Pakistani art boom

When a market is relatively small, it doesn't take a lot of new money to make it jump.

Pakistan's art market has gone crazy over the past year, with prices multiplying 10 to 20 times over. And famous artists are not the only beneficiaries.

In the nearby Unicorn gallery, a fresh art school graduate declines an attempt by a collector to reduce the price of her oil-on-canvas portrait of a woman from $580 to $450.

This is in sharp contrast to veteran painter Tasadduq Sohail who hardly received more than $50 for a painting until he was 65.

But then in 2006, one of his works was sold for $32,000 at an international auction.

Pakistan may have undervalued its artists up until recently, but is this sustainable?

Major buyers often do not even find it necessary to look at what they are buying.

"I know buyers who have been sending their servants to book entire shows before they open," says Saquib Hanif, a collector and art critic based in Karachi.

From the BBC.

Not so ugly Americans

According to a recent international survey, the French are now considered the most obnoxious tourists from European nations, behind only Indians and the last-place Chinese as the worst among countries worldwide. And it's not just the rest of the world that has a gripe with the Gallic attitude: the French also finished second to last among nations ranking the popularity of their own tourists who vacation at home.

Americans so often worry about their compatriots' misbehavior abroad. Nothing wrong about trying to do the right thing, but too often the boorishness of tourists from other nations gets overlooked.

Overall, French travelers landed 19th out of 21 nations worldwide, far behind the first-place Japanese, considered the most polite, quiet and tidy. Following the Japanese as most-liked tourists were the Germans, British and Canadians. Americans finished in 11th place alongside the Thais.

And this is interesting:

American tourists fared well in some surprising ways. Despite being notoriously language-limited, for example, they top the list of tourists credited with trying to speak local languages the most, with the French, Chinese, Japanese, Italians and Russians coming in last in the local-language rankings.

From Time.