Maybe just to my tiny brain....
Last Tuesday "Three Studies of Lucian Freud", a triptych painting by the
late British artist Francis Bacon, sold at a Christie’s
auction in New York City for $142,405,000.
According to this article, which speculates at length about which well-heeled collector may have bought the picture(s), "Bacon pretty openly detested the idea of art selling for exorbitant profits. As he once said, “Prices are so ridiculous that people go to galleries because they are obsessed by the money.”"
According to this article, which speculates at length about which well-heeled collector may have bought the picture(s), "Bacon pretty openly detested the idea of art selling for exorbitant profits. As he once said, “Prices are so ridiculous that people go to galleries because they are obsessed by the money.”"
Another favorite, and perhaps the most dramatic example of the "profitable painter syndrome", is poor old Vincent Van Gogh, the doomed genius who gave us "Starry Night" and dozens of other masterpieces, including an amazingly penetrating series of self-portraits -
one of the less-known Van Gogh self-portraits, from 1887
As we know, Vincent Van Gogh never sold a single canvas in his tormented lifetime, yet now his paintings change hands for millions of Dollars.
`“Portrait of Dr. Gachet," the most expensive painting by the troubled Dutch artist who was born in 1853 and died in 1890 from a self-inflicted gunshot wound, was sold at Christie’s New York in 1990 for $82.5 million. Of the artist’s top ten paintings sold at auction, all have cost over $20 million but only one has come up at auction after 2000, according to data from Artnet, which tracks auction results.' - the Wall Street Journal tells us.
(The WSJ article tells how a Van Gogh which has long been thought to be fake, is suddenly not-fake - and therefore worth a fortune. But that's not what we're talking about.)
Back in the 80s, as I recall it, Tokyo Banks had so much capital washing around that they didn't know where to put it. One of the solutions they found to this "problem", was to sink millions into paintings, which would either hang on the boardroom wall, or more likely, languish in an air-conditioned vault until their price rose enough to bring in the required profit.
Hardly what an artist starving in his garret has in mind as he labors over his hot easel....
I'm sure economists could offer us many ideas about what this means. If we have an economic system where huge sums of money can be frozen in the form of Art or Jewellery, what does that say about the money ordinary people work all week to earn? Not something I've heard discussed on PBS's spiritual-desert of a program, the "Nightly Business Report".
Here's my tiny contribution to the study - it seems to me that if a tiny handful of the people in the world control the huge preponderance of the planet's wealth, more than they can ever dream of actually consuming, or even seeing, maybe that has something to do with the insanity of chasing prices of masterpieces up and up into the stratosphere, while actual living artists, who would be delighted just to make a living, have to suffer and struggle in the effort to create a little beauty and understanding.
Seems like an argument for 2 or 3 things:
1. Taxes on speculation.
2. Taxes on Art deals, the proceeds from which would go directly to living artists.*
and 3. (Of course) Re-distribution of wealth.
(*I was told decades ago - don't know if it's still true - that in the Netherlands you can be a registered artist and receive a stipend from the Government, in return for which you give the taxman a certain number of Art-pieces a year. It's obviously good for the Artists, but it also works out well for the Government, as they can sell the works later on, and even make a profit on the deal.)
`“Portrait of Dr. Gachet," the most expensive painting by the troubled Dutch artist who was born in 1853 and died in 1890 from a self-inflicted gunshot wound, was sold at Christie’s New York in 1990 for $82.5 million. Of the artist’s top ten paintings sold at auction, all have cost over $20 million but only one has come up at auction after 2000, according to data from Artnet, which tracks auction results.' - the Wall Street Journal tells us.
(The WSJ article tells how a Van Gogh which has long been thought to be fake, is suddenly not-fake - and therefore worth a fortune. But that's not what we're talking about.)
Back in the 80s, as I recall it, Tokyo Banks had so much capital washing around that they didn't know where to put it. One of the solutions they found to this "problem", was to sink millions into paintings, which would either hang on the boardroom wall, or more likely, languish in an air-conditioned vault until their price rose enough to bring in the required profit.
Hardly what an artist starving in his garret has in mind as he labors over his hot easel....
I'm sure economists could offer us many ideas about what this means. If we have an economic system where huge sums of money can be frozen in the form of Art or Jewellery, what does that say about the money ordinary people work all week to earn? Not something I've heard discussed on PBS's spiritual-desert of a program, the "Nightly Business Report".
Here's my tiny contribution to the study - it seems to me that if a tiny handful of the people in the world control the huge preponderance of the planet's wealth, more than they can ever dream of actually consuming, or even seeing, maybe that has something to do with the insanity of chasing prices of masterpieces up and up into the stratosphere, while actual living artists, who would be delighted just to make a living, have to suffer and struggle in the effort to create a little beauty and understanding.
Seems like an argument for 2 or 3 things:
1. Taxes on speculation.
2. Taxes on Art deals, the proceeds from which would go directly to living artists.*
and 3. (Of course) Re-distribution of wealth.
(*I was told decades ago - don't know if it's still true - that in the Netherlands you can be a registered artist and receive a stipend from the Government, in return for which you give the taxman a certain number of Art-pieces a year. It's obviously good for the Artists, but it also works out well for the Government, as they can sell the works later on, and even make a profit on the deal.)
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