«I JUST READ EVERYTHING»

Just what can you say about a society in which a picture is worth so much when so many are facing poverty? It boggles my mind that one of the four existing versions of Edvard Munch's painting "The Scream" sold last year for $119.9 million. Such a vast sum of money could do so much to relieve suffering, but instead it was spent on a painting of suffering. As the prices of famous works of art rise, are we in some way going backwards in history?

There is something Medieval about the collecting habits of today's super-rich. It goes without saying that the rich have always been the most avid collectors of art, but frenzy at the top of the current art market that suggests that today's collectors are motivated less by the aesthetic value of their purchases than they are by a kind of religious fervor and supernatural faith in the transformative power of their purchases.

Blue chip works of art are now being bought and sold as relics.

Relics were bits and pieces of items that were directly connected to saints and their miraculous lives. During the medieval period splinters from the alleged true cross, finger bones of St. John the Baptist, and even alleged bits of Christ's foreskin -- the Holy Prepuce -- were avidly collected. Huge prices were paid, especially around the time of the crusades, and the market for relics was flooded with fakes. The situation got so bad that in 1287 the pope was given final authority in disputes over the authenticity of relics.

-Huffington Post