Times art critic Roberta Smith offers her reaction to the news that Francis Bacon's "Three Studies of Lucian Freud" sold for $142 million at auction:
Auctions have become the leading indicator of ultra-conspicuous consumption, pieces of public, male-dominated theater in which collectors, art dealers and auction houses flex their monetary clout, mostly for one another. The spectacle of watching these privileged few (mostly hedge fund managers and investment-hungry consortiums, it seems) tossing around huge amounts of money has become a rarefied spectator sport. These events are painful to watch yet impossible to ignore and deeply alienating if you actually love art for its own sake.
More than ever, the glittery auction-house/blue-chip gallery sphere is spinning out of control far above the regular workaday sphere where artists, dealers and everyone else struggle to get by.
I love art and don't find the auction result either "painful" or "deeply alienating." Rather, I find it inspiring that human genius and practice can turn a canvas and some tubes of paint into something worth $142 million. The article doesn't explain what's so intrinsically evil about hedge fund managers, but in any event past buyers of costly paintings have included the Getty Museum, casino and hotel operator Steve Wynn, and businessman Ronald Lauder, who, as the New York Sun pointed out in a memorable 2006 editorial, Lauder's Vision, understands that the aesthetic value of art and the monetary value are not unrelated.
Finally, the dichotomy the Times draws between "the glittery auction-house/blue-chip gallery sphere" and "the regular workaday sphere where artists, dealers and everyone else struggle to get by," is a false one. Which of those two spheres does the Times art critic inhabit? It's a permeable division, like that between major league and minor league baseball, or between small local newspapers and the global New York Times, in which the existence of each enriches the other.