This Photo of a Potato Sold for $1M https://t.co/wkhrUOpFz0 pic.twitter.com/8FggfcDnR8
— Newser (@Newser) January 27, 2016
Some of us send unfortunate texts after a few glasses of wine. Some European businessmen instead spend $1.08 million on a photo of a potato. “Potato #345” from celebrity photographer Kevin Abosch is just that: a portrait of an organic Irish potato against a black background. But a businessman who spotted the image at Abosch’s Paris home last year was apparently transfixed. “We had two glasses of wine and he said, ‘I really like that,’” Abosch tells the Sunday Times, per the BBC. “Two more glasses of wine and he said, ‘I really want that.’ We set the price two weeks later.” The deal, which is only now being reported, was the biggest of Abosch’s career, CNN reports. If the price is confirmed, “Potato #345” would be the 15th most expensive photo ever sold.
I appreciate art as much as, perhaps even more than, the next person…and yes, I understand that art is a highly subjective undertaking. After all, one person’s pile of dirty underwear might well be another’s art installation, right? I suppose that would explain the art installation spread all over our bedroom floor at the moment.
Ah, but I digress….
I’ve always firmly believed that there are two tests for ascertaining that one has far too much disposable income. One is a predilection for (or outright addiction to) cocaine. The second is the willingness to spend vast sums on art…like dropping $1.08 million on a photo of an organic Irish potato.
Don’t get me wrong; I like potatoes as much as the next person…but this would seem the textbook definition of a “WTF???” moment, don’tchathink??
My talents as an art critic are decidedly limited, and so I’m certainly not going to criticize someone for indulging an artistic yen that falls decidedly outside the bounds I normally fall within. Still, if you can drop $1.08 million on impulse for a photograph of a potato, even of the organic Irish variety, you might want to consider that you have WAY too damned much money.
[T]he 64-inch square photo, snapped in 2010, isn’t even the only one out there, per Mashable. Another copy of “Potato #345” was sold earlier and a third was donated to a museum in Serbia. What’s so great about this dirty potato? The 46-year-old Irishman says it was simply delivered to him along with other organic vegetables. “Generally, the life of a harvested potato is violent and taken for granted. I use the potato as a proxy for the ontological study of the human experience,” says Abosch, who’s also photographed Johnny Depp, Steven Spielberg, and Malala Yousafzai. “I see commonalities between humans and potatoes that speak to our relationship as individuals within a collective species.”
I get it; art is in the eye of the beholder…and this beholder, as open-minded on such things as I endeavor to be, just isn’t feeling it. It’s a harvested organic Irish potato, ferchrissakes. A photo of a naked Megyn Kelly slathered in honey and crushed Corn Flakes I might be able to grasp…but an organic Irish potato??
I’m not about to begrudge the buyer his success in whatever it is he does. Clearly, success means having the money to do the things you want to do without having to concern yourself with the mundane things mere mortals obsess over- mortgages, car payments, credit card debt, child care expenses, cell phone bills, yadayadayada…. When you can without so much as a thought of “Gee, I wonder if I can afford this?” drop $1 million, you’ve attained a level of financial success few of us will ever come close to attaining. Financial common sense might be another story, though.
That said, if you can do this sort of thing, I’d drop the old “To whom much is given, much is expected” maxim on you. Not that I’m advocating for socialism, but if you live in a world where $1 million comes out of petty cash, you live in a place where you can and should be paying your fair share of taxes…and perhaps even giving back to your community…you know, the ones who made your success possible. That means no tax shelters, no offshore hiding places for your money, and no accounting tricks designed to lessen your tax burden. Time was when the wealthiest Americans paid 90% of their income as taxes…and they still never had to worry about where their next Big Mac was coming from.
I’m not going to argue for a return to those times, but neither would I argue were they to return. It’s time for the wealthiest among us to realize that they have a responsibility to the world which helped make their vast wealth possible. America’s relatively stable economy and rule of law do more to protect wealth that perhaps any other country in the world…but that protection comes at a cost. The problem is that too many are heavily invested in avoiding paying their fair share of that cost. (Yes, I realize the buyer’s European, but my philosophy translates well.)
If you’re able to drop a million bucks on a photograph of a potato, it may just be time to reflect on your responsibility to the country (or world) that enabled and fostered that success. Were I a more vengeful, vindictive person, I’d suggest that perhaps it’s time we took a suggestion from Hamlet and first kill all the accountants and tax attorneys…except that I have friends who are both. I do believe that those who’ve prospered in America (or the world) have a duty to pay their fair share WITHOUT resorting to the creative dodges and accounting tricks designed to reduce their tax burden.
America is not about a “dog eat dog” world, highlighted by an “I got mine, you can damned well get your own ethos.” No one gets rich on their own, and if you can drop a million bucks without so much as a second thought, perhaps it’s time to reflect on your good fortune…as well as your responsibility to the collective, without whom you’d still be struggling to find something resembling success.
Time to do the right thing, don’tchathink??
