$120.000 Banana.

Jimmy Garlic wrote: »

The art trade has been used to launder money for decades. There are lots cases that have come before the courts in several countries.

Indeed. Ditto for the antiques and antiquities trade. It's a substantial enough part of the business(along with fakery) and well known within the trade(I know/have known a couple of fine art dealers). It rarely involves high profile stuff for obvious reasons, but even there it can happen. It's a very handy and often "tax free" way to move money around. It's also a good way to hide ill gotten gains. EG if I have to clean some money and buy an antique or minor, but agreed value work of art I can easily claim to have inherited it or "just had it laying around your honour". Brand new gold plated Ferraris are harder to explain Any biz with that kind of high value stock with pretty solid investment potential tends to attract the dodgier end.

Modern "art" like this example though wouldn't be in play. It's more in the older mid range and more permanent agreed artistic/monetary value under the radar stuff. Same goes for fakery. Trying to flog a Picasso say attracts a lot of attention, but a "minor" fauvist say is a much safer bet. This banana level stuff is more about willie waving for very wealthy people, or dealers claiming certain "values" hoping to push prices up for a particular artist, or yep eejits with more money than sense.

As for its artistic value? Much of modern art, or at least the dafter stuff that makes the papers is just channelling Duchamp without the historical context within art history, for the real want of better ideas on the part of the "artist" and that it's daftly easier to do. It was evocative and interesting and questioned the philosophy of viewing and value when Duchamp and others did it first, but nowadays nearly a century on it's decidedly old hat and unimaginative.