The U.S. recession isn't spelling gloom and doom for everyone. Starbucks is still abrewing so somebody's buying those $4 biscotties and pricey lattes and smoothies. Hollywood hacks are still being offered millions for making terrible movies and strippers aren't quitting their...well, night jobs. Mexican immigrant gardeners, in California no less despite the state's double-digit unemployment hike, aren't feeling the economic pinch either. Rich white people succumbing to mowing their own lawns and pruning their own bushes? Ha, that's rich!
Nor is the art world about to to get hip to discounts. Afterall, dears, discounts, like paying taxes, are for the little people.
Chinese-born artist Yan Pei-Ming exhibited his 60"x 90" watercolor of con man Bernard Madoff at this year's Armory Show. The large portrait was fetching a large price: $100,000. While it didn't go unnoticed---it was quite the attraction---the piece did go unsold; probably due to the six-figure price tag, or the subject matter, or the economic crash, or all of the above. Who knows? In New York City, art collectors have been known to buy shit on a canvas. Literally.
Perhaps this fashionista fact is what keeps Mr Pei-Ming unfazed. Undaunted by the lingering Madoff watercolor, the artist surmised, "Everything can be sold in this world." P.T. Barnum would be proud.
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