THE ART GAME

Mr. Wraight tries to open your eyes before you wink, significantly, to the fact that the art game is a fashionable confidence trick, that half of 1% sold today will not have any market value in thirty years, that there is a great deal of money snobbery and lack of taste in what people pay through the nose to buy, and that there is a calculable, cyclical ""gap of appreciation"" which gaarantees that your choice today will be nobody's tomorrow (say, in twenty years). Then there are all the deadfalls of buying at auctions or through dealers; of distinguishing forgeries and hoaxes; etc. etc. But in spite of all this, he is an active participant in the ""art game"" and he believes in it--even the big format, big prices paid for Pop-Op in America. Since he is English, a good deal of the provenance here is Christie's and Sotheby's (as against Richard Rush's Art As An Investment- 1961) But his judgements and specifics, while partial, of what to buy if you're rich, well off, comfortable or hard-up (?) will help the inexperienced innocent who should stop, look and listen. Others will know.