Measuring the value of culture as simply a product and function of induced economic forces driven by prediction data is something else – perhaps the beginning of the end of artists having any control over their destinies unless they employ an influencer whose primary research tool is Tik Tok.
……training, the development of technique and time lead to art and great art. It isn’t the product of accident or indolence or short cuts. S
As Sir Humphrey Appleby once said in Yes, Minister, the much-acclaimed BBC satire, being in politics and being in government are not the same thing.
1722 Europe was characterised by financial shocks and stock market bubbles, a controversial vaccine keeping the barely-recognised smallpox virus at bay, Russia invading a neighbouring nation and the Versailles legacy of Louis XIV bankrupting France. Not much has changed it would seem. Three centuries later inflation, Covid, Putin and the excesses of royalty still dominate the news.
I also doubt that prosecuting said art vandals [they were one of the Germanic tribes who sacked Rome by the way – Vandals that is] will do much either as long as the media is intent on turning them into heroes with something to say. The right to free speech may well be enshrined in law in some parts of the world but that doesn’t mean that wilful destruction or desecration of cultural artefacts should be tolerated. After all, the only thing that separates the barbarians from the culturally literate is the Art they leave behind and some artefacts will outlive humankind.
While pay for play galleries is the norm where I live, they generally don’t cost an arm and a leg and while there are no guaranteed sales, words like predatory and misleading aren’t part of the vocabulary.