The restaurant is very tasty, but I increasingly notice that establishments include a certain percentage on top of the menu prices in the bill. In this menu, the cost of a dish is listed as $30 per plate, plus a note like this. In this case, it’s a 4% operational charge. Then there are taxes on top of that, plus another 20% for tips. As a result, $30 from the menu turns into at least $40.
Let’s be honest about the art market (and why the prices there are insane).
Actually, there’s no mystery to it. It works somewhat like NFTs, only with a longer history and a better reputation.
The scheme is simple:
You take an item that hasn’t been on the market in this form yet (a painting, sculpture, installation — doesn’t matter). You call it an “important artifact”. It helps if you have connections — galleries, auction houses, billionaire collectors. If you don’t have connections, then find someone who does and sell the cow to them. Since uniqueness is required, there will be no paintings of bears in a pine forest, no matter how brilliantly they are done. There will be something distinct.
The very notion of “this is a painting/sculpture” — is just a convenient formality. The main thing is that the object can be incorporated into the already established art trading system.
Art is such — one of the most convenient ways to “optimize” taxes and move large sums of money. Paid 18 million euros for someone else’s work, and then someone “on your side” bought some of your work for the same 18 million. Virtually no money was really lost (just taxes), and now in catalogs and rankings, two works are each priced at 18 million. The price can be pushed up by selling them cascadingly. Win-win. Auctions are just in on the deal. Further, if you donate this work to a museum for charity, you can even cut more taxes. But it can also be sold. And here’s why.
Currently, there are simply too many free funds in the world. The number of billionaires and their wealth is growing faster than the availability of truly rare assets (real estate, companies, gold, etc. have all been divided already).
Art is one of the few markets where “scarcity” can still be created literally out of nowhere.
If you have access to a hundred such wealthy simpletons and you can tell stories (“this is an investment for 20-30 years, it will only increase”), then selling is purely a technical matter. Two or three interested parties = bidding already starts, and already you see +50-100% to the price.
Over time, real cases appear: someone bought in 2000 for 2 million, sold in 2024 for 80 million.
These cases are used to convince the next buyers. New buyers with their money confirm and amplify these cases. The cycle is closed.
Result: the rise in prices in the top segment of art is directly tied to the increase in the number of super-rich and their capital. As soon as a serious global crisis occurs and the extra trillions stop being printed/earned, and the pyramid collapses, the market will very quickly show where there was real cultural value, and where it was just a beautiful financial scheme.
P.S. This doesn’t mean at all that all contemporary art is a bubble. There are works that are really important historically and culturally. It’s just that at the very top of the price pie, cultural value has long ceased to be the main driver.
But at the summit of Olympus of the most expensive paintings of classic genius solitaries, there will never be, because galleries and dealers need artists who can produce 20-50 works a year to satisfy demand, organize exhibitions in five capitals simultaneously, and maintain turnover. Artists like Lopez Garcia, Odd Nerdrum, or Ron Mueck make unique pieces that will become especially valuable only after the artist dies.
This must be about my tenth staging of Le Nozze di Figaro. And I still can’t understand why no one ever bothers to make modern, well-constructed subtitles instead of something that resembles a product of prehistoric “Google translate”. Every single line is translated from Italian in such a barbaric way that it’s about to make one’s eyes bleed. And for what reason? The Italian is certainly not modern either, but if you undertake to translate, then do so in a way that the meaning can be grasped within those tens of milliseconds when your eyes dart to the screen. Now, you land on a text that takes a minute to chew over… Every woman makes me change colour… Instead of make me blush or make me pale… If you are fain to dance… And all that stuff.
My apples are almost ripe #pictured
I wonder why this Republican running for Congress from our little district didn’t at least use a pseudonym? Or does the context switch on for normal people and they just don’t see that the word butt means buttocks?
An excellent way to check if you’re talking with a robot
It might come in handy someday
Watch with sound. That’s when the creators’ imagination was at work. It was really boiling over
I’m telling the manager now, why do we need to present our AI solution, it’s AI, let it present itself. I imagine that in the near future, bots will be knocking on doors to sell themselves (and maybe not just themselves), while the door will have built-in bot protection.
I currently live in a luxury hotel (as they describe themselves) for $400 a night. It must be said, I barely found a hotel – everything was sold out. It all started with the fact that there was no hot water in the room. They gave me a new room, which also did not have hot water. But in this new room, a plumber came and whacked the faucet, causing it to turn even more, and then the warm water started flowing. Well, good, now I know how to bang it. But I spent almost half an hour searching for this second room, wandering the corridors and following signs that lead nowhere. When I told the receptionist that only ghosts could improve my mood from the lack of hot water and the forced move, the lady at the reception smiled cunningly and said that anything can happen. And after that, I spent half an hour looking for the room.
Imagine, you are given room 446. You exit the elevator. There you see signs
“to the right 438-456”
“to the right 466-476”
“to the right odd rooms”
“to the left 400-432”
“to the left 478”
You follow the corridor and at the very end of it
“to the right 439-487”
“straight 429-437”
“back 427-401”
Ok, I have 446, so to the right. There’s a door
“straight 439-477”
Hm. Ten rooms just lost by turning towards the door. Well, alright, my 446 is somewhere here.
You enter, and it’s not there. There’s 445 and 447.
It turned out that as I walked from the elevator following the arrow “to the right 438-456”, it wasn’t in vain it said “to the right – odd”. But then where are the even ones? Also to the right! Just not mentioned. The even numbers are behind one of the doors marked “to the right – odd”. You have to walk about ten meters and see on the right side of the corridor a blind door of the same style as the wall with a “exit” sign and numbers 438-454. So the even numbers are behind this door, but how would you know? And what if you have 445? Well good, we go through the door. But there’s nothing there.
Absolutely nothing, just stairs to the fifth and third floors. But there’s also an unmarked door. And behind this door, hurray, even numbers.
Whoever navigated this needs to be beaten with whips. The fact that the hotel is 132 years old does not excuse it)
Yuki is like clockwork. Twice a year, he enters a mode of howling. Just like a wolf at the Moon. Last year, the autumn howl started on October 15-16, 2024, and ended on the 20th. Today, October 15, 2025, it began. Prior to this
* March 15, 2022,
* October 27, 2022,
* February 2, 2023,
* April 1, 2024, lasted four days.
* October 15-16, lasted 4 days
Update: October 19, 2025, it ended
Yuki, we have everything recorded!
Hi, I'm Rauf Aliev. 