Most Expensive Painting

Posted on by Emily in General

Most Expensive Painting – A new record has been set for the most expensive painting ever sold.  Vanity Fair just reported (February 2012) that “The Card Players” by Paul Cezanne has been sold to the Qatar Royal Family for an impressive $250 million last year.

I love art, but I can’t really imagine paying that much money for anything. It makes me wonder– do they actually love the painting that much, or are they just interested in making history by buying a piece of art by a famous artist? I guess if you’re a collector, you’ll go to any lengths to get prized pieces– it becomes almost like an addiction.

Most Expensive Painting

People will pay a pretty penny for artwork, which is especially demonstrated if you look at what the record-setting top 10 paintings were sold for:

#1) The Card Players – Paul Cezanne – $250 million

#2) No. 5, 1948 – Jackson Pollock – $140 million

#3) Woman III – Willem de Kooning – $137.5 million

#4) Portrait of Adele Block-Bauer 1 – Gustav Klimt – $135

#5) Portrait of Dr. Gachet – Vincent Van Gogh – $82.5 million

#6) Nude, Green Leaves and Bust – Pablo Picasso – $106.5

#7) Garcon a la Pipe – Pablo Picasso – $104.2

#8) Bal du Moulin de la Galette – Pierre Auguste Renoir – $78.1

#9) Portrait of Joseph Roulin – Vincent Van Gogh – $58

#10) Dora Maar au Chat – Pablo Picasso – $95.2

Now, all of these paintings have been established as “masterpieces” for some time and therefore people are willing to pay millions for them. But art is somewhat subjective, best demonstrated by the story of the German cleaning woman.

An overzealous cleaning woman’s handiwork resulted in ruining a $1 million piece of artwork. An official in Dortmund, Germany has revealed that a cleaner inadvertently scrubbed away a patina intended to look like a dried rain puddle from Martin Kippenberger’s “When It Starts Dripping From The Ceiling”.

The modern art installation piece was on loan from a private collector to the city’s Ostwall museum. It will remain there for the time being, despite the damage sustained by the cleaner earlier this month. It is unclear what will happen to the piece as German-born artist Kippenberger died in 1997 and can’t be consulted. According to Dortmund city spokesperson Dagmar Papajewski, it will be up to the collector to decide whether or not the patina should be restored.

I personally don’t think that the definition of art should be so rigid. An expression of life by the hands of an individual with artistic intentions is art, in my opinion, as long as its tangible. There have been plenty of times that I haven’t necessarily cared for the artist’s taste or found their work lacking in some way, but what kind of world would we live in if there was no range of quality in expression? If every piece of art was a masterpiece wouldn’t that somehow take away from our appreciation of art as a whole?

Most Expensive Painting. Source : Wikipedia

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Most Expensive Painting

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