Are you sure you aren't attempting to judge originality with the benefit of hindsight? The fact that these works have been mindlessly copied countless times since they were first conceived and now appear trite and simplistic, doesn't make the original concept any less original.
As to the value and validity of the opinion of critics and art audience, surely the most import opinion about just about anything is the opinion of the intended audience.
The trick was original once. I don't know if that first was the blank canvas or the silent music track, but every other iteration is just a copy.
Regarding the fulfilment of expectation of the intended audience: I agree that it is an important aspect, but it will not make art good, merely makes it marketable. I have a feeling that museums are only serving as means of advertisements, to keep the perceived brand value of these items (and people) high. Criticising it is just as dangerous for this, as remote work is for the real-estate bubble. Criticists are stakeholders in this game, as well as the authors and the buyers. Their livelihood depends on the public agreeing to, or at least accepting the valuation of these items.
I think the real art in (post)modern art is this control of the public opinion, a large illusionistic trick. To me it seems similar to the "crypto" scam, so NFTs were kind of a perfect post-modern works of art! (when they were novel)
>You have a different definition of original than me, it seems.
Probably, as I prefer the standard dictionary one.
>Monetary value? You mean money laundering?
I also mean the traditional art buying public, before the 70s when modern random figures came into the picture, when money laundering wasn't needed and money laundering laws and checks where almost or entirely non-existent. Did Peggy Guggenheim and other such figures do it for money laundering?
>Critics and art audiences: totally no "opinion monopoly" or manufactured consent at play, right?
As opposed to the non-manufactured consent or opinion plurality of Joe Random?
> As opposed to the non-manufactured consent or opinion plurality of Joe Random?
It is funny while postmodernism is all about deconstruction and questioning existing values, social structures and authorities, when its authorities are questioned by an outsider, it becomes so defensive...
>It is funny while postmodernism is all about deconstruction and questioning existing values, social structures and authorities, when its authorities are questioned by an outsider, it becomes so defensive...
Not that funny in this case, since this has nothing to do with "postmodernism".
The artists that did those things we discussed were peak modernism. Dada/surealism (Duchamp), or nouveau réalisme (Klein) for example, and of course the entirety of data, lettrism, etc. have nothing at all to do with postmodernism.
In fact post-modernism, both when taken as a critical stance and as an artistic theory, was precisely against modernism (that those artists represented).
Critics and art audiences: totally no "opinion monopoly" or manufactured consent at play, right?
Monetary value? You mean money laundering?