In London’s Mayfair, portraits selected from the forthcoming Sotheby’s old masters auction have been hanging among the rails of dresses in Victoria Beckham’s clothing store. Expensive frocks and bags might seem bizarre and jarring as a backdrop to Renaissance paintings, but it is only the logical endpoint of the way the top end of the commercial art market has developed. If you had any lingering doubt that art was now part of the luxury goods market then this is the clincher.

The exchange here between the parties is obvious – Beckham, who has chosen the works, gets to look smart and sophisticated, Sotheby’s gets to attract the attention of passing oligarchs who might feel moved to add an “attributed to Albrecht Dürer” (estimate £300,000-£400,000) or a “circle of Leonardo” (estimate, £200,000-£300,000) to their shopping. And indeed the modern versions of the sitters, wearing bodices embroidered with carnations and roses, and draped in sparkling jewels, might well be in the market for Beckham’s £1,500 jackets were they to step out of their frames today. In fact, the pictures seem almost bargains compared with Leonardo da Vinci’s Salvator Mundi, which was bought at auction last year by Abu Dhabi’s culture department for $400m. The work will go on show in September, it was announced last week, in the emirate’s outpost of the Louvre.

It can be easy to be dazzled by the bewildering sums at play – as well as by the inescapable sense that the prices of some works of art have become utterly detached from any aesthetic or artistic concerns. This is art as the totem of the global elite. But it is good to remember that all that is really just noise. The real matter of art is the human necessity for everyday creativity. It is the right of all of us, especially of children, to engage with art, music, dance and drama. This is what enriches children’s learning, their understanding of others, and their understanding of themselves. In a purely pragmatic way, it also matters to Britain, since the creative and cultural sectors are growth areas in the economy. Yet these subjects are being gradually leached from British schools as budgets are cut, curriculums are narrowed and trimmed to the bone, and as overstretched teachers struggle to hold their institutions together.

Which makes the actions of Andria Zafirakou more admirable. Ms Zafirakou, a teacher at a community college in Brent, London, has recently won the Varkay Foundation’s global teaching prize, worth $1m. There was nothing to stop her pocketing the cash. Instead, mindful of what a powerful experience it can be for a child to meet a “real-life artist”, she is using it to set up artists-in-residence programmes in schools. “I had to start a mission, a crusade, to help fix a mess,” she has said. Ms Zafirakou’s generosity offers a gleam of hope in a world that can, at times, seem unremittingly dark. Her actions stand as an example to philanthropists – and a reproach to the government.