Rothko

 “Why do you think Mark Rothko’s art sells for so much?”

“I don’t know. Maybe cos it’s so boring.”

“Why would that get it to sell for so much?!”

“There’s probably a lot of really boring people out there, and some of them have an awful lot of money. And so these people really resonate with boring art, and are willing to pay for all the resonance. Just a theory off the top of my head.”

“Bit of a harsh theory maybe.”

“Maybe so. I don’t have much invested in it though, so I don’t really care either way. Another theory though while we’re at it: people, particularly “successful” people want to believe the society and culture within which they’re having this success is, say, culturally significant, which of course exalts further their success. And so there’s a desire to believe in this society having great artists as a natural outpouring of itself, and the more money paid for the work of these supposedly great artists, the more apparently convincing the proof of their greatness; and on again to the significance of the culture and those successful within it. The same then obviously applies to artists like Damien Hirst in Britain. The huge prices paid serves to prove the significance of the society producing such apparently significant artists, and so in turn magnifying the achievement of those achieving material success within that society. So there’s all kinds of vanity and insecurities involved.

Again though, that’s all just off the top of my head.”