money,money

Artnews has a take on how art can sell so high:

"...Findlay says certain collectors 'only become interested in an artist if works by that artist have been demonstrably sold in a particular price category and perhaps—although subjective—a fairly high price category. If you presented the work of an unknown artist to them and said, ‘You can have it for $15,000,’ they might not look at it, either literally or with any degree of interest.” Queens Museum of Art director Tom Finkelpearl accepts it as a given: “It’s an inevitable human response to understand that there is a certain degree of power in monetary value. You look at this four-by-five-foot piece of canvas and think, ‘It’s worth as much as a house,’ or ‘It’s worth ten cars.’ People compare it to their own lives and how they spend their money.” The reported value of objects 'inevitably shapes the way we look, perhaps sometimes in stunned disbelief,' says Lynn Gumpert, director of the Grey Art Gallery at New York University. 'It makes us look two or three times at something that we might not have paid attention to. It makes us rethink our judgment...'"