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Comment by Foobar8568 | Hacker News Reader

Modern art (or just art), it's more a money laundry, tax evasion, asset management scheme than anything else.

I think those play a smaller role, for the following reason: If modern art was primarily about the social aspects, you'd expect most modern art to be stuff like a perfectly blank canvas or a urinal, because those are direct signals of the "coolness" of the artist (who else but a charismatic person can sell a blank canvas?)

If art was more about tax evasion, etc, then modern art would probably be more photorealistic or otherwise difficult to create (since this would make it easier for outsiders to assess the scarcity of an asset)

But I agree that the modern art market is multifactorial in nature and that there are elements of both involved.

But most modern art is not much better than blank canvas, etc.

That's exactly what I'm saying: The more ludicrous the art, the more likely it is that the product is not the art itself, but the artist.

The tax evasion argument doesn't seem to follow. It's not the scarcity that you want hard to measure it's the value. Scarcity in modern art is always assured by one of a kind or limited runs. If it's photorealistic it's much easier to judge the value than an abstract composition. How much should a shark in formaldehyde be worth? If it's in a natural history museum, then the price of the shark, the tank and the formaldehyde and any labor to prepare it. If it's in an art museum, who knows? Whatever someone paid for it.

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