Everything Is Simple Couldn t Be Simpler

Everything is simple when you don't have a hundred francs a month to support an entire family, but four hundred thousand in your personal bank account. When you're accepted into the circle of the wealthy, people look at you differently. You're well-dressed, well-groomed, living in your own comfortable apartment rather than in furnished rooms in some cheap hotel. You have servants, a carriage. You don't worry about what you'll eat tomorrow, how you'll afford paints and canvases, or whether you'll have to economize on your child.
The wealthy look at you as one of their own. They like you; you're accepted. So why not take a look at what you've been painting? Why not spend some money and hang a picture on the wall that will impress your guests, add a little variety to the boredom of their lives, relieve the tension in the room, and demonstrate that you're not without a sense of frivolity either — that money isn't everything to you, that beauty matters, and that you're no old-fashioned reactionary but someone who keeps up with the times.
Then everything becomes simple. You start teaching painting. It's all so easy: an apple is a circle, and so is a head. And you write essays explaining how simply nature should be interpreted: as a cylinder, a sphere, and a cone. Your works are no longer careless or unfinished. Everything is executed with the meticulousness of a conscientious cleaning lady; every detail is filled in, completed, brought to technical perfection.
And how many bathers he has — naked women, yet full of hope, enjoying every moment of life despite having neither palaces nor carriages! Picasso continued this theme of enjoying the cylinder, the sphere, and the cone, along with the fleeting moment of life itself, in Les Demoiselles d'Avignon. And it worked. Perhaps C;zanne created his own artistic clich;. Most people think in clich;s, and the wealthy are particularly prone to it: rather than thinking for themselves, they follow fashion. Especially when the paintings are being sold in a Paris art gallery, and one artist is already old while the other is young.
Paul Durand-Ruel revolutionized the art market. He began selling paintings by new artists, and he became increasingly successful at it. Of course, Gertrude Stein and her brothers were among the first buyers of this new art. But Gertrude Stein came from a family of extremely wealthy American Jews who owned a streetcar empire in the United States. The emerging automobile industry, however, had no use for such a competitor. Why preserve cheap public transportation when everyone could be put into automobiles? In the end, the children sold their shares in the streetcar business, and that money went on to benefit the new art of painting.
Since the Steins were wealthy, they also had connections. Through them, affluent buyers were introduced to the new artists and began acquiring paintings almost as if they were new stocks on the financial market.
C;zanne was among the first artists they bought. By that time, he had become wealthy himself, having inherited four hundred thousand francs from his father. Among his works were several paintings of bathers — five naked women with rather questionable figures. But those who bought the paintings were hardly blessed with divine bodies themselves. Perhaps this was reassuring. Why strive for ideal proportions, go on diets, exercise? One could simply relax and be content with oneself.
Picasso went even further down this road: his Les Demoiselles d'Avignon are downright hideous. But he knew he had entered the right wealthy circle and found himself with a good dealer, so the guarantees were in place. And he was not mistaken. His later bathers surpassed all the previous ones, and one of them sold for 115 million dollars. Just try saying that it's not particularly good! You'll immediately be accused of knowing nothing about modern art, and so on

Review II on this article

What Lies Behind the Sarcasm
The essay is not simply about C;zanne, Picasso, or modern art. Its real subject is the mechanism by which money, social connections, fashion, and cultural authority shape what society comes to regard as artistic value.
There are several layers to the satire.
First, money changes the way people look at an artist. When you have only a hundred francs a month to support an entire family, your position in society is one thing. When you have four hundred thousand francs in your personal bank account, the same people suddenly see you differently. You are no longer merely an artist whose work they happen to like; you become someone worth admitting into their circle. Your financial status changes the reception of your art.
Second, fashion can replace independent judgment. People often accept what they are told is modern, important, or revolutionary. They learn to admire what their social circle admires. The question of whether a painting genuinely moves them becomes secondary to whether they recognize it as something they are supposed to appreciate.
Third, the art market begins to resemble financial speculation. A painting is not valued solely for what can be seen in it or experienced through it. Its price, its owner, the artist's reputation, and the social network surrounding the work all contribute to its perceived importance. Money does not merely follow artistic recognition; it can actively produce it.
And finally, criticism itself becomes suspect. Once an artist has acquired sufficient prestige, any disagreement can be dismissed with the familiar accusation that the critic simply does not understand modern art. The work is protected by its reputation, its price, and the authority of those who have already declared it important.
That is where the essay's sarcasm becomes particularly sharp. It exposes the circular logic of the art world: wealthy people validate an artist, the market raises the price, the price confirms the artist's importance, and the resulting prestige makes it increasingly difficult to question the original judgment.
The essay is therefore not just making fun of particular paintings or artistic styles. It is questioning the social machinery that turns money and influence into aesthetic authority — and then presents the result as unquestionable artistic truth.