As any regular reader of this blog knows, I have a fetish for analyzing both the incentives facing the different actors in the art market and the consequences those incentives create. Some of my favorite posts this year, from Speed Kills to The Menace of the ‘More’ Machine to Narratives Make the Art World Go 'Round, have all centered on how the accelerating velocity of transactions is warping the strategies of museums, gallerists, artists, and collectors in varying ways.  

Yesterday, dependably thoughtful gallerist and author Edward Winkleman penned a short blog post that neatly interlaced with some of those ideas. But it also spurred my brain’s hyperactive comparison-drawing function into another parallel between high art and Hollywood–with some potentially unsettling implications for visual culture.