The Santa Fe art scene

It’s amazing how quickly, with exposure, things go from “that’s an outrageous price” to “hmmmmm, fairly reasonable …”

UPDATE:  The picture is unfair to the Santa Fe art scene, as there is an amazing variety of different styles, eras, cultures, media, and schools of art represented.  Except nudes.  There are always nudes.  And expensiveness.  There is always with the expensiveness.

The comment, to expand, is that one starts off at the foot of Canyon Road (the big art street in town) and looks at some Amazingly Beautiful and/or Impressively Crafted Pieces, considers how they would look in one’s living room, then looks at the price and wonders how they would look in the refrigerator box one would have to move into if one actually tried to buy them.  Four figures minimum, for most stuff, going up into the five figures.  Yikes.

Then you find something you like. That you really like. 

And then something else.

And after the tenth or twelfth gallery, even though the prices haven’t changed, your sense of perspective has, such that a $2800 sculpture is no longer utterly absurd for something that small, but is, in fact, a relatively good price, all things considered.

I think it’s called the Stockholm Syndrome, where you start to sympathize with your captors …

Anyway, it’s an excellent reason to not impulse buy, but to write down everything you like and go ponder it overnight (or over dinner).  And then go and max out the credit cards the next day, but more selectively.  After all, why does the kid need a college education when there’s pretty art in the house for her to learn to appreciate?