It doesn't really bother me that much that someone else could sell your Instagram photos.
What bothers me is that someone else would buy them, when they're available for free on the internet.
What bothers me is that someone else would buy them, when they're available for free on the internet.
Anyone could hunt down an Instagram post that spoke to them and have a very high quality large print reproduction of it for a couple orders of magnitude less than $90k. Stuff like this is at the root of my whole beef with modern art. It's much more about being clever than talent or dedication or anything else. I could spend a lifetime trying to imitate Rembrandt and never get there. I could knock this Richard Prince stunt out before lunch if I started now (it's currently 10:13 AM CST here in Kansas City).
Art's a weird world. White canvases have sold for many millions:
http://www.bloombergview.com/articles/2014-11-14/why-pay-15-...
What you're actually buying when you purchase a piece of art is bound to be subjective, as the enjoyment of visual art is much more individual than, say, a video game. There are games that blur the lines of what makes up a game, and people still buy them, play them, and enjoy them.
Also, there's plenty of ways to enjoy a game without ever playing it. When I was a kid, I would buy strategy guides for games I never played or owned. I'll watch people playing games that I would never play myself. If someone like John Romero or Sid Meier made something like a Pac-Man clone, I might buy it.
So it's easy for me to see why someone would buy these Instagram shots. There's something about the curation and attention being given to them by the artist that makes it a more interesting experience to look at than if you just took a screenshot and saved it in a folder or printed it out. The artist isn't just producing visuals, he's also applying a more cultivated taste to 'what' he's producing. He's only got so much time to make things, what he chooses to make tells as much of a story as the skills he used to make it.
Source: http://www.nytimes.com/2015/04/27/arts/design/tax-break-used...
Regardless, this all makes Prince in high demand - basically any work now can be validated by his comment and then can be reproduced without paying the original creator for a license.
Thats not how art world works :).