I’m watching a programme about artists and bankers. A massive amount of money passes through the system and the super rich pay hundreds of thousands or millions of pounds or dollars to get hold of fashionable art. The programme is about collecting art and how much its value can inflate over time. But the art market can go down as well as up. Someone may be a fashionable artist now only to be dropped in the future.

Much of it seems more like luck than judgement. Art investors collect from many artists to cover the risk. Apparently artists were treated in the same way in the past. Canaletto painted 100 paintings in 9 years, his art became famous but he had a workshop where he had assistants to help him finish his paintings.

People looking at the art may find some of the images in the programme very bad. But like the emporers new clothes that does not seem to matter. In fact sending art abroad can mean  you don’t have to pay tax. There  seem to be some very dodgy practices that the programme raised. The whole basis of the show seems to be how to make money for the rich. Art is an industry and artists need to know about it but it would be very unlikely to get taken on by a rich patron. There are still artists struggling to make ends meet who do it for the love of art.