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I've been thinking that the commercial side of art is based on magical thinking, more specifically the 'law of contagion' http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Law_of_c

• TheOtherHobbes 11y ago
  The commercial side of most things is based on magical thinking - specifically the collection of totem objects like companies, stock options, brand reputations, and luxury consumables that confer juju on their owner. Art auctions are one of the more obvious examples of this. But they're hardly unique. The entire business world leans heavily on the same pre-rational kinds of thinking and feeling. Which is not to say that engineers don't sometimes build stuff that works. Or that Picasso wasn't an amazing artist. (Not many people know about Picasso's very early work, where he totally nailed basic figurative painting and drawing.) But that's not where the value is. The value is in status games and perception, not content.
• cm2187 11y ago
  There would be a great experiment to do. We recently learned that Picasso's handyman was paid in paintings and that he probably stole a few others. That means he has Picasso paintings that are unknown to the world. It would be great to alter the signature on one of them to some unknown czech artist of the same period and see if museums will even want to pay a penny to acquire it and if art critiques will even bother spending a minute looking at the painting if they don't know it is a Picasso!