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The Problem of Insecure Rich Guys
I used to often pass through the lobby of a large DC office building in which there were always several ridiculous sculptures and other nonsensical 3-D assemblages of stuff. The “collection” changed fairly often but the style was consistent: Large, garish, silly and/or mildly offensive.
That “art” (and what I knew of the building owner) was consistent with my long-held suspicion that the chief source of funding for the art market in the US is wealthy self-made people from non-elite backgrounds anxious to demonstrate or to achieve membership in high society. The parasitic class of critics, brokers, and sellers are far more likely to be from upper or upper or middle-class backgrounds and graduates of prestige colleges than are their buyers. Only someone relying on an “expert” rather than his or her own aesthetic preferences would buy the kinds of garbage “art” that have proliferated in public and private spaces.
Rich people purchasing status certification from “experts” is a harmless waste of money if it means buying a large canvas full of random colors purporting to be high art—or, in the ultimate brazen con, a solid color or even blank canvas. The less intelligible or inherently pleasing the “art,” the more important the role of the critic (See, The Painted Word by Tom Wolfe.) and the more prestigious the purchase. But when the status being purchased is no longer by means of art or yachts or mansions but from the endorsement and funding of policies crafted by “experts,” it distorts politics and life and comes at the expense of many other people.
I hesitate to judge or try to psychoanalyze the billionaire CEO of BlackRock Larry Fink. Still, he does seem to be fairly typical of this new trend—a highly successful yet seemingly insecure man who needs to be certified by the elite’s high priesthood (“experts”). His father owned a shoe store, his mother was an academic. He went to UCLA, not Stanford or Yale. He is a very capable financial steward and has been wildly successful at every stage of his career. He is said to be worth over a billion dollars. He is woke and a climate change warrior and a staple of gatherings of the new elite. The seductive delusion of assuming the role of courageous global leadership by abject uniform followership at the direction of “experts” has become almost a pandemic of the wealthy in our time.
The world’s billionaires are trying to find status and meaning by delegating much of their judgment to “experts” who can certify them as pro-science, prescient, or noble and “global leaders.”
It is almost ironic the extent to which leftist social science academics (is “leftist” now a redundant adjective here?) claim that “status anxiety” is what drives non-elite white people into the evil clutches of Donald Trump. See, for example, this solemn Thomas Edsall piece. When conservatives gather, it is mostly a pleasant surprise to find kindred spirits rather than an identity-shaping experience. When the issues are income destruction, school core curriculum based on racial division and sexual perversion, and the pernicious anti-democratic and anti-constitutional encroachment by government (aided by its media allies) that is a far more substantive threat package than mere “status anxiety.”
In stark contrast, the Davos crowd faces no such visceral, tangible threats to life and livelihood. Their status anxiety really is about status. And they flaunt their dependence on “experts” as if it makes them appear enlightened.
Bill Gates was making COVID policy while having less grasp of the issues than the great majority of us at Ricochet probably because none of us paid Gates-level bucks to “experts” to tell us what to think (and that we were really clever for thinking it). Leo DiCaprio and the other super-rich climate warriors cannot possibly know how weak the climate models really are or that it makes far more sense to begin to adapt to the coming likely modest gradual change than spend ruinously to fail to prevent it.
The parasitic political and policy class funded by the super-rich have locked their patrons into a death struggle against the normals. The Davos luminaries now see populist revolts as a rejection of their rightful, expert-certified role as Global Leaders. Billions of dollars worth of misplaced ego is now literally screwing up the politics of the entire world.
The next time you are inclined to laugh at some rich buffoon paying millions for a painting a chimpanzee could replicate or spending vast sums for a preposterously large yacht or a fortune for an absurdly lavish conversion of a medieval castle into a vacation home, remember that he could have spent that money funding activist groups and political manipulators set on destroying your freedoms, our families, global economic growth, opportunity, and normal life. If we could redirect all those private jets to diverse, expensive tropical resorts instead of Davos, think about how much better it would be for everyone on earth.
Published in General
For the super wealthy buying art has about the same financial impact as me buying a used book at a thrift store.
Hey, I resemble that. They read just as well.
Related to this point, one of the Japanese programs that my wife and I like to watch is a program called “Kaiun! Nandemo kanteidan” (rough translation, “Get Lucky! The Appraisal Team will check anything”). As the title says, the show has a team of appraisers with different specialties who will appraise anything, from ancient Chinese art to premodern pottery or scrolls to modern toys and autographed sporting goods. For some of the items, the show provides a history of the artist or historical figure or background on the type of artwork. It’s kind of like watching a history program, but you’re never sure what will be highlighted or which items will appraise well. The people who bring items to the show covers the gamut, from television and sports stars to retirees living on a rather tight budget. I’m not an aficionado at valuing anything, and on average guess wrong regarding which are fakes, so I cannot judge whether the appraisers get them right, but their explanations for their valuations are informative.
Related to @wicon‘s point above, many of the items brought for appraisal are fakes. Someone will bring a painting that they paid the equivalent of, say, $1,000 at a antique shop or an internet auction, but ends up being a fake appraised at $10. In the case of fakes that look very good, the appraisers will often remind the owner that it’s still nice looking and worth keeping. Many of the owners are retirees who got into it after retiring, and their families in the audience (yes, this is in front of a large audience) usually want them to stop wasting money buying a bunch of useless antiques. I’m with the family members, I wouldn’t try it.
That is fascinating. Huh.
In the museum, the painting is displayed with the two vases on either side. It’s really cool. I don’t know if the vases are just reproductions, but it’s a stunning presentation.
It’s a huge painting. You feel as though you are right in the room the with girls. :-)
It’s probably just as well I don’t have a million dollars burning a hole in my pocket for “art”, considering my vulgarian tastes. I don’t think the world will be improved by more pin-up art of women in leather bikinis a la Frank Frazetta.
You are not alone!
Thanks! The bank president was an informal and down to earth guy who didn’t fit the standard mode of what you would expect from a CEO of the largest bank in Ohio at the time, National City. So I didn’t want to make him look stodgy.
I entered his portrait in an online art competition and titled it “Life is Beautiful.” I thought that fit but my wife thought the title sounded too pretentious!
https://www.artrenewal.org/Salon2016/Artwork/ByCategory/22634#content
Funny coincidence. My wife’s uncle was a science fiction writer named Donald Wollheim who eventually became the editor of Ace Books and once had a falling-out with Frank Frazetta and fired him from a job!
You can always branch out and collect art depicting dogs playing poker.
My brother had a job in the Reagan White House. A friend of his was a gifted painter. The then new addition to the National Gallery of Art had lots of regular amateur exhibitions in one hall and there was one exhibit of paintings and sketches done by staff of the White House. With a brilliant stroke, the artist painted a good likeness of my brother; Standing next to him was Elvis with his arm around his shoulder. And the composition was 3/4 life-size on black velvet. In the National Gallery. ‘Murica!
I once had a big unveiling for a doctor’s portrait at the Cleveland Clinic. His friends approached me beforehand and asked if I would participate in a practical joke….. The day came to unveil the portrait to the crowd. The guy I painted was asked to take the veil off the painting, only to discover a painting of his face on a figure of Elvis on black velvet that I had done, with the pompadour hair and rhinestones and everything. The audience sat silently stunned for about three seconds, then uproarious laughter ensued. I calmly walked over and removed the Elvis painting to reveal the real portrait underneath.
Sorry, I never took a picture of the Elvis painting.
Beautiful portraits!
My son is a photographer-stockbroker-bonsai gardener-former Ricochet member. He does not have the patience to paint or draw, but he has done amazing work with his camera. He took this photograph for a Catholic nonprofit that does some work in Haiti. (Funny story: he had to get a pincushion’s worth of vaccines in order to go. He went to a little urgent care business on Cape Cod. His doctor said, “Wow, I haven’t done this in a while. I have to check the CDC.” He ended up giving my son a 45-page sheaf of dos and don’ts from the CDC and quite a lot of vaccines! :-) )
This is my favorite photograph. In the whole world there is no photograph more beautiful. :-)
That looks like right out of Norman Rockwell’s portfolio!
I agree.
I also think it should be on the cover of some magazine somewhere.
It probably should get a Pulitzer or Nobel. Right? :-)
Mothers are very objective about these things. :-) :-)
When he was a kid, he played baseball and he was a percussionist–classical music as well as jazz and other styles.
Those three things are all about timing. He was born with an ability to split seconds and to wait patiently. Just amazing.
I remember you mentioning his keen sense of timing a long time ago. That picture captured at just the right moment demonstrates it clearly.
I’ve only had a few instances where I had to utilize sharp photographic timing in my portraiture. The most drastic case was in trying to do a painting of a girl swinging through the air on her backyard swing. To get the “real feel” of her in motion I set my camera up on a tripod and used the fastest possible exposure time with a fast exposure film (this was long before digital photography). I set the focus to match the moment when she would be at the lowest point in her arc and told her to just swing away happily. I then just kept firing off dozens of shots trying to get her at the correct focal point. By the preponderance of increasing pure random chance, I got enough good shots of different parts of her that I was able to piece them together for this portrait, though I think your son captured his moment even better:
The mother wanted me to fill in her missing teeth but I told her “Oh, no! It fits a little girl just right and you’ll never have this moment again.”