re: This painting from Cy Twombly sold for 41.6 million last year

Buy art for cheap. Get a friend of a friend to appraise it for big money. Donate it to a museum. Boom, you just turned a $5k purchase into a $5M tax write off.

Once one particular artist gets appraised like this, suddenly all his work starts to go up in value. Then the artist dies, and the value really kicks up because suddenly no more of it is being made.

If you want to make your art worth something, die. If you want your art to become really valuable, commit suicide.