ART & MONEY Revisited

When Robert Hughes delivered his jeremaiad, Art and Money, in 1984, it seemed as if the earth would surely open up and swallow the greedy dealers, the opportunistic artists, the vulgar, nouveau riche collectors who had wrought such pestilence upon the fair face of Art.

The gist of Hughes’s argument was that art was being corrupted and debased by the huge sums being paid for works by a new set of superstars whom he viewed as decidedly second-rate. Artists such as Julian Schnabel and Keith Haring left him stone cold, as did the growing adulation for Andy Warhol, who was being treated as the prophet of a new era.

He snorted at ‘the art starlet one sees waddling about like a Strasbourg goose, his ego distended to gross