It's all very clear to me now

[mithriltabby]

We’re watching an episode of The Saint that introduces the notion of an artist blackmailing people and getting the money delivered as extravagant payments for bad art.

So much 20th century art makes sense now! The stuff that sells all out of proportion to its aesthetic value is actually the result of initial blackmail payments, followed by influential people (who have enough money to be worth blackmailing in the first place) touting the art as having that kind of outrageous value. Once the trend is established, innocent artists create more of the same to serve as a smoke screen.

The next iteration, of course, is to have someone initiate the blackmail process in order to affect the price of a particular segment of the art market...

Comments

[wyvernwell.livejournal.com]

Wow! That explains it all to me now! I feel so much better. I thought the world had gone crazy. I mean, Jackson Pollock paintings? Come on!

[mithriltabby]

The next challenge for art historians is to figure out which artists were the initial blackmailers and which ones were just following the trend...

[cmccurry.livejournal.com]

You can add Thomas Kinkade to the list. There is no other explanation for his popularity.

[deirdremoon.livejournal.com]

This also makes sense for designer runway fashion. Especially since even the *more* normal labels who actually sell real clothes only imitate the broadest hints from the designer lines... Even they know that (Southpark-Stan voice) "this is pretty f**ked up, right here."