Urban Shocker
Doyenne
Re: Hirst etc. How much is anything in the art market actually worth? What someone will pay for it, I suppose - however much one has to throw at the problem.
Getting back to the Chicago comparison that Ladies Mile sets up - between the American and British/Canadian collecting pattern of the 1880s and beyond, when the States was flush with robber baron wealth and Toronto was a colonial city - I believe that the old French salon system was actually rather good when you consider that it packed large numbers of people into the exhibitions. But the independant dealers, like Durand-Ruel, were smart in the way they targeted collectors by setting up smaller, more intimate galleries and catering to their clients that way. Our rich American cousins, who looked to France for cultural leadership, hoovered up brand new Impressionist paintings in large numbers ( and all but ignored earlier works by these artists ... ) that way, and that forced up prices for those artists in Paris for those who were the true progressive patrons and had bought in the 1860s and '70s. There's also the question of how to put together a good collection at a considerably later date ( the Courtauld in London, for instance ) when a fuller picture of the art of a particular time is available. There are advantages to taking that approach because the collection can acquire a range of works that simply wouldn't have been available without that "bigger picture".
Getting back to the Chicago comparison that Ladies Mile sets up - between the American and British/Canadian collecting pattern of the 1880s and beyond, when the States was flush with robber baron wealth and Toronto was a colonial city - I believe that the old French salon system was actually rather good when you consider that it packed large numbers of people into the exhibitions. But the independant dealers, like Durand-Ruel, were smart in the way they targeted collectors by setting up smaller, more intimate galleries and catering to their clients that way. Our rich American cousins, who looked to France for cultural leadership, hoovered up brand new Impressionist paintings in large numbers ( and all but ignored earlier works by these artists ... ) that way, and that forced up prices for those artists in Paris for those who were the true progressive patrons and had bought in the 1860s and '70s. There's also the question of how to put together a good collection at a considerably later date ( the Courtauld in London, for instance ) when a fuller picture of the art of a particular time is available. There are advantages to taking that approach because the collection can acquire a range of works that simply wouldn't have been available without that "bigger picture".