Jerry Saltz has talked about how money has runied art interspersed in his lectures. Check out the recently posted podcast here. Anyway, exorbitant prices do totally skew art and the perception of art in a negative way. But, in this fever-pitched capitalist society can we expect anything else? Probably not. Humans are ruining the entire planet for money so, art is just another toy for play and pleasure. “Pleasure me baby!”

Has Money Ruined Art?:

“Or is the hype about the hype keeping us from seeing the real picture? The collateral benefits of this loopy, vulgar, and altogether overheated New York art moment.”

“Last year, amid the same tent-city casino atmosphere, Amy Cappellazzo, the international co-head of Christie’s postwar-and-contemporary-art department, crowed that auction houses were ’the big-box retailers putting the mom-and-pops out of business … After you have a fourth home and a G5 jet, what else is there?’ A few months earlier, her cheeky competitor, Tobias Meyer of Sotheby’s, effused, ’The best art is the most expensive, because the market is so smart.’ That’s exactly wrong. The market is not computer but camera, so dumb that it believes almost anything put in front of it. It’s self-replicating: If the market sees one artist’s work selling well, it buys more by that artist, driving up prices. Thus, the rush to buy third-rate product from second-rate artists, like the kitschy paintings of Martin Eder, whose prices have hit $500,000.”

(Via nymag.com: Art.)