A Modest Proposal: Break the Art Fair

Weird how the revolutionary ideas being thrown about here don't extend to just switching to digital art, instead starting and stopping at a moral obligation to give their gallery below market advertising space. Just because it has been less financially successful? Okay...

Prices are generally determined by what the market will bear. The high-end art market is bearing those prices.

At the same time as those fairs and nearly the same place are sometimes dozens of satellite fairs with lower prices. Impressionism came to light from such fairs a century and a half ago, so they've met the demand curve for a long time.

High-end fairs have no monopoly. There is a range of options from high-end to low-end. Seems to me the market is doing fine and has been for centuries. If you complain that you can't afford the high-end art, you can go to museums or make your own for nearly free.

On mobile (Chrome, Android 5) and I can't view the cookie policy because it comes up with another full screen cookie modal.

The first paragraph is a needlessly vituperative anti-American rant, calling into question the rest of the article.

Art fairs aren't broken. Art is broken. The whole complaint of this article is that non artists can't properly profit off of it.

The whole art world has become a pissing match to buy the couple of big names that will impress their friends where as if you just wanted to buy stuff you liked you could walk outside somewhere like art basel and find plenty of interesting work that anyone could afford.