Reply #34: As a art history professor, I have to point out that economics is much

[Hissyspit]

more complex than everyone is implying. The typical immediate reaction to news about visual art always seems to be manifestations of stereotypes and reactions of "How can that be worth THAT much money?"

The valuing of cultural objects is not necessarily at the expense of other things in society. The production and evaluation and re-evaluation of "high" cultural expression is EXTREMELY important to society. As someone else pointed out in another post, it is not as if the money has been destroyed. $65 million gets spent on many motion-picture budgets every year. Where are the weekly threads attacking that practice?

One reason many philanthropists can give massive amounts of money to charity is because they invest in things of cultural value.

Massive amounts of money are moved around all the time, everyday, and much of it is illicit and directly at the expense of many people and at the negative exploitation of many people. Buying important, culturally significant artworks is hardly the worst thing that someone can do, and having a knee-jerk reaction to about the only aspect of the visual arts world that gets reported in the mainstream media seems to indicate a confusion of intrinsic value and cultural value.

We saw similar naivete displayed concerning the "Gates" project by Christo last year.

One other thing: Picasso was mean, and there is nothing wrong with criticizing/taking a critical view of his work, but he is not especially "overrated" - much of what he accomplished, in conjunction and under the influence of his fellow artists was pretty important to 20th-century thought and art in general.