The triptych picture by Francis Bacon, Three Studies of Lucien Freud, is now the most expensive art work ever sold at auction, having reached $142.4 million during Christie’s contemporary auction in New York on november 12th. The Balloon Dog (Orange) by Jeff Koons is now the most expensive art work by a living artist ever to sell at auction, having sold for $58.4 million. For more than a month, Christie’s had been billing the sale as a landmark event with a greater number of paintings and sculptures estimated to sell for over $20 million than it has ever had before. The hard sell apparently worked, Nearly 10,000 visitors entered its galleries to preview the auction. The sale totaled $691.5 million, far above the high estimate of $670.4 million, becoming the most expensive auction ever. Of the 69 works up for auction, only six failed to sell. All in all, 10 world record prices were achieved for artists who, besides Bacon, included Christopher Wool, Ad Reinhardt, Donald Judd and Willem de Kooning.
In May 2012, Christie's sold Rothko's Orange, Red, Yellow for $86.8 million, a record for any contemporary artwork at auction. Christie's also has an iconic Andy Warhol, Coca-Cola (3), estimated to sell for $40 million to $60 million. The Warhol auction record is $71.7 million for Green Car Crash (Green Burning Car I), sold in 2007. "La Rêve (The Dream)" is one of Picasso's most sensual and famous paintings reaching 155 million in a Private sale , depicting her lover Marie-Therese Walter sitting on a red armchair with her eyes closed. In 2006, Steve Wynn agreed to sell the painting to Steven Cohen for $139 million, but the sale was cancelled when Mr. Wynn accidentally damaged the work. Edvard Munch’s “The Scream” was sold for 119.9 million making That painting the most expensive painting ever sold at auction until it was surpassed by Bacon's "Three Studies of Lucian Freud". The work is the most colorful of the four versions of Edvard Munch’s masterpiece 'The Scream', and the only one still in private hands.
In my opinion all of these art works selling for record breaking prices makes sense, except Jeff Koons’s Balloon Dog. To me what Koons does isn’t his own art work, now if he were to give credit to all of his factory workers who help produce these, unimaginative copies, then maybe i would give him a little more credit. When it comes to art I believe that using a previous idea for inspiration is fine, but not directly copying something and then selling it for millions. I have a hard time with modern art because there is this idea of it being ok to just “copy and passed” so to say, meaning artist think that its within their artistic licence to recycle older works of art or even products we buy everyday to call it their own. There is never a limit to what we can create from our own mind, so why not pull from within yourself rather than take the easy way out and re-make a previous work.
1893
Jeff Koons
giant balloon Dog Sculpture
Francis Bacon
Three Studies of Lucian Freud
1969
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