AS THE LAWRENCE WEINER RETROSPECTIVE at the Whitney Museum fades to white under multiple coats of Kilz and latex paint, and his various exuberant ephemera take up residence at LA MoCA before wending their way back to their rightful property owners; as Tate Modern and the ICA London emerge from momentary spells of whispered
headlines, random sketching, streams of consciousness, and face slapping; as New York's New Museum concludes its vestigial assault on the Work of Art, not to mention the etiquette of proper spacing, and as visitors to the new building experience the worst case of
buyer's remorse since the reopening of the Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago; as the Metropolitan Museum's Dutch paintings readjust to the staid organizing principles of artist's name, date, and genre rather
than hanging according to who bought what from whom (on whose advice) and resold it to so - and - so, who then donated it to the Met; and as the scent of modesty - prosaic, charcoal filtered, crystalline - emanates from the 2008 Whitney Biennial, now is as good a time as any to talk about money.
Though
headlines blared Judge lets
buyer ditch deal on condo and B.C. court rules pre-sale condo contract invalid, the fact of the matter is that Bastion Coast is little more
than the application of pre-existing law.
While legal press
headlines obsess about client pressure on law firm fees in what remains a
buyer's market, firms are arguably losing double - digit profitability due to how they handle payment for costs other
than their own time.
Would not a more realistic conclusion (and a more appropriate
headline) be that new homes tend to be priced higher
than the average resales and further that the average price of a new home purchased by a first time
buyer is rapidly approaching the average price of all resales?