No coincidence then that many painters in this century pile up their paint thickly. Uniqueness is preserved. S omething similar holds for sculptors. Modern sculptors often evade that fate by the complicated ways they treat their surfaces, providing a high polish, letting them rust, sand blasting them with noticeable scratch marks, or even painting them. Mass production is again not possible.
Many more techniques insure the same non-reproducibility.
S ingular art can't be everywhere. Most often it can only be seen on exhibit, in a museum or gallery. Today's museums, like the new Frank Gehry Guggenheim Museum in San Sebastian, Spain, are themselves amazing, unusual, attention-getting structures, entering which takes you into a special space, almost a cathedral where the art on the walls is to be venerated. Not everyone visiting a museum looks with care, but enough do to set a mood. Older cathedrals had their recognizable saints and reliquaries.