They have made it more expensive for wealthy patrons and museums to buy paintings and sculptures at auctions.
After Martin Peretz, the longtime owner and editor in chief of The New Republic, had a fainting spell in Paris in the late 1980s, Mr. Cockburn gleefully wrote that Mr. Peretz had been dining at an expensive restaurant where patrons were "so bloated that they have to be rubbed down with Vaseline to squeeze through the door".
Commissioned by an Italian cardinal, the sculpture was created in the 1540's for King Francis I when Cellini's design proved too expensive for his first patron.
She gestured at the patrons wearing expensive sunglasses and canvas sneakers.
Four years of political turmoil have brought clearer divisions between wealthy families and their domestic staff, between the patrons of expensive restaurants and the waiters who serve them, between golfing businessmen and the legions of caddies who carry their bags.
Patrons of expensive art, such as opera, already supplement government grants and boxoffice takings with private donations.Technology has made it possible for dispersed, niche interests to become sustainable communities.
In malls, multiplexes and theme parks, too, the mock artists of the Portrait Studio and a less expensive version, Sketch Express, await patrons willing to pay from $2 for an express sketch to $5 for a color picture.
Even so, his first assignment for The Times, in 2001, was an article for the Sunday Styles section about an "assiduously cool" bar in the East Village where the black-clad patrons sipped expensive cocktails and ate tapas while staring at models and other beautiful people.
This was then converted into an expensive indoor theatre for wealthy patrons.
Many end up in debt, since they are forced to shop for food at expensive stores owned by their patrons.
