Opinion The curious case of the existential goat

Over the last week, two items from the mid-20th century went to auction and were bought for handsome sums. The first piece — an iconic work from a brilliant mind — sold for 6,50,000 euros (Rs 59,024,550). The second, a “sculpture” by one of the most famous unemployed people in the world — one who isn’t an artist of repute or, some would say, skill — fetched 8,500 British pounds or Rs 9,07,212. Between the two, though, it is the cheaper one that is over-priced.

The more expensive item is a handwritten draft — a hoax, it seems — of the manuscript of L’Étranger (The Stranger or The Outsider) by Albert Camus. Unlike most authors’ drafts, this was likely written by Camus in 1944, two years after L’Étranger was first published. The story of a French settler accused of murder, largely because of his lack of emotion at his mother’s death, The Outsider is a classic. Some believe that the manuscript — with doodles and symbols in the margins — was copied out by Camus to raise money for the French Resistance against Nazi occupation. Then there’s the ceramic goat, made by the then Prince of Wales, Charles. Its price tag has little justification — it looks a bit like a cheap novelty ashtray. It was owned by a Canadian for 55 years, whose aunt reportedly knew the now king.

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Charles — by all accounts, a nice man — is a Kardashian at worst and a placeholder for unearned wealth and power at best. Yet, people bid — a symptom, perhaps, of the sheer power of the “royal” family’s marketing. There’s another way of looking at the love for the amateurish-at-best work by Charles — one an existentialist like Camus would approve of: The only intrinsic value of things and people is that they exist. The rest of society is just absurd — it pays good money for ugly goats.