The actor Hugh Grant has confessed that he was drunk (at least, according to the Daily Mail) when he ordered an assistant to bid at Sotheby's for a Warhol that he later sold for £13m. Grant bought the painting for £2m.
It's a lovely story about the modern art market. Forget the apocalyptic diatribes, dark prophesies, moral seethings. Here is the reality of art and money in the 21st century. You're drunk (and affluent), you buy a Warhol. A few years later the value of recent art has so escalated that you can make an astronomical – previously unimaginable – profit on it. Soon afterwards, the market collapses, then it sort of maybe bounces back ...
Drunkenness is the best metaphor for the whole thing. Were prices manipulated by cunning dealers? Doubtless. But was that really what made art so desirable? It was more like a collective booze-up, everyone talking at the tops of their voices. Critics (like me) saying that Hirst's diamond skull was great art. Curators saying Warhol was greater than Jasper Johns. Magazines saying hey, let's slap a picture of Jay Jopling on the cover. Accountants and investment advisers joining in ...
The whole world has talked up and bought into art in a drunken frenzy. The sobriety of recession didn't last long. It's the morning after, but a lot of us are headed down the pub, credit card in pocket. Critics such as Robert Hughes can't help seeing this as a terrible tragedy for western civilisation. In reality, it is no more tragic than the office Christmas party.
Money and art is a funny story, not a sad one. It's a joke that such inane sums have been paid. It's a farce, not a conspiracy. Good old Hugh Grant for telling it like it was.
