I am trying to remember a famous experiment involving an art cynic (notice I didn't say critic). If anybody can find this I would be most apprecative.

Anyways, this guy got hold of some art by school kids or housewives or otherwise fairly amateur artists and gathered them in a gallery. He then attibuted several of them to well known artists and others to anonymous or unknown names. He asked people to rate some of the works and the results turned out that the "art" supposed done by well known artists was rated higher than the other pieces. He even switched the names around when using different testers and results invariably came back that if you slap a well known name on a peice of art, it has a higher chance of being well received and therefore higher priced.

If this has anything to do with this thread, please let me know.