The Price of Everything

Paintings by Basquiat and Gerhard Richter sell at auction for tens of millions of dollars; a multi-story inflatable ballerina by Jeff Koons dwarfs visitors at Rockefeller Center; Maurizio Cattelan’s gold plated toilet is installed in the Guggenheim Museum for all to see and use. Today, art is a spectacle, big bucks and front-page news. As a society, we have become less concerned with the aesthetic and social values of art, and more concerned with brand names and the business of it all. Many feel that art has become a pawn of the ultra-rich—an exclusive investment class with perks and loopholes out of reach to the average citizen— who, as collectors, flip works at auction and squirrel away their trophies in high end security warehouses.

This documentary by Nathaniel Kahn, son of the famed architect Louis Kahn, demystifies the rarefied world of contemporary art in a dynamic and entertaining way. With unprecedented access to artists, dealers, collectors and auction houses, it takes us deep into a hidden world where nothing is what it seems.  Ultimately, the film re-affirms the transcendent power of art itself and the deep need we have for it in our lives.