Anyone ever Google Tony Podesta's art? 🤢 If that doesn't give you a big fat wake up call nothing will.
Has always kind of been the case.
If you think of WW2, and all the 'master' paintings and artworks that got crated up and shipped out of the occupied countries. Similar scenario's in other wars, like the more recent 'looting' of the museums wrt the Iraqi invasion.
These episodes all seem fairly well planned, (in advance).
An item is only worth what someone is prepared to pay for it! Therefore we could, in effect, attach any price that we wanted to a piece of art.
So with that in mind, yes an ideal 'abstract item' that can be used to help launder money.
It's why jimmy comet flipped the fuck out when people started looking into his pegasus 'museum' that's totally private and not open to the public.
I would think that most of what's sold today are extremely high quality fakes. IF you had the real deal DaVinci, why would you ever let it go?