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The art world takes note, however, when those speculating are Wall Street hedge funds more interested in the pay-off than the painting.

Fund managers, according to the Wall Street Journal, have become "some of the most active buyers and sellers in the art world." They are also the most obvious culprits behind the contemporary art market's volatility and price inflation, according to skeptics.

Ed Ruscha-commissioned paintings for lobbies; Richard Prince prints hanging in offices art satisfies the status symbol needs of Wall Street's suddenly rich. While some claim passion and not money drives their collecting ("they aim to build legacy collections that can eventually be passed on to museums," according to the Journal), others see art as just "another market ripe for trading, buying, selling and flipping."

The art-as-a-commodity thinking translates into classic financial market strategies, such as building a "position," or buying a large stake of a company's stock (an artist's work), and then trying to drive the stock's price up by promoting it, the Journal writes.

Big-name dealers like Charles Saatchi have followed similar paths over the years. The purchase power of the hedge funds, however, has moved markets. Fund favorites such as Ruscha, Prince and Martin Kippenberger have seen their prices at least double in the last five years, the Journal notes.

"I'm afraid the bubble we're seeing with some artists is going to burst someday," New York dealer and gallery owner Richard L. Feigen told the paper. "There's just a big disconnect between price and merit. These hedge-fund guys are throwing money around the art world like confetti."

FOR FULL STORY SEE:
The Wall Street Journal (reprinted by the Post-Gazette): "Painting by numbers: Hedge-fund experts put art in the deal"