What is the man on the bridge screaming in Edvard Munch's most famous work? I will tell you. He is screaming: "I am too expensive! I belong in a public collection!"  As an artist, the price of art makes me want to scream. Munch's pastel drawing of The Scream, one of four versions, sold for $120m (£74m) last week in just 12 minutes. When the bidding reached $100m, the audience applauded. As he recorded the final offer, the auctioneer joked: "I love you." What is that love born of? It would be mean to say the love the auctioneer proclaimed was simply born of greed. After all, perhaps you really have to love art, love The Scream, and love its buyers, to value it at £74m. But trophy prices that only the super-rich can afford are damaging. Few public collections could even begin to raise £74m for a single acquisition.  This version of The Scream is the only one to include a poem by Munch on the frame, which describes the inspiration behind the series. It reads: "I was walking along a path with two friends – the sun was setting – suddenly the sky turned blood red – I paused, feeling exhausted, and leaned on the fence – there was blood and tongues of fire above the blue-black fjord and the city – my friends walked on, and I stood there trembling with anxiety – and I sensed an infinite scream passing through nature."  A piece of this magnitude belongs where everyone can see it. The enjoyment, understanding and popularity of such iconic works is humanity's inheritance. Human beings can fall in love across generations; people from all over the world can come to understand each other through their cultures; and we can all celebrate together by listening to great music – but not if the great artefacts of our age are squirrelled away in a rich person's downstairs loo.  Even if a public collection could afford to plough huge amounts of its energy, effort and cash into making such a purchase, it would not be right: there is so much else you could do with that kind of money. Think how many great works by younger artists you could buy with just £500,000. Think what a difference a sum like that could make to gallery education departments (schemes aiming to widen access to the visual arts). From time to time, galleries do attempt to rescue an important work "for the nation"; but, despite some high-profile successes, such as the purchase last year of Bruegel the Younger's Procession to Calvary, the capacity to do this is more limited than is widely perceived. Crazy auction prices do nothing to help us hang on to our art.  There is another pernicious result of the art market's buoyancy. In this recession, art is still seen as a good investment: everything else may be in flux, but Picasso will always be Picasso. This inflates the value of public collections, meaning galleries come to be seen as places housing treasures with a high monetary value – not as buildings filled with ideas, aspirations and possibilities. National collections, with their armies of trustees, are protected from local councillors eager to sell off a Lowry to manage a deficit – but smaller ones aren't. Last year, a painting by John Everett Millais was sold by Bolton council for £74,400 to fund a new museum warehouse. Such de-acquisition should go from being a taboo to being illegal.  What's the solution? That's trickier. We can appeal to rich people's sense of public spirit, in the hope that they will donate, or at least long-lend, work to museums. But the problem is that public officials in museums are not there to chase and flatter wealthy collectors but to display the important art of the past, to reveal unseen histories, to reflect what is going on today while pointing to tomorrow.  Contemporary artists are split into two camps: those who are quite happy to create objects that work well as investment vehicles; and those (mainly younger) artists who couldn't care less. Neither group has a claim on making better art. You can make valuable, interesting, important art out of gold as well as sausages. I am keen on contemporary artists making a living, but we all need to beware the dangers of the inflated art market.  If contemporary art remains too expensive, it will not be bought by public museums. The collections of the future won't have good work that reflects, challenges or explains what is going on now. In the end, the best currency an artist can receive is footfall and discussion. There is no point in showing your work only to the "right people". Art shouldn't just be available to all, it should also be available in multiple ways – and we should encourage all people to make it.  Hey artists! Don't turn ideas into cash. Make art cheap. Give your art to public collections and don't demand a tax break. Make art that has no investment potential. Don't get caught up with making money. Get caught up with making things better.
At £74m, The Scream went to a buyer with very deep pockets. Such prices destroy rather than celebrate creativity, says artist Bob and Roberta Smith