An executive at a top art insurance company told me that a Cezanne painting sold privately for $250m – that stands as the highest price ever paid for a single work of art to date. Not bad for some pigment on a bit of canvas. Many would say that such a lofty number is a ludicrous concept in a time of great political unrest and systemic poverty worldwide. I say why stop there; that the benchmark will steadily rise and in no time at all we will live to see the day of the $1-billion dollar painting. I can hardly wait. I feel entitled to have forged a life in aesthetics, and that you can now attain such high levels of remuneration only makes it that much more pleasant. So, in the age when cash is crap, not to mention the toxic dollar that has become the currency of choice for short sellers, the 1988 Christopher Wool painting Apocalypse Now sums it up perfectly: “SELL THE HOUSE, SELL THE CAR, SELL THE KIDS”. And buy art!
