Advertising as Art: The ashtray that inspired William Gibson.

The Significant Objects store on eBay, in which everyday trinkets are listed next to short stories, offers an interesting slant on the relationship between art and the market…

No buyer believes that the ashtray featured in William Gibson’s entry truly did come from a friend’s dad in the military, and so readers enjoy the quality that Immanuel Kant ascribed to all aesthetic judgments: disinterestedness. It might sound like an obscure point, but Kant argues that the beautiful must be pleasing on its own account. “One must not be in the least prepossessed in favour of the real existence of the thing,” he writes in the Critique of Judgement (1790) “but must preserve complete indifference in this respect, in order to play the part of judge in matters of taste.” [via Guardian.UK]