hmm...

"The bogus religiosity which now surrounds original works of art, and which is ultimately dependent upon their market value, has become the substitute for what paintings lost when the camera made them reproducible.  Its function is nostalgic.  It is the final empty claim for the continuing values of an oligarchic, undemocratic culture.  If the image is no longer unique and exclusive, the art object, the thing, must be made mysteriously so."

-Ways of Seeing, John Berger

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Mona-lisa_in_the_Louvre.jpg