The thing I hate the most about advertising is that it attracts all the bright, creative and ambitious young people, leaving us mainly with the slow and self-obsessed to become our artists. Modern art is a disaster area. Never in the field of human history has so much been used by so many to say so little.

Note that this is a relatively new phenomenon. Marketing really only came into its own post-war. There's a reason Mad Men is set in the '50s: That was before we grew disillusioned with marketing. For that matter, recorded music and moving images are relatively new, historically speaking. Yet for roughly half that time, they have been the primary means with which to sell things.

This is changing. When the head of Saatchi and Saatchi says "marketing is dead" it means, at a bare minimum, that those who market for a living are considering new ways to get their message across. It only took Google introducing "Search+Your World" for the term "SEO" to cough and sputter - everyone is now talking about "SMO" or "Social Media Optimization."

Print media is already dying. The kidz no longer watch television on television. How the hell do you market when nobody watches your ads, nobody listens to your jingles, and the only place they'll see your print campaign is on the side of a bus?

I suspect the advertising world is about to change, and change dramatically. We're likely to go back to consuming "art" because we like it.

"Art because we like it" is not what drives $100m Jackson Pollack purchases. That's all speculation. It's "greater fool theory." There is nothing intrinsic in a Jackson Pollack that commands $100m. Here's an article in Scientific American challenging the notion that you can use fractal theory to tell a real Jackson Pollack from a fake one:

http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=can-fractal...

...if even the use of higher math is questionable in telling a real one from a fake one, where's the "value" in a real one?

The argument is not that there is no value in art. The argument is that art is overvalued. Much like there is inherent value in Tokyo real estate, however, there isn't $93k per square foot:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Japanese_asset_price_bubble

So if Banksy's right, and all the artists are working in advertising... and the doomsayers are right, and art is in a speculative bubble... what happens when all the artists who can't work in advertising start working in art?

There are mathematically two choices: either more money is spent on more art, or the same amount of money is spent on more art.

The thing about art, particularly from a speculative standpoint, is that it relies on exclusivity. If there are seven thousand prints of an Escher, it's worth a lot less than if there are seven prints of an Escher. Of course, if there are seven thousand prints of an Escher there are 6,993 more people who get to hang it on their wall... and people will pay for that. They won't pay $100 million, but they'll pay $10.

In order for that Pollack to hold its value, it will have to be consistently held to be worth more than anything that comes before or since. Van Gogh's "Sunflowers" blew people's minds in '87 when it sold for $53m - that was the first time any "new artist" had been sold for that much money. Look at the list now: among the top ten, 1876 is the latest:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_most_expensive_painting...

Most of that list, in fact, is 20th century art. Had you sunk your fortune into Dutch masters in 1985 you would be experiencing a very real loss right now.

...and that's presuming nobody new starts making art.

here's the thing. You can go down to any gallery in any town and buy art that you like for not a lot of money. As I recall, I suggested you do this and you did. How was the experience? Pleasant? Would you recommend it to someone else?

The playing field is now flat. The only thing that separates Damien Hirst from whoever painted that piece you bought is Damien Hirst is "known" to the art world. And they're slow and ossified but the Internet will catch up to them, too.

I'm part of an art "experiment" that I'm not at liberty to discuss right now. Give it six months or so. It'll be interesting to see how it turns out. I don't think we're going to singlehandedly pop the "art" bubble.

But I think that there will be money made.