No, this is not Fitsnews. The nekkid woman at right is a work of art — a very valuable work of art.
An ex-cab driver who is now a billionaire in China bought the above Modigiliani, titled “Nu Couché,” for — maybe you should sit down first — $170,405,000.
Unlike with some extremely expensive works of art, I totally get why he liked it. It’s appeal is rather straightforward and visceral. But so is the kind of picture that will no longer appear in Playboy. I would not pay $1.70 for a picture in Playboy (which is why Playboy is struggling), much less $170 million for any picture that has ever been put on the market. If I had $170 billion, I wouldn’t spend that much for a picture. I wouldn’t want to be such a sap for one thing, and there are far better ways to spend the money.
Besides, to see that very same picture, all I had to do was Google it. I don’t care how nice the brushstrokes are, a picture is a picture.
Which means that even if I were a billionaire, you probably wouldn’t find me at Christie’s. Although I did have a pint in a pub across the street from Christie’s when I was in London. In the pub were a number of guys who apparently worked there, but I didn’t talk to them while enjoying my bitter.
However, I’m not entirely lacking in the sensibilities necessary to see marketability in art. Check out this interactive feature from The New York Times, which asks you which works of art brought the highest price. I got the first three right and thought I was really savvy, but I missed on the rest of them.
Another good reason for me not to spend millions on a painting even if I had billions. I’d be a lousy judge of resale value.
But I thought you might have fun taking the quiz, too…
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5/7. Were I a billionaire, I would have bought both the Lichtenstein pieces and the Moore sculpture and let the rest go.
Of course, if the painting sold for $170,000,000, that means there was someone else who was willing to pay 160,000,000 or something like that.
There are a lot of rich idiots out there.
I would be such a sensible billionaire… Great wealth is wasted on the wrong people.
Excellent sell by the disposer.
This is a painting referential to the history of western painting”; in a sly, and knowing way. But that’s not why this buyer bought it. It did come to his attention because of the criticism of this work, however. It isn’t like he spent almost $200M on a flee market find.
That doesn’t make him any less of a fool. Of course, same was said of Americans who started buying up the avant garde Parisian art after 1880. That worked out pretty well for those rubes. We will have to see, but seems pretty likely this will be back on the market in a few years and maybe sell, and maybe not, for a fraction of this record.