The Price of Art

Michael O'Hare at samefacts wrote a cost/benefit analysis for the recent $95 million Picasso purchase. He concludes it makes no sense, and asks if he's missing something. His commenters provide a list of plausible explanations, all basically having to do with feelings of inferiority (in one area or another) being overcompensated. I think the answer is much simpler; it's the same as the explanation for why a dog licks his balls. Because he can. I figure for anyone spending near $100 mil on a painting, that it's likely not the greatest of his/her extravagances. And people with incomes in the under $20 million per year category, who try to assess such purhase reasoning based on the buying power of a dollar, miss the point entirely. And in the doing, it seems to me, they betray a latent hostility for art and the enormity of consequence inherent to creative potential. There's not many pieces I've seen by Picasso that suit my particular personal taste. But his drawings and paintings are only one small dimension of his creative authority. It was his defiance of conformity, his genuine creativity, and his expansion of the imagination - for everyone - which represent a priceless value. How much would the scraps of paper be worth, on which Einstein wrote his theory of relativity? Picasso was a pretty prolific guy, but there's still a finite number of images that he authored by his own hand. The value of this image is not just about a painting. It's not just about this particular painting. It's not just the artifact that has worth. The value of any single one of Picasso's drawings or paintings or sculptures encompasses all the powers of creative ingenuity involved in his process of authorship. When someone has enough dough to throw $100 mil at a painting, they may well have issues of insecurity or inferiority, about which that purchase may be a display of overcompensation. But it's just as easy to imagine a basically well adjusted - but incomprehensibly rich - individual making the purchase, because s/he appreciates the historical implications of the creative authorship, quite above and beyond the limited scope in aesthetic attributes of the painting itself. We might wish phenomenonally wealthy people would spend the disposable portions of their income on rebuilding New Orleans, or guaranteeing all citizens of the world better health care or decent jobs. But we could also wish that all the people forking over ridiculously inflated sums for hot dogs and beer at sports events would spend their money instead on beneficial public service projects. The particular buyer in this case remains unidentified for now. So any number of possible explanations may exist to accurately describe the motive behind the purchase. My guess is that it's simply someone who could afford to buy an influential piece of history. And so the painting got bought. The buyer probably bought an expensive meal that day too. And the painting purchase was just not all that different from someone buying sports memorabilia or landmark automobiles. Cost/benefit analyses are completely beside the point. The realm of capitalist exchange determines boundaries in the dollar market. But there are, I'd have thought would be rather obvious (even in this time of Republican dominion), many other factors involved in determining worth for things. Trying to assess the Picasso purchase in mere dollar terms evinces a sneering contempt for the value of art and creativity. A similar void in enlightenment might prompt one to seek cost/benefit sense in sending a pet dog or cat or turtle to the vet.