Last May, "The Scream" sold for $120 million dollars. That's a lot for a pastel by grouchy Norwegian. That's not the only big sale in the art world. The super-rich, which seem immune to the bad economy, are buying up a storm.
Last week, Art Basel was raging in Miami. It made more news for the hijinks of celebrities than for the art itself.
In Newsweek, Blake Gopnik wonders if the art bubble will pop and the rich will be left with worthless oils and canvas. He's fairly certain that this bubble will deflate, maybe not with a pop, but with a slow hiss.
The reason I’m certain that today’s contemporary market is due to deflate is because people like me will make it happen. We won’t do it on purpose, tempting as that might be. We’ll make the bubble pop in the normal course of things, as all of us—critics, curators, and art lovers of all kinds—decide that today’s market darlings are tomorrow’s also-rans.
Apt. 11d 
On a related note, I enjoyed Jerry Saltz’ recent piece on fake Richters in NYMag:
“I love art, but I hate the astronomical prices it sells for. My skin crawls when I read about auctions, and every year they get grosser. Last month, a living-artist record was set when a 1994 abstract Gerhard Richter painting was sold for $34.2 million. Like a lot of these purchases, the sale was about a collector trying to make art history by spending money. Or big-dick-waving. Ugh.”
http://www.vulture.com/2012/11/fake-gerhard-richter-paintings.html
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My thought in reading the articles about Art Basel was that the art world was a clear reflection of the vast inequality (robber baron style) that is developing in the world today. There seem to be swathes of people who are awash with money and stuck about what to spend it on. Some of them are spending it on charitable giving (Gates, Buffet), some on trying to buy elections (Adelson, Koch, . . . .), some on toys (Ellison, . . . .), and some on art.
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