Why buy a Picasso if you can’t show it off?

http://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2015/may/18/picasso-les-femmes-d-alger-michele-hanson

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What an odd business over that Picasso, Les Femmes d’Alger, which sold last week for $179m (£115m). Why buy something like that and keep it a secret? Whoever it was can’t even show off about it. And I thought that was the whole point. He can’t even show his friends, because they might blab. Which means no one can see it, except him. He’ll have to hide it in his private vault.

Related: Is any painting really worth $179m?

“I think Freud and his bottom come in here somehow,” says Fielding coarsely. But it’s more baffling than that. Why bother to retain and withhold something, if no one knows you’ve got it, or wants you to give them some? Where’s the pleasure in that? You can’t even gloat or revel in their envy. And it was a silly purchase anyway, for that money, this being one of Picasso’s poorer efforts.

But it is a Picasso, and we should all be entitled to look at it, if we so wish. Seeing one insanely rich person snap it up and hide it away is very sickening indeed. There is already much about the art world that makes one rush for the sick bucket: it is stuffed with pretentious, snooty, big-headed, self-obsessed purveyors of incomprehensible and poorly executed crapola, led by unscrupulous, grasping rogues, but this Picasso episode takes the biscuit.

Probably the painting is only an investment, and the buyer will grab tons more moolah from an even bigger mug, although he has gazillions already. Perhaps he’s unwell – his dealings with money are obsessive and out of control. He needs help and discipline. Perhaps his sort need their version of Iain Duncan Smith’s proposed pre-paid benefit cards for poor people, who can’t manage their money either. They should have a government-controlled credit card to stop them frittering funds on overpriced goods that they don’t need. If the pauper may not have his beer, the gazillionnaire may not have his grossly overpriced artwork. Unless he donates an equivalent amount to starving would-be artists, or any other starving, homeless persons. There are all sorts. Take your pick. A tiny step on the road to equality.