Introduction: The Highest Art Auction in History

Recently a Christie’s art sale became the best auction in history. The sale blanketed works via Jackson Pollock, Roy Lichtenstein and Jean-Michel Basquiat, amongst others and in total generated $495 million. The sale hooked up sixteen new global auction information, with 9 works promoting for extra than $10m (£6.6m) and 23 for more than $5m (£three.2m). Christie’s said the record breaking income pondered “a new technology inside the art marketplace”.

The top lot of Wednesday’s sale turned into Pollock’s drip painting Number 19, 1948, which fetched $fifty eight.4m (£38.3m) – nearly twice its pre-sale estimate.

Lichtenstein’s Woman with Flowered Hat sold for $56.1 million Christian Music Lyrics, whilst every other Basquiat paintings, Dustheads (top of article), went for $forty eight.Eight million.

All 3 works set the best charges ever fetched for the artists at auction. Christie’s described the $495,021,500 total – which included commissions – as “superb”. Only 4 of the 70 masses on offer went unsold.

In addition, a 1968 oil painting by means of Gerhard Richter has set a brand new record for the best auction fee completed by means of a living artist. Richter’s photograph-portray Domplatz, Mailand (Cathedral Square, Milan) sold for $37.1 million (£24.4 million). Sotheby’s defined Domplatz, Mailand, which depicts a cityscape painted in a fashion that shows a blurred image, as a “masterpiece of twentieth Century art” and the “epitome” of the artist’s Nineteen Sixties photo-portray canon. Don Bryant, founder of Napa Valley’s Bryant Family Vineyard and the portray’s new proprietor, stated the paintings “just knocks me over”.

Brett Gorvy, head of put up-battle and cutting-edge art, stated “The brilliant bidding and report expenses set replicate a new generation inside the artwork market,” he stated. Steven Murphy, CEO of Christie’s International, stated new collectors had been assisting pressure the increase.

Myths of the Music-Fine Art Price Differential

When I got here across this newsletter I become shocked on the prices those works of art were capable of obtain. Several of them would hardly evoke a wonderful emotional response in me, even as others would possibly handiest slightly, however for almost all of them I honestly do not apprehend how their fees are pondered inside the paintings, and vice versa. Obviously, these pieces had been no longer intended for people like me, an artist, whilst rich shoppers really see their intrinsic inventive fee honestly.

So why doesn’t tune entice those kinds of prices? Is it even viable for a bit of recorded music, now not music memorabilia or a song artifact (which includes a unprecedented document, LP, bootleg, T-blouse, album paintings, etc.), to be worth $1 million or greater? Are all musicians and song composers doomed to conflict in the music industry and claw their way up into a career in track? If one portray can be valued at $1 million, why can not a tune or piece of song additionally be valued in addition? Apparently, the $.99 in line with down load charge is the very best price a track is able to command at marketplace value, no matter what its first-rate or content, and the musician or composer need to accept this value as such.

The monetary equation looks something like this:

1 portray = $37 million

1 music = $.99

Sometimes people say that a song can exchange the world, but nobody ever says that about art work. So theoretically, if human beings want alternate $.Ninety nine is the charge we should pay for it.

Now right here are some statements that need to assist us make clear what the monetary or fee discrepancy between portray and tune is primarily based upon.

(1) There are fewer painters than there are musicians.