11/12/2009
Andy Warhol's '200 One Dollar Bills' Goes for $43.7 Million
The money appears to be back in the contemporary art market:
"The price rose at breakneck speed as five collectors vied for the classic image, '200 One Dollar Bills.' It ended up selling for $43.7 million (including fees to Sotheby’s), more than three times its high estimate of $12 million. The buyer, whom Sotheby’s refused to identify, bid by telephone through Bruno Vinciguerra, the company’s chief operating officer. Sotheby’s would also not identify the seller, although people familiar with the collection said it was Pauline Karpidas, a London-based collector. Just a year after the art market was in the doldrums with the world’s financial markets, buyers with deep pockets were not shy about stepping up for tried-and-true artists. The sale topped Sotheby’s expectations, totaling $134.4 million, well above its $67.9 million high estimate."
Posted 11:51 AM EST by Andy Towle in Andy Warhol, Art and Design, Auctions, News | Permalink
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I will be auctioning off my piece "200 Pennies" at eBay. Bidding starts at $17.
Posted by: crispy | Nov 12, 2009 12:05:43 PM
It's things like this that make me feel like "art" is sometimes the biggest (and best) scams ever.
Posted by: Austin | Nov 12, 2009 1:44:53 PM
With art it doesn't matter if you're talented or if the work you produce is interesting and good. Most artists don't even produce their own work (and while this has been true for centuries, many at least knew how to do it and were intimately involved with its conception and creation--not so anymore). What matters more is how it will resell and retain its value, determined by the propaganda of those who work within the industry (representing artists), contributing to price inflation. And we get andy warhola (who was at least talented in the beginning), jeff koons (never talented), and damien hirst (never talented). Of course, we also get some genuinely talented people in the mix, too, like Francis Bacon.
Posted by: TANK | Nov 12, 2009 2:03:01 PM
Just to be clear, it is not 'Art', and never intended to be...it's a marketing ploy for Ego gratification. A testament to the fact that you can spray paint turds & macaroni, call it 'transendent' and some robber baron will spend 50 millin on it, because he can...Woe be unto any truely talented artist in this toxic world!
Posted by: Booka | Nov 12, 2009 2:20:19 PM
I suppose it's a good investment financially speaking.
Andy was a real wise-guy; there are suckas born every minute.
Posted by: John in Boston | Nov 12, 2009 6:50:45 PM
the contemporaray art scene is nothing more than an incestuous circle-fuck. Case in point, the New Museum's upcoming Jeff Koons retrospective curated by no other than Jeff Koons himself from a selection of his works that are part of the collection of one of his biggest patrons, Athens industrialist Dakis Joannou, a New Museum Trustee. But wait, there is more to this vertigo-inducing web of connections as a NYTimes article illustrates.
http://artsbeat.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/11/11/the-new-museums-web-of-connections/
Posted by: bading | Nov 12, 2009 7:20:47 PM
I've seen more creative work carved into bathroom stalls (not really, but there is an argument that it could be). Who the hell is stupid enough to pay $43.7 million for something that is literally only worth $200?
Posted by: Garst | Nov 13, 2009 12:33:57 AM
Don't forget the cost of the frame, Garst. LOL
Posted by: Jake | Nov 13, 2009 1:46:26 AM
It's not even worth 200$, it's a print!
Posted by: Max | Nov 13, 2009 9:24:48 AM