Posted on 03/03/2022 10:45:20 AM PST by nickcarraway
René Magritte’s Surrealist masterpiece L’empire des lumières sold for a record £59.4 million (US$79.8 million) at a Sotheby’s sale on Wednesday, achieving a world auction record for the artist.
The 1961 painting, with a paradoxical image of darkened home lit from within yet under a bright blue sky of floating clouds, was sought by three telephone bidders over more than seven minutes before a winning hammer offer of £51.5 million, before fees, was secured by Alex Branczik, the auction house’s chairman of modern and contemporary art in Asia.
Magritte’s previous auction record of US$26.8 million was achieved for a 1937 portrait titled Le Principe du plaisir, at a November 2018 Sotheby’s auction in New York.
The final price for L’empire des lumières (The empire of light) exceeded a presale estimate in excess of US$60 million, and, according to Sotheby’s, is the highest price in sterling achieved for a work sold at auction in London. The dollar price represents the second-highest price achieved, Sotheby’s said.
The sale was the highlight of back-to-back live and live-streamed auctions at Sotheby’s that began with current works largely of the 21st century before moving to modern and contemporary art.
The total achieved for both sales, with 74 lots in total, was about £222.1 million, near the top end of an estimated range of between £170.4 million and £223.3 million. Final sales include fees paid by buyers, while the estimate ranges do not.
The modern and contemporary sale featured several big-ticket paintings, including a number of works by Claude Monet.
Monet’s Nymphéas, 1914-17—which had been in the same Japanese private collection for more than 40 years—went for £23.2 million, with fees, above a £20 million high estimate.
Five other Monet works from an anonymous American collector that had a combined estimate in the region of £35
(Excerpt) Read more at barrons.com ...
The one thing we can be sure of is that it is not a pipe.
Fine art is largely a money laundering / tax evasion scheme for the wealthy.
Buy a painting - comprised of doodles and splashed paint - for 10k from an “up and coming” artist. Spend 150k promoting the artist, holding showings, and upping sales over the next year. This week an Al Saud buys another one of the ‘artist’s the painting, next week its the Rothschilds, then a Ma. Watch as the “artistic value” of your 10k painting skyrockets.
Then donate your painting to some museum at an appraised value of $10mil., take the tax deduction and viola! You just evaded taxes on $10mil income for a measly 160k. The wealthy’s accountants and art managers all know each other, and take turns.
Stories like this paint the scam with legitimacy.
I could help a lot of kids go to college or trade school for that much money.
And I don’t even like the painting.
Maybe they don't want their money to be spend on bombs and weapons to kill some poor kid.
Do you have a citation that there are a significant number of artworks that sell for $160k, and end up appraised at $10 million?
Its an example so you can understand the scam.
Happens daily. Numbers change but the scam is the same.
Get your head out of the sand.
One of my favorite pictures
Kind of art noir. I’d like it better with the sun up.
“Fine art is largely a money laundering / tax evasion scheme for the wealthy.”
Indeed it is.
You are too suspicious. Next thing you’ll be telling us that people aren’t buying Hunter’s paintings for their artistic value.
What a boring painting.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-lj5RgpgfPE
Rene and Georgette Magritte With Their Dog After the War
It’s not bad, it’s pleasant to me. Just depends on what you like.
>Oh, well. I’ll just use that money to bid on the masterpiece below.
According to one source, although “A Friend in Need” has never been up for sale it is valued at several million dollars.
While the Magritte painting is well crafted, depending on it’s size I’d think it worth a few thousand dollars at best.
I for one would rather have the series of 13 Poker Playing Dogs.
On a tangent, the Cleveland Museum of Art, one of the best art museums on the planet was once offered the complete body of Norman Rockwell’s work for almost nothing and they turned it down, saying that illustrators didn’t belong in a museum of fine art.
Also, the Magritte is a Da Vinci compared to the utter hideousness of the work of Jean-Michel Basquiat. Check out the picture “Untitled 1982”. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Untitled_(1982_painting)
According to me it was the work of a of a diseased and sick mind. According to Wikipedia ... “It originally sold for $4,000 in 1982.[2] It was auctioned at Christie’s in 1984 to Jerry and Emily Spiegel for $20,900. In May 2017, the painting was auctioned at Sotheby’s to Japanese businessman and art collector Yusaku Maezawa for $110.5 million.
If I were given a chance to buy it I might pay a few hundred dollars so I could paint over it and re-use a valuable chunk of canvas.
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