> Now that the bubble has burst, the speculators are out of the picture, off flipping meme coins, where no one makes them feel inadequate or insists that they buy three things they don’t want to get the one thing they do.

> “The juice has got to be worth the squeeze,” one collector-trader said. “And there’s no juice in the art market. It’s just squeeze, squeeze, squeeze. Rude, rude, rude.”

From what little I know of the NY art scene, by osmosis (by having an SO who previously was accomplished in it, and could mingle well at gallery openings and cocktail parties, infinitely better than I could ever learn to)...

I wonder whether the "rude, rude, rude" means that the market had come to depend on nouveau riche speculators (who'd typically have neither the intellectual and artistic background, nor old-money social graces/conventions).

If you didn't respect your customers, and didn't make them feel valued, then the ones who only cared about money or status games have other options.

I feel like anyone who says about art “the juice has to be worth the squeeze” isn’t really into art.

This is very much a nouveau riche culture - infinite entitlement and self-importance that confuses marketing and narcissism for substance.

The same illness infected the art world, and it was no more sustainable there than anywhere else.