James Stewart thinks the run up in art prices is over-hyped. He points to evidence that all is not well in the broader art market with evidence from David Kusin and Michael Moses. What you boil it all down, Stewart thinks its just a matter of taste:

Take the disparate results for the Bacon “Triptych” (a record) and the Warhol “Liz” (disappointing). Both feature what would seem to the untrained eye to be yellow as the dominant color. At Christie’s, that was a major selling point of the Bacon work: “The juxtaposition of radiant sunshine yellow contrasting with the brutal physicality and immediacy of the brush strokes in this celebrated life-size triptych is what makes Bacon’s art so remarkable,” the auction house said. But when I asked a major collector why the similarly hued “Liz” hadn’t fared better, he said it was the yellow. “Did you see it?” he said. “It’s the color of your urine.”

Record Prices Mask a Tepid Art Market – NYTimes.com.