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But there are other things at play besides money. There is the desire to belong to the cultural elite in which certain collectors are recognised as leaders. Greek collector Dakis Joannou is perhaps the most respected of all, both for his taste and his policy of loaning works for public view – 250 works from his private collection were recently on show in Athens, to mark the Olympic Games. When a leading collector like Joannou buys an artist's work, others will rush to follow. Soon, demand outstrips supply, and then the gallery owner or dealer who represents the artist can choose to whom they wish to sell. They often favour those buyers who will let their names be used to promote the gallery, and so the gallery gets more kudos, its artists become even more desirable, and the punters are ever more anxious to buy into the charmed circle. And, of course, there is the art itself. Many of the collectors talk about being moved by the work they own. Don and Mera Rubell, who have the world's largest modern art collection, believe that, in Don's words, 'the collector can become purified by the act of collecting art'. While Mark Fletcher, a professional art adviser, describes himself as a Hermes who travels with his clients into the artists' creative underworld in order to bring back an image to the upper world of their sitting rooms. It seems the song of the artist can still be heard through all that rustling of dollar bills. 
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