Martin Gayford

Luxury Goods: Absolutely priceless

The utter uselessness of art is part of its beauty, says Martin Gayford

issue 15 May 2004

A couple of weeks ago I attended a reception in the Banqueting House on Whitehall to mark the opening of an exhibition by the American painter Cy Twombly at the Serpentine Gallery. A vast and lavish buffet was laid on tables down the length of Inigo Jones’s grandest room. Wealthy collectors drank champagne with Turner Prize-winning artists beneath Rubens’s only surviving ceiling.

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