Conventional Wisdom: Price of Culture Edition

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By Newsweek StaffShareNewsweek is a Trust Project member

CW's weekend roundup from the big-money arts world.

Frida Kahlo ⬆

Kahlo's El sueño (La cama)—the one where she sleeps beneath a skeleton—sold for $54.7 million, breaking Georgia O'Keeffe's $44.4 million record for a work by a female artist set by her Jimson Weed, depicting giant white flowers floating in blue sky. The art market knows what time it is: modernist serenity is out, surrealist suffering is in.

Pras Michel ⬇

The Fugees rapper faced charges for $21 million in illegal donations to Obama's 2012 campaign, which turned out to be a small piece of the $120 million he took from Malaysian fugitive Jho Low, whose $4.5 billion embezzlement investigation, prosecutors said, Michel then tried to derail by tampering with witnesses. Fourteen years in prison is the prize for putting on a masterclass for what not to do when facing federal prosecution.

Steve Cohen ⬇

The Mets owner bought Maurizio Cattelan's 18-karat 220-pound gold toilet in 2017 and now has sold it at auction for $12.1 million—barely above its scrap price—to Ripley's Believe It or Not! If the hedge fund billionaire had instead bought Bitcoin back then, he'd be sitting on $64 million instead of a golden throne only fit for a freak show.

Timothée Chalamet ⬆

Turned promotional materials for his ping-pong movie Marty Supreme into $250 windbreakers at a SoHo pop-up where fans lined up for hours after celebrities like Tom Brady got theirs for free. When you convince people to pay to advertise your movie for you, who needs to make the movie good?  

Shein ⬇

The Chinese e-tailer wanted to join "a key fashion capital and embrace its spirit of creativity and excellence" by opening a Paris store. But all anyone was talking about was the childlike sex dolls sold on its unregulated marketplace, now under investigation by French prosecutors. Less haute couture, more hauled into court.

Originally a staple of Newsweek's print edition, Conventional Wisdom used arrows to track whose stock was rising or falling in the political circus. We're reviving it in the digital age because the problem it lampooned—hyperbole and partisan certainty masquerading as insight—has only intensified.

CW assigns arrows—up, down, or sideways—to the figures and forces shaping current events. The arrows don't predict the future or claim special insight. They capture the prevailing winds of the moment, uncluttered by tribal howling. In an era when partisan media reinforces rather than questions assumptions, CW operates from the center—skeptical of left and right alike, committed to puncturing inflated reputations and recognizing overlooked truths.

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