The auction for a Claude Monet impressionist painting ended with a bid for $97 million — and the internet is angry. The enormous divide between the super-rich and the rest of the world’s population often remains out of sight, but in moments like this auction — when an individual or private equity group or art cartel — can drop $100+ million (with fees) on a canvas, that divide becomes visible.
For those in the Sen. Bernie Sanders camp, who believe the divide between the rich and the working class is unethical and unconscionable, it’s like gasoline poured onto the wildfire of financial inequality.
If you ever wanted to see what too much money looks like, you found it pic.twitter.com/NFuTWmfAhj
— Read Jackson Rising by @CooperationJXN (@JoshuaPHilll) February 28, 2023
“It’s most infuriating,” wrote one commenter, “but I think it’s helpful to get a better sense of the sheer, gross excess these people have.” Another commenter writes: “I always think about how many hungry people could be fed & housed when I see these kinds of disgusting spectacles.”
The TikTok is captioned ‘What Too Much Money Looks Like’ — yet the real bidders are never revealed. There is no knowing what they look like. They have hired people to do their bidding for them. The wealth is, except to those who possess it, an abstraction.
I do not think we should accept it as ‘normal’ in our society that billionaires get massive tax breaks while teachers in this country have to work a second job just to make ends meet.
— Bernie Sanders (@BernieSanders) February 13, 2023
We must pay all teachers in America at least $60,000.
The growing financial divide is enabled by what Sanders calls a “corrupt political system in which billionaires through super PACs can buy elections in this country.” The political status quo, according to Sanders and his followers, is what allows the consolidation of wealth on conspicuous display at the world’s art auctions.
Let me tell you something. You’re not crazy. Yes, there is something wrong in this world when a few people have billions of dollars, and millions of people have nothing. We have got to make certain that a dream and a vision for a decent society remains alive.
— Bernie Sanders (@BernieSanders) February 4, 2023
In 2021 alone, as most of the world struggled with a global pandemic and its fiscal effects, “the global arts Aggregate sales by dealers and auctioneers reached $65.1 billion, soaring by 29% from 2020,” according to the 2022 Art Basel and UBS Global Art Market Report.
Wealthy US buyers topped the list by a large margin, followed by buyers in China. “The United States remained the largest single market, with sales rising by a third during 2021 to just over $28 billion,” Art Basel reports. In second place, China’s sales totaled $13.4 billion.
Nearly half a million viral views have accumulated for the auction footage on Twitter alone, where it was reposted.
The responses are mostly condemning, with talk about how the cronyism between the banks and politicians protect a system that doesn’t protect the people. Some responses are deep personal, and use real world details to describe the financial divide, as it’s experienced: “Sometimes I can’t even afford to wash my clothes at the laundromat. Can’t afford food. Daily chronic pain I can’t afford to treat. 97 million dollars for a painting? Infuriating.”
This gets at the core of Sanders’s agenda, which he expresses at length in his new book, It’s Okay To Be Angry About Capitalism. Based on the reactions to this auction, people are angry, indeed. The book is described as “a progressive takedown of the uber-capitalist status quo that has enriched millionaires and billionaires at the expense of the working class, and a blueprint for what transformational change would actually look like.”
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