Ask a luxury watchmaker or a high-class designer what their professions are like compared to when they were at the beginning of their journey. They might give you the usual work hard and network and build you skill kinda thing and for many professions that’s really how you grow. You get good at something, you get into a tribe with fellow craftspeople and you build your network of customers and peers. If all is well and you get a little lucky, you just might make it in your business, maybe even to the top. And pretty much everyone can (kinda) do it. At least that’s what they call the American dream, and while I am in the EU, we do dream overseas too, so I presume this is a universal dream we all share.

But what about fine art? Do we artists get to have the same (or at least similar path to success)? Well, maybe. But my real guess is no. Now while nobody will argue if we’d propose that there are good and bad artists; those that have a feeling for composition, anatomy, colour and space, and those who don’t as much. And surely there are artists, who are better than others at marketing and networking and all the things a romantic art lover shuns upon. But is that enough?

While I’d love to say yes and just be done with spreading my doubts about the free market of fine art, the evidence might be leaning to a no. Sure there are artists who got “found” by chance or by the merit of their work, but most of the blue chip players like Jeff Koons and Damien Hirst haven’t become superstars because they did exceptional work, but because they got signed by a bluechip gallery. And while Koons did struggle a lot during his early years, Hirst was on fire after the first Freeze show took off and the famous collector Charles Saatchi signed him fresh out of college.

My question is merely this: does hard work and building a network pay the same if you’re a cook, a financial advisor or an artist, or does the subjective, ambivalent nature of our profession dictate the need for an outside conformation of quality, that nowadays seems to come almost exclusively from a high-status gallery. Because I can’t say that I would need a food critic to tell me how my risotto is – because I can taste it for myself. And if someone lost 30% of the money I invested into a hedge fund while the market was stable, well, I wouldn’t need a professional to tell me that I needed a new financial advisor.

But looking at a wood-print of a WW2 motif that hangs on my wall, I surely can judge it by many factors, but to be able to say that it will someday be worth as much as a painting by Hirst. Probably not. And the problem is, it isn’t related to either the quality of the print nor the quality of my network. Because the possibility of an average middle-class guy like me to get friendly with Saatchi or the like, well, isn’t as high as movies make us believe. Not saying I won’t still take my chances and definitely not saying you shouldn’t too.