THE PRICE OF EVERYTHING
Director NATHANIEL KAHN
Basquiat paintings regularly fetch tens of millions of dollars, and the recent sale of a little-known Da Vinci topped $450 million—but what forces are driving the white-hot art market? Who assigns and who pays these astronomical sums? What currency adequately measures art’s value? The Price of Everything leads us into a rarefied labyrinth of galleries, studios, and auction houses to wrestle with these questions and explore what society loses and gains when art becomes a rich person’s commodity.
With unprecedented access to in-demand artists like Jeff Koons, Gerhard Richter, and Njideka Akunyili Crosby, and to prominent collectors and dealers, Academy Award nominee Nathaniel Kahn coaxes out the dynamics at play in pricing the priceless. Intimate interviews with a mega-collector reveal a surprising mix of altruism and business acumen as he determines the fate of his collection. Candid moments with ’60s art star Larry Poons probe why he fell out of fashion while his contemporaries’ cultural and monetary stock went sky-high. Rather than prescribe answers, Kahn’s juicy systemic portrait teases out tensions, holding a fun-house mirror to our feverish times.