€8m tag on Andy Warhol selfie: Excess or art?

It seems far easier to define excess than it is to define art — one is obvious enough, the other may not always be. 

It is easy enough though to recognise when those two ideas flow together, when something, for whatever reason, becomes something it is not, when it assumes a property far beyond anything intrinsic or intended.

Later this month, an Andy Warhol selfie, taken in 1963, and based on a photo-booth image of the pop artist, goes to auction in London. It is suggested that the image will realise around €8m. Though we are very much at the hype-is-everything (a fair enough description of the artist too) stage of the process this seems an absolute affront.