The esteemed art critic Robert Hughes has covered developments in the art world since the early 1970s. He has been one of the loudest voices protesting the art-for-the-art-market’s-sake that has dominated museums and auction blocks in the last twenty years.

Personally, I find myself in utter agreement with Mr. Hughes:
-What is the message of this generation of artists? I would argue that they are intellectually and aesthetically bankrupt.
-If the ‘artist’ serves only as a conceptual genitor (ordering teams of interns to actually create the art), what is the point of creating it at all? Apparently, so that it can be sold.

The program “The Mona Lisa Curse,” for which I have created a youtube playlist and embedded it below, succinctly outlines the incestuous relationships between ‘artists’ such as Damian Hirst and Jeff Koons and their ignorant, super rich clientele. The real danger, Mr. Hughes shows, is that this fad for art as a collectible is pushing out the meager budgets of museums and leaving them at the whim of rich collectors. These wealthy collectors, now the main buyers of works available at auction, can lend their property to museums to increase its worth, and thus control the narrative of the art world.