Rothko’s ‘masterpiece’ worth £35m? Stripe me, no! My toddler is a better painter

Modern art is an acquired taste, experts say.

And, I would add, if you do have a taste for it and would like to buy some, you will also need to have acquired stupefying amounts of money.

Today we have once again been reminded of the eye-watering sums modern art can fetch after it emerged that a Mark Rothko painting – consisting of three stripes of red, black and orange layered over a red background - is expected to sell for £35million at auction.

Now, if you’re one of the world’s growing band of billionaires, you might argue that, at just £11.7million a stripe, No. 36 (Black Stripe) is a bargain.

But, to me, the estimated bid at Christie’s auction house in New York only highlights how wealth is utterly wasted on the rich.

I mean, I’m pretty sure I could knock out a pretty similar piece – with few discernable differences – in an afternoon.

Failing that, my two-year-old son is coming along nicely in finger-painting and I think he could make a good stab at it if enticed with sufficient biscuit rewards.

To illustrate this, I have published a recent picture he painted at nursery. See, it’s pretty much a Rothko.

Yet, if I tried to sell it, no one would be willing to pay even a thousandth of what they would for any of the 835 real Rothkos.

Yet, if I did, no one would be willing to pay even a thousandth of what they would for any of Rothko’s remarkably similar 835 so-called masterpieces.

he fact that ease of replication does not seem to have much impact on the price is astounding.

It certainly gives me a new-found respect for Britain’s richest artist Damien Hirst because at least his pickled ponies would be an extreme DIY challenge.

In fact, I have a grudging respect for all modern artists. When it comes to fleecing super-rich idiots, I say more power to ‘em.

If only our government could be as good at getting millionaires and billionaires to cough up their fair share of taxes and perhaps pay their staff decent wages.

Artists also help paint a disturbing picture of how unbalanced our world is in terms of wealth.

Inequality is something I write a lot about in my blog, but a picture (and its price tag) really is worth at least a thousand words.

I could bang on about how the rich are 64% richer than before the recession – while the poor are 57% poorer.

Or I could bore readers by revealing how the number of global billionaires have more than doubled over that same period, rising from 793 in 2009 to 1,826 this year (while all the time complaining about a “tough economic climate” the rest of us are actually suffering).

But nothing illustrates the injustice of our system better than three stripes on a canvas and what our super-rich betters are willing to bid between themselves to buy it.