$34k Picasso plate to be sold for $500 in stunt that exposes collector hypocrisy

It’s not about pretentiousness. It’s a market for collectibles, and for a piece to be collectible, it has to be authentic.

Here, they mixed a bunch of identical fake plates with a real one. They’re trying to prove that people don’t care about beauty, only about collectability. But that’s no secret. The art world doesn’t give a damn about beauty or meaning, they care about how collectible it is, plain and simple.

Anyone who thinks high-worth art, 20k plus, is purchased for beauty or meaning is not active in the art world.

There’s a book, "The $12 Million Stuffed Shark," that lays out the art world in fine detail. I highly recommend it.

Art dealers, collectors, and auctioneers couldn’t care less about meaning or beauty. It’s all about provenance, scarcity, and an artist’s desirability.

There’s a fourth participant, the casual buyer with lots of money. This is who everything is marketed towards. That’s where the myth of intrinsic beauty and meaning comes in. They’re the sucker. Auction houses like Sotheby’s and Christie’s hire top marketing firms to concoct stories for the artwork and imbue it with meaning, but that’s all aimed at the casual buyer.

Everyone else is in it for the money. Art dealers, collectors, and auctioneers trade among themselves, pumping up the value due to provenance. Then they unload it on the sucker. And here’s an interesting fact, over 90% of the time, once an artwork is unloaded, it never reaches that high price again.

If you want to make money in the art world, you have to be an active participant and be part of the inner group, you can't be the casual.

This doesn't mean there's no beauty in art. There certainly is. Go to a local gallery and buy yourself something good to look at. But don't confuse wall decorations with the "art market". They're two very different beasts.