Boom (ctd.)
November 13 2013
Video: Christie's
A new record for a work of art at auction was set last night at Christie's in New York, when Francis Bacon's triptych portrait of Lucian Freud sold for $142.4m, making it the most expensive work of art ever sold at auction. The overall sale was also the highest in auction history, netting $691,583,000.
So far so impressive. But I wonder if, in the long run, people in some distant, more rational age might come to view yet another record set last night as the most significant event of the evening: the $58.4m paid for Jeff Koons' Balloon Dog (Orange)*, which Christie's had touted as 'the Holy Grail of art'. This makes Koons the most expensive living artist.
Think of those last six words as some of the most depressing in the history of art, and gawp at the swaggering, smirking, vulgar display of taste-free excess on display in the video above.
*one of five
Update: Michael Savage Tweets that, using the US inflation calculator, Van Gogh's Portrait of Dr Gachet is still the most expensive painting bought at auction, just, at $147.8m. It sold in 1990 for $82.5m.
Update II - a reader writes
Fascinating -- the Christie's video which you slam (" swaggering, smirking, vulgar display of taste-free excess") has "been removed by the user" from YouTube.
Curious. So it has. And apparently the Koons was guaranteed, so someone evidently made a few bucks out of the upside.
Update III - a reader hears:
While in a NYC yesterday a person at the Met Museum suggested that the Koons was worth its price because he is more accessible than say Bacon.
Does accessible in the art world now mean shallow and lacking content.
