Barry Schwabsky on the art world:

At a time when art still makes headlines mostly for the absurd prices people are willing to pay for it, it may sound surprising to say that the ethic of the art world entails a deep ambivalence about its financial basis–the “umbilical cord of gold” that, as Clement Greenberg once observed, has always tied it to the ruling class. Although the art world is filled with people who possess an incredible talent for moneymaking, my observation is that for most of them–dealers and collectors included–there is little economic rationality to their behavior, or anyway what economic rationality is there is a facade for more obscure motives. This is not to say that those motives are somehow “pure” but rather that even art that seems totally fixated on commercial culture is fixated on it in the mode of fantasy, of image.