In the eye of the beholder...

Pablo Picasso's 'Dora Maar with cat' in an image released by Sotheby's. Picasso's 1941 portrait of his mistress sold for an astounding 51.6 million pounds at Sotheby's on Wednesday, becoming the second most expensive painting in auction history. REUTERS/Handout

51.6 million pounds...that's 95 million dollars.....for a piece of art! That just goes to show you how miserably foolish the idle rich are.

It's axiomatic in economics that something is worth only what someone is willing to pay for it. You can try to claim that your Pokemon card collection is worth $1000 dollars but if people are willing to pay only $5 for it, then its worth is $5.

By that standard, this "Dora Maar with Cat" is worth 95 million dollars. But did this buyer really see that much value in the art...or was he paying for something else entirely?

Look, I can appreciate art...most people can. It's the subjective, random nature of its value that ticks me off. It seems to me that all one needs to be a successfull artist is a tortured, eccentric existence, a tragic personal story to explain the pathology that gives rise to your art, and a cabal of do-nothing, lucky-sperm-club, socialites who fancy themselves art critics to fall for the sad, sobbing story and act as benefactor. I mean look at Picasso's stuff...my kid was cranking out better than that in kindergarten between beenie-weenies for lunch and nap-time. Picasso's popularity isn't simply due to how skillful a painter he was, or how good he was at drawing...it's about who he was, what motivated him, how eccentric and odd he was...in short, a cult of personality.

And that illustrates my point about art...it's all so subjective and arbitrary that who can say whether art is good or not? Isn't it really about a fleeting, pop-culture fad, or a cult of the artists personality, or even more cynically, about what the popular, rich benefactor tells all her rich, idiot Eurotrash friends is good art?

I enjoyed reading the story about the people at a marine aquarium who stuck a paint brush in a dolphin's mouth and trained him to drag it across a piece of canvas. Without telling anyone, they trotted these pieces out at a gallery and made up some sad tale of how miserable and tortured the artist was and people paid thousands for the pieces. Much money was raised for the aquarium and who is to say that these people didn't get their money's worth? If they were willing to part with $10,000 for some abstract oil on canvas cleverly named " Fancy White Alabcore in Oil", then on that day, it was worth $10,000. But just like the guy who paid $95 million for a Picasso, what they paid for was the story behind the art...not necessarily the art itself.

Now, I'm going home to dig up all my kids kindergarten art, frame it, make up a good story, and take it to the nearest gallery.