Wow! I didn't think much about this aspect when I wrote. But at the end I don't think it's sustainable. I mean modern art is easy to create. Classical paintings could do well. But modern art is like a ponzi scheme. Maybe it will continue for some time. I do think it is a smart store of wealth. But it's not backed by anything but marketing.
Thanks for offering a new perspective :)
Like other currencies they are worth what they are worth because everyone agrees they are worth that much. If I recall a lot of it was classical paintings. But the values of those are all marketing too, the Mona Lisa was not always what it is now. It behooves all the people involved though that they all play along and accept the crazy pricetags on those pieces as legitimate.
At least Mona Lisa required a lot of real skill. So I'm cool with those hard to create art being expensive. Drawing few stupid lines on the other hand is nothing rare. Maybe someone would figure out a way to mass produce those kind of cheap artwork and eventually bring the price down.
I've been on a cruise ship the last week that only offered like 3 non news channels and one was all of these interviews/profiles of modern artists and it seems like what they were all doing was actually very complicated and labor intensive, they all seemed to be going out of their way to make it like that in order to justify their existence, one guy would take 3 days to cover a sheet of steel with gold leaf before he would even start working on it and then he was like electrocuting it and pouring chemicals on it and they did look pretty cool when he was done but I feel like he could simplify the process, but that would defeat the point.