It gets shallower as it goes up. Privilege has its cost and convenience isn’t cheap. To a materialistic world this is most unwelcome news. No one wants to hear that life is more engaging and more profound with less, and that the better off not only don’t really care about art but can’t even see it, not really. Wealth insulates -- no more changing tires, making beds, cooking for yourself. Also, no agonizing over financial dilemmas, no need for personal sacrifice, and no day to day participation in the unrelenting adventure of most people’s lives. The ultra-wealthy bought their way out or had their ticket prepaid in trust, and with cool detachment they watch the trudge of humanity from box seats, concerned about cuff links and makes of car. They’d all jump at the paper Warhol, and all his friends, used to wipe their asses or was it peed on -- who cares, they’ll call it art. (google 'piss paintings') That was Andy’s attitude and he just came out and said it for anyone who’d listen -- rich people don’t listen.
Art is about empathy, not some fuzzy communal sentiment, but a deep down intimate connection sometimes so immediate and unexpected people have been known to cry spontaneously in front of paintings. For this to happen there has to be some depth to plum, enough life experience for art to engage, some touch of common humanity already established. Paradoxically this means the people most likely to appreciate art are the ones who have had to make choices tempered by limited resources, not by the comfortable who can more easily afford it. Like being born too beautiful, excessive ease must be overcome, and by the craziest coincidence art can help with that, too.
