In our bookclub discussion of photography last night, the question came up of why for a reproducible art form, photographs still command high prices for canonical or critical-favorite works. Why do we pay $408,000 for an "original" Arbus? One explanation was that it was a conspiracy among galleries to trick people into paying a lot of money for nothing.
However, I think this debate might be cast interestingly aside news that the Brokeback Mountain plaid shirts have sold for $100,000. Not stratospheric, but a reminder that in affluent societies, people will be willing to pay lots of money on rare objects. Sometimes, that will be based on highly formalized aesthetic sensibility, other times on fandom or a sense of historical importance.
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