It occurs to me that I ought to share some information that stunned me.
When I was visiting Washington D.C. this past weekend, my hostess (Do we still use this feminized form now that we’ve dropped waitress and actress?) took me to a gallery in Bethesda, Md., where she had bought a swell, huge painting. The gallery, she said she’d been told, moves millions of dollars of art every month.
In we went. I was stunned–by the preponderance of crappy “art” with big prices.
Clearly, the art market is a separate entity from the art world. This gallery is sitting in the center of a big-bucks community with mega-houses in need of decoration on the walls.
The better art showing these days in Old City and Center City is a way better deal that what this guy had, for the most part. I suppose this isn’t much of an insight, but: What sells is different from what’s good and from what’s interesting.
