Camus Crosses The Street, parts 858 - 861

 858. It was a big retrospective of the works of Cezanne. Cezanne, being one of the foremost pioneers of modern art, I expected big crowds and a long line to get in, but it was the usual thing, fifteen or twenty elderly couples with white hair in each of the rooms of the exhibit. 

859. I went to a baseball game, there were ten thousand people in the stands screaming so loud I had a ringing in my ears for a week, and my poor little Duck body was almost crushed to death in the rush to get into the stadium. People are interested in baseball, people and people are interested in cinema. People in general are not interested in art in any way. There behaviors make this abundantly clear. Art exhibits are social affairs where the rich go to visit with each other, they are not about art.

860. "Social affairs you think, Mr. Duck?", said Buboni. "Are you saying that all of the billions of dollars that have been spent on new museums for modern art in the world, and all of the trillions of dollars that has been spent by collectors driving up the prices of modern works to unprecedented levels are simply the expression of a social phenomena, to be studied not as a part of art history, but studied as a branch of sociology. 

861. "I am not going to get into that argument with you today said the Duck, and besides I know you have read Veblen's book 'The Theory Of The Leisure Class.' That book was written in 1899 but it is still the best and only explanation for why someone would pay 40 million dollars for an object consisting of a piece of cloth with paint smeared on one side of it, which is all that on oil painting is in actuality."