I don't think anyone's under the impression that people paying lots of money for extremely stupid things is a recent phenomenon. I deride those buying single-colour canvasses for 8 figure price tags just the same as I deride anyone buying into the litany of crypto pyramid schemes.

I get it that some people buy it as investments, hoping to find a sucker to sell it to at a higher price. But that just sounds like pump-and-dump to me. Or maybe it's rich people who have run out of fun things to do with their money.

Me, I'd rather do what Elon Musk does. I wanted to buy stock in SpaceX, but it is privately held, so I bought TSLA instead. Lucked out on that one.

It's fresh, it's pushing boundaries, it's making people think and wonder, it's generating snark and discussion.

If readymades are art, if a blank canvas is art, then art is just a scam!

Not sure if it will stand the test of time though (I mean technically in terms of the artifacts persisting, and conceptually, aka whether it will still be interesting in 10 years or seen as a fad).

Survivorship bias. The successes are highly visible, and we never hear of the failures.

> If readymades are art, if a blank canvas is art, then art is just a scam!

Ceci n'est pas une pipe. All art is a kind of deception.

Meanwhile, in craftsman's art fields (all of the many ingredients that go into filmmaking, videogames, etc), if you're merely competent at what you do, it's like being a programmer - you learn the skills, and you get a job doing it, and my goodness - it pays a salary. There's no lottery involved. If you're a good matte painter, concept artist, 3d modeller, et cetera, illustrator, figure artist, etc, etc - people gladly pay money for it.

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Anecdotally, as someone in the games industry (and knowing some folks in film), the difference between these two fields (con art and skilled art) is pretty stark. Every person I've know who's tried to do con art has failed to make a career out of it, and every person who's gotten a degree-equivalent level of skill/effort into skilled art has earned a living doing it (in much the same way they would in programming).

Not for the folks I know. I know plenty of authors, painters, photographers, and ex-film-students who need day jobs. It's practically a trope. These are people with degrees in the subject who have already made professional money at it, but can't make enough steady money with it.

(guessing here) If you met these people on the job, you'd know a lot more gainfully employed folks simply by definition.

Not necessarily. Creators who toil in obscurity during life but receive posthumous recognition do happen.