“Olav Velthuis, a Dutch sociologist who wrote Talking Prices, the best study of what art spending means, compares the top of the art market to the potlatches performed by the American Indians of the Pacific Northwest, where the goal was to ostentatiously give away, even destroy, as much of your wealth as possible—to show that you could.”
— From ‘Why Is Art So Damned Expensive?’ by Blake Gopnik. http://www.thedailybeast.com//content/newsweek/2011/12/04/why-is-art-so-damned-expensive.html
