- Buy Painting X1, X2, X3, ... for 10K apiece.
- Your friend buys Painting Y1, Y2, Y3, ... for 10K apiece.
- You buy one of your friend's paintings for 1M. He does the same.
- Holy cow! "Market price" for the rest of your paintings is now 100x greater than it was yesterday.
- "Donate" as many of the paintings as you wish to the museum next door. Deduct the full value (now 1M) on your taxes.
Say you bought the painting for $10k, then the artist becomes world famous and the price really does rise to $1m. Are you going to donate the painting if doing so would trigger a ~$150k capital gains tax bill? Nope. At least if you sold it you have the proceeds to cover the taxes.
- Line
- Color
- Form
- Space
Studying the use of these elements can make you a better designer for sure.
If you are a film maker, you make study an artist's use of color (Monet, Mondrian) to get inspired for your color palette. You are right that studying paintings won't magically make you a better person or make you a better at basketball but in the realm of creation, studying paintings are definitely valuable.
That said, I'm not a fan of tax incentives for art from a government that's borrowing money, as one definition of art is that which has no function.
Great Photography collection in SF that meets this criteria it seems. Definitely worth a visit.
Sounds suspiciously like money laundering. You don't think all that expensive Art, is really worth that amount do you?
