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Picasso Painting Sells For Record $180 Million In Christie's Auction
If the Fed's bubble busting team led by Stanley Fischer was looking for runaway inflation, it could have easily found it earlier today without any particular effort, only not in the usual CPI place, but in the price of Women of Algiers (Version O), a "vibrant, multi-hued painting" from Pablo Picasso which moments ago became the world's most expensive artwork, selling for $179,365,000, included the house's premium in a Christie's auction.
The same auction would also sell Alberto Giacometti's sculpture "Pointing Man," which was poised to set a record as the most expensive sculpture sold at auction. They were among two dozen masterpieces from the 20th century Christie's offered in a curated sale titled "Looking Forward to the Past."
The price for the Picasso surpasses the $142.4 million paid two years ago for Francis Bacon’s triptych, “Three Studies of Lucian Freud,” as well as earlier record of $120 million for Edvard Munch’s tortured “Scream.”
The price discovery, according to the WSJ, was described as a "dogged contest at Christie’s New York salesroom, with the bidding starting at $100 million and shot up quickly, with four telephone bidders competing for the jewel-tone scene of Cubist-style women lounging at odd angles in a room festooned with lush, striped décor."
But as the price topped $145 million, the bidding war winnowed to a pair of telephone bidders and the room watched, hushed, a few pulling out their cellphones to capture the moment. After 11 minutes, the gavel fell and Brett Gorvy, global head of postwar art, fielded the anonymous winning bid.
The WSJ describes the painting as "a riot of colors and focuses mainly on a scantily dressed woman whose face evokes Picasso’s former lover, Françoise Gilot. She is joined by a disconnected tumble of other, smaller nudes who each seem to conjure other modern masterworks. The obvious muse is Eugène Delacroix’s 1834 scene of Algerian women in a fantasy interior. But Picasso also painted the work as a homage to his artistic hero and sometime rival Henri Matisse, who had died the year before."
Why the high price?
The Picasso was considered a trophy as much for its ownership pedigree as its artistic merits. The work last changed hands 18 years ago when the estate of U.S. collectors Victor and Sally Ganz sold it through the auction house to a London dealer for $31.9 million. Its seller on Monday remains anonymous.
However, considering that the estimate price for the painting was nearly $40 million lower than the gavel price, one also has to thank the record $150 billion in global QE injecting stock market liquidity (and removing bond market liquidity) courtesy of the ECB and BOJ each and every month.
Picasso’s record price on Monday reflects the trophy-hunting atmosphere dominating the global art marketplace now, as billionaires compete for the handful of masterpieces that come up for sale in any given season. Bragging rights are part of the works’ allure, but the collective bidding is also ratcheting price levels for dozens of the world’s top artists.
This is not the end of it. From AP:
Experts say high art prices are driven by artworks' investment value and by wealthy new and established collectors seeking out the very best works.
"I don't really see an end to it, unless interest rates drop sharply, which I don't see happening in the near future," Manhattan dealer Richard Feigen said.
Impressionist and modern artworks continue to corner the market because "they are beautiful, accessible and a proven value," added Sarah Lichtman, professor of design history and curatorial studies at The New School.
"I think we will continue to see the financiers seeking these works out as they would a blue chip company that pays reliable dividends for years to come," she said.
With the one difference that art does not, in fact, pay any dividends, and any purchase is merely a gamble on further price appreciation driven by even greater asset bubbles in the future.
The identity of the buyer wasn't immediately disclosed, but there are really just two options: a bored "activist" hedge funder, who has been urging his portfolio companies to lever to the hilt and buy back his stock, or a just as bored Chinese billionare, seeking to bypass China's capital controls in new and, vibrant and multi-hued ways.
Now, the only question we have what is the Goldman bid/offer on the AJ-tranche of its brand new securitization product, the Pablo Picasso Backed Securities.
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In other news... Greece paid a billion Dollars to the IMF. No help from either ECB or IMF required.
Broke, my ass. When push comes to shove, these fuckers have the money.
As for this piece of art... Picasso was a horn dog and his crap is overrated. Now it's in a bubble too.
I'm making over $7k a month working part time. I kept hearing other people tell me how much money they can make online so I decided to look into it. Well, it was all true and has totally changed my life. This is what I do... www.jobs-review.com
The State of the Kleptocracy is alive and thriving!
"Picasso Painting Sells For Record $180 Million In Christie's Auction"
More proof of the insanity of our age. My daughter's finger painting has more merit than this tripe. Sorry... I've always felt that way about "modern" art. Shoenberg was the same thing for music of the same period with his "atonality". Imagine music without key or meter - what a horrid concept. It's not art... it's torture.
that's where qe goes towards.
It's still fucking ugly.
Agreed... it's hideous.
But it's also great value provided there's an even bigger fool waiting in the wings to pay even more for this heavily soiled toilet paper.
The definitive statement on the stupidity of modern art by Karl Zinsmeister:
http://archive.is/AG8n1
Very good writing, even if you don't care overmuch about the subject.
Well, there are tits on that painting, even an ass I think. So it's worth every penny.
picasso is a scam.
end of discuss.
."Picasso Painting Sells For Record $180 Million In Christie's Auction"
IMO, both Picasso and his art are a... Barbaric Relic. Unfortunately, it keeps appreciating a LOT better against paper fiat than the other 'Barbaric Relic', AU.
Some folks overpaid for some shit.
I guess my art history major may pay off after all. //
Maybe if you get into forgery.
I'm not a Picasso fan but that one I like....
Ok, great. The guy's into tits. We all applaud him for that common admiration. But seriously, beyond that: W. T. F. Someone below mentions that Picasso himself said he was a bit of a fraud. So maybe that explains some of it. The rest is pure programmed bullshit that people buy into. Frightening.
Let the 80s begin
imo that thing is hideous
No doubt some great legal mind of the future will say, paraphrasing "I can't describe it but I know it when I see it." ;-)
Picasso himself admitted he was a bit of a fraud, but 'twas all good fun'....
Its a lot like pet rocks & chia pets I guess, it takes "a certain type of person" to aquire this sort of stuff ;-)
At least the pet rock can go into attack mode when an intruder invades your home, though I must admit my XD-40 would be more effectual. But in a pinch...
Miffed;-)
I dunno those chia pets can leave you with a nasty lingering infection. Its right up there with Chinese sheet rock! ;-)
Job security depending on how the offending object caused the infection. In my field the possibilities are endless. To bad I don't work in the ER anymore. Got more stories out of that.
Miffed
buzzsaw, your avatar suggests that you might have poor taste.
The art and megamansions prices are going nuts. One way to get money out of cash. They'll be buying gold too pretty soon.
Too late, I already cornered the market for Velvet Elvis and Dogs Playing Poker.
Beenie babies are coming back, I can just feel it. Mine will do better because I was savvy to cover the tags in plastic protectors.
Miffed;-)
And Cabbage Patch Dolls. I'm thinkin Cabbage Patch Picasso Dolls, millionaires will pay...well...millions for shit...lol.
Now Dali, well ;-)
Dali was a smart guy. Got his students to copy his technique, cranked them out and just signed 'um. Beats chopping off an ear for some woman who probably wasn't very impressed knowing women.
Miffed;-)
lol...well, some of them are well known plagiarists.
Wasn't it van Gogh who said "Friends, Romans, countrymen, Gauguin lend me your ears!" ;-)
Simple.
There are so much dollars around that ultra rich want nothing to do with them.
A picasso painting is now officially money.
Dump dollars, get paintings
You didn't paint that.
Liberty is a demand. Tyranny is submission.
Someone else made those brushes, that paint and canvas! Art should be a free "commodity" to the entire world not stuck in some private collection!!!
Its a basic human right!
(Open up that can of whipass...lol)
Wake me up in a little while when the painting is going for several hundred quadrillion US dollars.
That's what Hillary Clinton would look like naked when viewed through a kaleidoscope......
Through a kaleidoscope and backwards though a giant telescope are the only two possible ways to look at Hillary naked without going into shock.
I just mini-vomited in my mouth.
Couple that with this headline....
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2015-05-11/average-age-minimum-wage-worker...
It was the Best of Timess and It was the Worst of Times
To put things into perspective, Fed pumps out $80bn of wallet-sized paintings a month, an equivalent of 444 Picasso's. Knowing the rate of their counterfeiting nothing except the derivatives market feels impressive... or the size of outstanding student loans perhaps.
I don't get it.
Really.
There are so many Picasso paintings out there --held by his heirs. Like hundreds still in private hands. What would happen if a grandchild wanted to dump her collection on the market? *That* would be interesting.
I was at a friend's place the other night and they were watching a BBC docmentary called "The Super-rich and us." Surprisingly for the beeb it was really well done. Totally depressing to listen to all of the wankers though, and especially some pathetic baroness at a polo game telling the reporter that concerns about the wealth gap were mainly just envy. Worth watching as long as you don't throw something through the tv screen.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O_oeJgnkvmI
It's all fun and games until you take it to a quality framer and find out that it will cost you another $180 million to have it framed properly.
I wonder how Picasso would have felt if he knew his painting would one day be owned and controlled by someone primarily for bragging rights?
I wonder if he would have painted it at all?
how many boobies can you count?
That's the second nice rack on ZH today (think Emily). No complaints here.
just like gold. you can't print picasso's
So it should follow, is a Picasso print like a paper gold contract??
I'm tired of all the buyers and sellers being anonymous. Why?
If Yellen would just learn to paint one of those every day, ... y'know what, it still wouldn't make a dent in even the annual budget deficit, a mere $80,000,000,000 per year in "art".
So you now need about a billion just for a reasonable house and a couple of pictures on the walls.
Buyer overpaid. Stupid shmuck.
Buyer overpaid. Stupid shmuck.
I do not like this masonic, illuminty, freemason modern art. They get give this picture for free, I never will put it in one of my rooms, even not in the toilet room.
Where Surrealists tried to elevate the dream-state into a higher reality (and opposed the use of narcotics) the Visionary artist uses all means at his disposal - even at great risk to himself - to access different states of consciousness and expose the resulting vision. Art of the Visionary attempts to show what lies beyond the boundary of our sight. Through dream, trance, or other altered states, the artist attempts to see the unseen - attaining a visionary state that transcends our regular modes of perception. The task awaiting him, thereafter, is to communicate his vision in a form recognizable to 'everyday sight'.http://visionaryrevue.com/webtext/longman1.html
That whole dialog sounds like some seriously exclusive bullshit. So this is what they discuss, while standing in front of the painting, in hushed tones. I wrote this up myself. Here you go:
"The wholesome complexity of the cubism style has been influenced by the surrealists, as they struggle to break through a lattice of overlaid styles, that were imposed on them, in the 1930's, and though they suffer the consequences of this choice, the artist must find the inner empathatic emotion, to transcend the chains that bind him to a style and acheive true and effortless works, that are applauded by even the common man."
and if there was a picasso futures market, the current spot price would be $180.00