Posted on 11/16/2018 3:08:18 AM PST by C19fan
An iconic 1972 painting by British artist David Hockney soared to $90.3million at Christie's on Thursday, smashing the record for the highest price ever paid at auction for a work by a living artist. With Christie's commission, Portrait of an Artist (Pool with Two Figures), surpassed the auction house's pre-sale estimate of about $80million, following a bidding war between two determined would-be buyers once the work hit $70million. The previous record for a work by a living artist was held by Jeff Koons' sculpture Balloon Dog, which sold for $58.4million in 2013. Hockney's previous auction record was $28.4million.
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#4 That must be it or is there some tax dodge as well?
They are high stakes poker chips/a place to put your money. Sometimes they “travel”. Easier than carrying that much cash. Especially when you buy a painting in a country that you don’t live in. You’ve just parked almost a hundred million there.
Often, yes.
Jeff Koons doesn’t even make his own art. He subcontracts others to make his works for him.
If you showed me that picture out of context I’d say it was made by a first-year art student of little talent.
Wow. How amateurish. I love how he didn’t even cover his lines on the green hill on the left. There is almost no detail in the background. The figure standing is in a very unnatural position. There is no detail on the figure in the pool. The lighting doesn’t seem right. C+ in a high school art class. The purchase of this painting shows an absurdly extreme example of a lack of discernment. The artist is terrible.
I just looked at his other stuff. This probably is some of his best work. Someone show this guy how to paint a person proportionally before he dies, please.
I think the idea is to resell it a few years for $10 million more than you paid for it.
It's rare that I see one of these paintings that I actually like.
It’s an easy way to hide wealth and to guarantee something if all goes to pot.
So, even if you end up selling a $100 million painting for $10 million, because the economy has gone to hell, you’re guaranteed $10 million.
That part I get, but you’re right. Most of the modern master paintings are just crap. I will pay a couple hundred dollars for a Da Vinci or Rembrandt knock off than what I often see being auctioned off.
I see a hundred hand-drawn images a day that blow this out of the water. What a disgrace the “art” industry has become.
Funny. I read a great autobiography about Richard Feynman called "Surely You're Joking Mr. Feynman", and in it, he talks about art, and how he became an artist later in life for a period of time.
In it, he wondered "What is good art? How do I know art is good? Is it something I can quantify?" (If you don't know of him, he was a young "Wunderkind Physicist" working on the Manhattan Project, the youngest prominent physicist on the team that included Einstein, Neil Bohrs, Oppenhiemer, etc. He was only 24 when he was recruited to join the team in 1942)
So, in the Sixties, he became interested in art, and on a trip to Italy he visited a famous place where there were a lot of paintings from Botticelli, Raphel, etc. He did not know anything about art, but he wondered if he could tell great art from other art. So he walked around looking at all the paintings, categorizing each of them without knowing anything about them as "That one is really good", "That one doesn't look that impressive", and so on.
He then went and got a brochure that explained each painting, and found that he COULD tell the difference...without fail, all the ones he thought weren't as good had been painted by apprentices of the masters and categorized in the brochure as "not having any significance"...
I found that interesting. So, when I look at art, and I think it sucks...I keep in mind that it is quite possible, I, as a non-artist, can discern the difference!
Miss me with that gay sh*t.
You bet!
IIRC there’s a whole town in China that does nothing but produce reproductions of famous paintings. What I saw were pretty decent efforts.
They misspelled “hackney.”
Well, apparently I have gaydar.
“I really don’t get the idea of paying millions of dollars for classic artworks, when you can just as easily get nice paintings for $60 to hang on walls.”
Oh, I get paying a lot for fine works of art. I’ve done it myself. Lots of Chagalls in my house.
This, however, is crap.
Homoerotic? Isn’t that a bit of a stretch? I had to go back and look at it, but even on second look I don’t see that. I also don’t see what’s worth 90 or so million—or even 1. I’m sure I just don’t understand.
A likely suspect.
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