Astonishing art, astonishing prices

admin — Mon, 16 Nov 2009 11:59:02 +0000

I have been tracking the mega-prices paid at auction for paintings since Top 10 of Everything began back in 1989, when Van Gogh’s Irises, which had sold two years earlier for $53.9 million, held the record. Now, that sort of price wouldn’t get anywhere near the Top 10, the latest version of which I have just compiled and looks like this:

	Artist/ painting/ sale year	Price ($)
1	Pablo Picasso, Garçon à la pipe, 2004	104,168,000
2	Pablo Picasso, Dora Maar au chat, 2006	95,216,000
3	Gustav Klimt, Portrait of Adele Bloch-Bauer II, 2006	87,936,000
4	Francis Bacon, Triptych, 2008	86,281,000
5	Vincent van Gogh, Portrait du Dr Gachet, 1990	82,500,000
6	Claude Monet, Le Bassin aux Nymphéas, 2008	80,379,591
7	Pierre-Auguste Renoir, Bal au Moulin de la Galette, Montmartre, 1990	78,100,000
8	Sir Peter Paul Rubens, The Massacre of the Innocents, 2002	75,930,440
9	Mark Rothko, White Center (Yellow, pink and lavender on rose), 2007	72,840,000
10	Andy Warhol, Green Car Crash – Green Burning Car I, 2007	71,720,000

Russian oligarch Roman Abramovich was revealed as the buyer of Francis Bacon’s Triptych. The price he paid is a record for a post-war painting. The previous day he had purchased Lucian Freud’s Benefits Supervisor Sleeping for $33.6 million, a record price for a work by a living artist.

Even higher prices are reputed to have been paid for works of art sold privately. Such sales are rarely publicized, but it is believed that in 2006 US music mogul David Geffen sold Jackson Pollock’s No.5, 1948 for $140 million.

A private sale that never happened was that of Pablo Picasso’s painting Le rêve. Its owner, Las Vegas casino owner Steve Wynn, agreed to sell it privately for $139 million, but while showing it to a group of friends, Mr Wynn made a sweeping gesture and accidentally poked his elbow through the canvas, resulting in a 15-cm (6-inch) tear – and the cancellation of the sale.

The Top 10 of Everything » van gogh

Astonishing art, astonishing prices