$104.3 Million?!?

I don’t know how people do it. Just how on earth do people spend an insane amount of money on something and not even flinch? Well, I don’t know if they flinched or not, but my point is that if I had spent ONE-HUNDRED AND FOUR MILLION DOLLARS on something, you better believe it would be something monumental, and I don’t mean a freaking Giacometti sculpture!

It would be something that saved the entire world’s children or cured cancer or rebuilt Haiti. It would be something that created a normal, beautiful life for men, women and children in a third-world country. It would have been something that saved lives by the hundreds of thousands and then been enough to invest in those hundreds of thousands saving others. I would have spent the money on something beautiful.

Not on a piece of art. No wonder the buyer remained “Anonymous.” I’d be ashamed for people to know my name too if I’d spent $104.3 million on a sculpture!

I adore art. I love bright, bold acrylic colors on expensive, tightly pulled canvas, the feel of the brush with that first stroke against a clean, stark-white backdrop…. I love painting. I love art. So do not misunderstand me and think I just do not appreciate art, because I do. Below is one of my own paintings, entitled “Coming to the Age of Accountability.”

I was accepted as a Gawker Artist. I even like art that my mother would have wrinkled her nose at and called “gaudy!”

So it’s not that I do not understand the value of modern art and the importance of artistic expression in our modern culture. I do!

But no work of art is worth one-hundred and four million dollars. Not even a lost Rembrandt. Not even a lost van Gogh.

Christ Himself could have painted a beautiful scene of Nazareth when He was a child and I would still believe it wrong to spend a hundred-million dollars on it!

And I think Christ would, too.

I’m finished ranting now. Good morning, everyone! Have a beautiful weekend!