Yep there’s a whole industry around this too, you can watch these high end art auctions live where all the people in the room “bidding” are just representing the real bidders by proxy. It can get dark pretty quickly though if you start imagining what may actually be buying.

This is the case for pretty much all auctions though. Not everyone has the ability to be physically present in the auction room.

> you can watch these

Where?

example of a previous stream https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=LzwZow7U5KE

Except most of this art was legitimate capital A Art. Existing in the Art World.

Let's not dismiss all modern art as fake. As popular of a philistine take that is amongst engineer types.

Considering the story of the Glomar Explorer, its astonishing just how much can the CIA hide in plain sight.

Compared to that, astroturfing the works of a few modern artists seems trivial (and does not require the CIA or any bogeyman organization, just someone with sufficient clout in the art critic world).

Since spying requires inordinate amounts of untraceable funds, I wonder just how many CIA personnel have amassed huge private fortunes this way.

See also: art in embassies program