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Out of context: Reply #29531
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"Even in the straightest part of the art world," she finds, "the players have character"--echoing the art magazine publisher who explains his love of the art world by describing it as "the place where I found the most kindred spirits--enough oddball, overeducated, anachronistic, anarchic people to make me happy." But they don't know whether their passion is noble or base; one collector speaks about it as a religion and an addiction. A gallerist nicely sums up his profession this way: "Our business is to sell symptoms articulated as objects." What's ambiguous is whether the symptoms are merely those of a few odd individuals or of the culture at large. The artists believe in their vision--"a total vision of how things have to be," as one puts it; "an individual's radically idiosyncratic interpretation of the world," says another--and in order for the artists to be successful, dealers and collectors and critics have to believe in it with them. "What we're looking for is integrity," say the collectors.