If you want to see the market at work, that's the place to do it. Galleries don't go out on a limb too often exhibiting things they don't think will sell either in quantity to the small buyers or to the important buyers who make a few large purchases and show them to their well-heeled friends.

I understand where you get your suspicion of critics. Bear in mind that critics often have the expectation of pleasing the hidden market, that is, the people who actually invest in contemporary art.

Art has always been discretionary spending. It depends on the discretion of the person doing the spending. What do we want?

I'm part of the market that spends on original art, though certainly not in the range of the people who can afford things now considered classics. My objects are many in making the purchases. To wit:

For work, I acquire representational art that features children, or abstract art that features children or things children like, or landscapes or townscapes of places either local or recognizable by average people. Most of it belongs to me personally, but some of it comes via other avenues. I also collect art calendars, including children's illustrators, from which I post pictures with captions naming the art and the artist in a regularly, changing bulletin board feature. The kids get a greater exposure to different schools and methods that way. None of these works is especially controversial -- among the framed works, the Dali of "Jack and the Beanstalk" complete with matadors comes closest -- although not all of them would be to everyone's taste. But that's the point. I want our youth department to be a garden for the eyes. Orchids, daisies and dandelions all have a place in it.

For home, well, there are family portraits, which are portraits and heirlooms and not to be messed with. I have geometric abstract pieces; representational works that incorporate unusual color combinations such as a mountain scene done entirely in black and rosemadder; silkscreens of animals; cartoons and other pieces of whimsy that are mostly monochrome; copper etchings of historical objects; framed batik landscapes; charcoal sketches; needlework old and relatively new; and art photos. No depictions of human biological waste, but there's a skull in one of the charcoal sketches. There's also a skull beer stine from a German medical school on the piano, next to a bust of Bach, that is of dubious taste, but it's funny and I like it.

So, I'm going for a level of educational awareness, with a little edge, at work. People don't need to be smacked around at the library, but it's good to see things that are different from what one might have chosen for home. And at home, I like color, imagination, history and variety. And humor. And contrast.

Come to think of it, I go for the color, imagination, history, variety, humor and contrast at work too, only with an awareness of who the audience is.

People who buy art can have similar things in mind, that is, to buy according to their own tastes for an audience they know well, or they can be going for the cool factor, to show they are just that much more fashion forward than other people. Sometimes the shock schlock gets those buyers, but sometimes the cool factor is truly visionary. If you read the early public opinion of impressionism, you will find that people didn't think much of it. Now, it commands admiration and attention, due to the people who bought it and preserved it in spite of the fact that the common taste thought it was junk.

The art world is driven by the market just as much as anything else where commodities are for sale. Anyone who wants a vote can do so with a checkbook or a credit card. If they can afford it.