What do you think of when you think of Andy Warhol? Bright portraits of Marilyn Monroe? Soup cans, perhaps? Right. ME TOO. And yet this painting of a car crash is the most expensive Warhol painting, sold at auction for $104.5 million last year!
Just when I think I know everything about the art market. YEESH.
This triptych of Lucien Freud, painted by Francis Bacon, is the most expensive painting ever sold at auction (if you avoid inflation). One hundred forty million dollars. That’s seven zeroes.
If you can genuinely explain to me why this has the highest price tag ever paid at auction, that’d be swell. If you can introduce me to the person who paid for it, I’m gonna need to prepare myself for putting the work in. Because if you have 140 million to throw at a bad set of paintings….I’d like to introduce myself.
Consider this added to my “W1$HL1ST” email that’s sitting in my Draft folder to my parents.
To celebrate the “Madame Cezanne” exhibit that opens at the Met today, I looked into their marital bliss…or lack thereof, apparently. Turns out that Paul Cezanne didn’t leave his wife anything in their will, and instead left it all to his son. Guess I need to add a new surname to my list of “Hated Pauls in Art History.” You’re in good company with that Gauguin clown, Cezanne.
Leonardo da Vinci’s “Lady with an Ermine” is a portrait of Cecilia Gallerani. She ended up being the mistress of da Vinci’s boss, the Duke of Milan. Although she had his child, they didn’t end up together. I guess when you’re responsible for commissioning The Last Supper and making weapons with 80 tons of bronze that was supposed to be used for your own equestrian statue…you gotta go with someone more noble.
Probably why that ermine-ferret-thing looks so awful.
43 artworks from the Mellon Collection went up for auction earlier this week. The auction brought in more than $157 million. Bunny Mellon died earlier this year at 103. To honor her and her art collection, I’m going to work on bringing back elbow-length gloves and hanging out with First Ladies.
The portrait of Ginevra de’ Benci by Leonardo da Vinci is the only one on display in Americas. There’s some debate as to whether the juniper tree and sprigs on the back of the work are a pun on her name (juniper is ginepro in Italian) or not. Traditionally, junipers are symbols of pain and loss, and are often used in widow portraiture. If that’s the case, there’s a chance that Ginevra is someone totally different! Scholar Maike Vogt-Luerssen said she’s Fioretta Gorini, widow of Giuliano de’ Medici (of, like, the Medicis!), who was assassinated in 1478. He was stabbed 23 times. Yikes! I thought that stuff only happened on the Game of Thrones.
I suppose I’ll have questions for the National Gallery, since their website totally takes the claim of her both being Ginevra and da Vinci using the juniper/ginepro as a pun for her name.
The painting is unique in that there’s a back. It says “beauty adorns virtue.” She also used to have hands, but the panel was cut down due to damage.
Christopher Robin, Pooh, and Piglet are wondering where their weekend went.
Like this illustration? You can buy it at Sotheby’s English Literature, History, Children’s Books and Illustrations auction later this week.
Warhol’s “Triple Elvis” sold for $81.9 million this week. More than a billion dollars were spent at auction at Sotheby’s and Christie’s. Like, hello?! I rummage for change when ordering my iced coffee. This whole “millions to throw down on art” must be really, really nice.
arthipstory 