Titian

The art market is, I think, the best place to test out theories about economics and the relationship of value and price.  A couple of items floating about will serve.  There are the recurring stories about the Museum of Contemporary Art in Los Angeles, and then, this morning, the news about a couple of Titian paintings up for sale in the UK.  The owner (the Duke of Sutherland) is asking 100 million pounds for the paintings, and apparently will get it.  Many contributions being collected.  People are entitled to give their money as they will I suppose, or within some pretty broad limits.  Which is the point -- is there a connection of any strength between the price of the two paintings and their value?  I am not at all sure how one goes about thinking it through.  The first two options are plainly deficient.  One could just leave it at the value of the paintings is the price paid.  Monetize and we are done.  Or one might hand it all over to some experts.  (Like wine -- and obviously just as much a fraud.)  Somewhere else I think is where one wants to be.  To me, the prices are far too high.  Titian is great, but not 50 million pounds.  I am not sure there is a work of art I would put up that much for.  Is that the problem?  An inability or defect in conception on my side?  Well, Jeff Koons sculptures at 15 million are ridiculously over-priced.  It is a funny market with lots and lots of levels.  In any moderately large city, one can easily find quite good art work at relatively low prices.  One can get first rate photographs, for example, at under $2,000, and paintings are not all that much higher.  And then this market of the hugely expensive.  (A market which is filled with dreck.)   This is the kind of thing I think is genuinely hard to think about.