True Value Of Expensive Art?

International Thu 17-01-2008

True Value Of Expensive Art?
By a Correspondent

There has been an interesting article released in the past week by researchers at the Stanford Graduate school of Business and the California Institute of Technology about people’s association of the price of wine and its quality.

According to the scientists’ findings, people subconsciously expect wines that cost more to be of a higher quality than cheap wine. Of course that is not always the case, as wine connoisseurs would attest, but the same kind of analogy seem to apply to collectors of works of art.

In a newly published book, The $12 Million Stuffed Shark, the author Don Thompson, looks at the values about life, art and money and the ‘money fixated world of modern art’

Is some form of art ‘custom made’ for the super rich – the only ones who can afford to pay millions of dollars for what most ordinary people would only scoff at? Or is buying expensive art, like buying the expensive wine, a status statement rather than an appreciation and a true representation of the art’s worth?

Do the millionaires buy the art as part of a game to beat fellow millionaires in a bidding game and make it to the headlines with their catch?

In an engaging article, published by the timesonline website, Thompson’s book is discussed at length. And by the way, the title of the book is acquired from an actual event where a millionaire paid US$ 12 million for a dead shark that had been turned into a piece of art.

Posted By: Diana Achieng

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