Word: zquez
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...thing "special," isolated, fetishistically rare. It not only removes the painting from the flow of discourse about experience that art is meant to sustain, but it makes the price part of the subject of the work, separating it, by implication, from everything else ever painted by Velázquez, turning it from one painting among others into a dead whale on a flatcar, a curiosity to be gawped at. To most people visiting the Met, Rembrandt's Aristotle Contemplating the Bust of Homer, bought amid vast publicity in 1961 for $2.3 million, is still "the two-million-dollar Rembrandt...
...Essay "Who Needs Masterpieces at Those Prices?" [July 19], that "in America today, nobody needs another Titian -not at those prices." America does need masterpieces, and the high cost is created not by the "rapacity" of museums but by the extreme rarity of these masterpieces (the Velázquez and the Titian are probably the last great masterpieces ever to go on sale) and by inflation...
...Metropolitan Museum, in purchasing the Velázquez, was simply performing one of the principal functions of a museum, acquiring a great work of art. The painting was purchased with funds restricted solely to art purchases; we could not have used the money otherwise...
...unfortunately, did not succeed. I hope that in the future closer cooperation among museums will reverse the trend toward ever-increasing prices for works of art. In the meantime, I like to think that most Americans feel a sense of joy and enrichment in having this great Velázquez come to this country and realize that its price tag will eventually disappear...