The static number of $106.5 million can purchase almost anything – a dream house, an exotic pet or two. Anyone will tell you – if they had $106.5 million to spend, there would be plenty of expensive items on their list.
So if I said that on May 4th, an art buyer called into an auction and paid a record breaking $106.5 million for a 1932 Picasso painting, would you believe me?
You should, for it broke the world record for the highest price for an art work at an auction, EVER! Crazy eh?
Paying high prices for paintings isn’t a new trend in our culture. Authentic art these days goes for plenty of high rolling dollars. In recent years paintings went for $71.1 million for Green Car Crash by Warhol or $104.3 million for Walking Man I by Giacometti.
Picasso’s legendary painting is called – Nude, Green Leaves and Bust, an oil painting that took him less than a day to create. It is of his mistress Marie-Therese Walter and measures five by four feet. It shows a reclining nude figure with an image of Picasso in the background looking over her.
It formally belonged to California art patron Frances Lasker Brody, who kept it in the family since 1951. He only paid $19,800.
At Christie’s in New York – five bidders went head to head and went over $80 million for the one painting in less than nine minutes.
The buyer who bought the Picasso piece is kept secret, a wall flower as many put it. We all know controversy stirs when a headline making price and an anonymous rich buyer are put together – people are naturally curious as to who the buyer was. Could the buyer be concerned for their safety? They don’t want to brag that they can spend this much on a painting? Or perhaps they are a diehard fan and wanted the painting with no media attention to praise them.
Conor Jordan, head of impressionist and modern art for Christie’s New York, said he was “ecstatic with the results…tonight’s spectacular results showed the great confidence in the marketplace and the enthusiasm with which it welcomes top quality works,” he said.
We may not know who the buyer was, but we do know it was a perfect match. For the buyer and painter have similar attributes: both are a little bit crazy.
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