nuance score is low. That’s intellectually consistent. But the price is almost always Network. An artist with strong institutional relationships, gallery representation, and critical support will command a premium the work alone doesn’t explain. This isn’t a scandal. It’s just how the market works, once you know to look for it.
They are entirely separate things, and conflating them is one of the most common mistakes in the art world. The 3 N’s measure quality: the intellectual, technical and emotional substance of the work. Network determines value: the web of galleries, institutions, collectors and critics that surrounds an artist. Van Gogh died broke with extraordinary N scores. Understanding this distinction is the beginning of real literacy in the art market.
Taste isn’t something you have or don’t have. It’s something you cultivate. Think of it like the balloon allegory: the person with a small balloon thinks they’ve nearly figured it out. The person with a large balloon sees how much they don’t yet know and finds that exciting. Good taste is less about certainty and more about curiosity. Finding art that not only sings to your soul, but will do so over decades, requires the courage of both looking, and learning how to see.
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