The London Telegraph has a good article on the upcoming British Television show The World’s Most Expensive Paintings with Alastair Sooke , part of the BBC Art Revealed series.The show and the Telegraph reveal a glimpse into the upper markets of collecting fine art. It touches on both acquiring and the selling process of some of the worlds most expensive pieces of art.
Before and after most major fine art auctions we hear in the press how much the items sold for and hundreds of millions of dollars changing hands in exchange for art.
The Sooke article in the Telegraph touches on topics such as needing to be a billionaire in order to collect at the top of the market, that all of the major auction houses track the great collections and the heirs and family members, and looks at the relationships between auctioneers and top collectors (not always good).
Sooke writes in the Telegraph
In general, the super-rich tend to compete over blue-chip Impressionist and Modern pictures — i.e. art that is old enough to bear the imprimatur of historical approval, but not so old that the supply of the best material has entirely dwindled.
“The people that I work with are surrounded by quality in their lives, so why would it stop in their art collecting?” says Tania Pos, an art adviser who, on behalf of an anonymous client, bought the seventh-most expensive painting ever sold at auction: a picture of waterlilies by Monet that went for almost $80.4 million at Christie’s in London in 2008. “They wish to have the very best — whether it’s their home, their car or their planes. It’s just the way they live their lives.”
A painting’s monetary value doesn’t necessarily reflect its aesthetic worth. According to auction lore, brown paintings don’t sell well, female nudes trump pictures of men and a painting’s dimensions should fit inside an elevator on Park Avenue, New York. And of course there is no guarantee that a painting that once sold for a huge sum will hold its value: look at the overinflated prices paid for contemporary artists such as Julian Schnabel and David Salle during the Eighties.
The wealthy buy art for complex reasons. Take Rothko’s White Center. To find out why someone was prepared to pay almost $73 million for it, I met Arne Glimcher, the New York art dealer who used to represent Rothko’s estate. “White Center is a wonderful painting,” he told me. “But all kinds of things converge for a painting to bring that sum of money, such as provenance and rarity. The painting hadn’t been on the market for years.”
Click HERE to read the full Telegraph article. A very interesting and enlightening article.
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