Painting by numbers

Doc illustrates the relationship between art, money

THE PRICE OF EVERYTHING

1/2 out of 5 Cast: Amy Cappellazzo, George Condo, Njideka Akunyili Crosby Director: Nathaniel Kahn Duration: 1 h 38 m “There is no golden age without gold,” says art curator Paul Schimmel in this lively, wide-ranging documentary by Nathaniel Kahn that seeks to understand the link between fine art and finance. Although artist Larry Poons tries to deflate the thesis from the outset: “Art and money have no intrinsic hookup at all,” he says with a twinkle in his eye. “The best artist is the most expensive artist? How could that be true?”

Kahn assembles a grab-bag of erudite creators, collectors, critics and curators to look at the current state of multi-million-dollar art sales, which he traces back to an auction by taxi magnate Robert Scull in 1973. (A countdown to a modern-day Sotheby’s sale adds an unnecessary ticking clock to the film’s tempo.)

“Deep down you have to be shallow,” says collector Stefan Edlis, who before the film is out will give a huge donation of Warhols to the Chicago Art Institute. “You have to be a decorator. You want the thing to work with the rugs, and you want it to work with the furniture.”

It also doesn’t hurt to be wealthy. Edlis and his wife bought a Jeff Koons rabbit sculpture for just under a million in 1991. They estimate it’s now worth about $65 million. Edlis also owns Him, an unnerving statue of Hitler, apparently kneeling in prayer, by Maurizio Cattelan; not bad for a guy whose German passport — “It’s out of date,” he notes mildly — features a Swastika and a large “J” for Jew.

Sometimes the film tries to cover too much ground too quickly. One anecdote talks about how Koons parlayed his work as a commodities broker — cue clip of Leonardo DiCaprio in The Wolf of Wall Street — into selling art futures; you’d pay for the promise of a work he hadn’t made yet. But fascinating as this is, we move instead to how Damien Hirst’s star has fallen. (You may remember his sharks-in-formaldehyde from the early ’90s.)

The film’s title comes from a line in an Oscar Wilde play, that a cynic is “a man who knows the price of everything, and the value of nothing.” But it’s worth noting the riposte: “And a sentimentalist ... is a man who sees an absurd value in everything and doesn’t know the market price of any single thing.”

This documentary allies itself unapologetically with the sentimentalists.