The dependent and shifting nature of art values, not only on the market but inherently, is uppermost in the mind of today’s art collector, whether he buys for himself or as the representative of an institution. Acquiring a work is acquiring a piece of art history, or it is acquiring nothing (beyond, that is, an object of personal enjoyment in the same class as a cat or a souvenir). In signing his check the collector asserts his belief in the future presence of the work as a significant point attained by art as a whole. History, however, is open to anything and the merit of the chosen painting or sculpture has―at best―only the validation of a present-day consensus. This consensus is all but certain to be displaced, as others have been in the past. In the last analysis, committing himself to a painting is the collector’s own act. Through it he courageously affirms not only his aesthetic judgment, from whatever source it be derived, but the conviction that ______________________________________.
* consensus: 합의 ** aesthetic: 미학의