Originally Posted by roachboy

i suppose part of it is the heist film trappings with which my imagination was more than willing to fill in details of this story....but some of it is also a deep ambivalence about museyrooms. on the one hand, they make available for various forms of bourgeois aesthetic contemplation by the public (as over against, say, private collectors). on the other, they do this in the form of a kind of art zoo. on the one hand, they are at the center of a valuation process that enables art to be converted into commodity form. on the other hand, art is not a commodity. not really. on the one hand, this valuation enables (some) artists to make a living. on the other, it really enables auction houses and other intermediaries to make livings because most of the artists whose work is Really Pricey are dead. that's why their work is Really Pricey. they can't do the de chirico thing and take a 10 year detour making new versions of their earlier work. on the one hand, i like going to museums. on the other, art heists make me happy.

it's like that.