I'm John Batchel with my colleague Simon Constable in Paradise in the South of France.

PC has up at Kipplinger about investing in fine art. Simon, immediately when I read your opening,

some fellow who paid $6 million or pounds for a banana that was nailed to a wall,

and he quickly ate it. That put me off from ever buying fine art if that's what it was.

What is the art market these days? Is it wacky like banana eaters? Well, I think the banana

eater thing was to attract attention to the art market. The art market in the last half of

2024 was the worst it's been this century, according to the people who do the index for

art or the price index for art. And a lot of things were being sold at a loss during that half-year period.

So this event, when this banana was eaten, this 25-cent banana was eaten,

it was basically a good attracting thing for getting interest in the art market.

Now, most art does not involve things that will perish very quickly,

like lettuces or bananas or anything. And one of the things you've got to work out before

you even consider investing in art is what counts as fine art and what doesn't. So collectibles,

you know, things like, you know, fancy orcelain cups or mugs or plates or things like that are generally not considered to be fine

art. What you need is something that is, is rather special. It's got to be skilled and it needs to be unique or rare on the rest of it.

And the Banksy quote I put in a piece was,

Arch should comfort the disturbed and disturbed the comfortable.

It's going to move you in some way.

There's a lot of cash, Simon.

Why did it have such a bad year?

We've got 30 seconds.

It was a bad year because the stock market was so good last year.

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