Abstract Money
Source: $1bn painting only matter of time as art prices surge
One billion…with a B…hmm. I suppose if the US dollar were to go through a massive devaluation and fell by let’s say…90% we could conceivably have someone pay a billion for a painting. Barring that, the claim seems iffy.
We get it, art is unique…only one of its kind, yada yada yada. But absent the aforementioned currency collapse or an elaborate insurance scheme, it’s hard to picture a scenario in which a painting, one painting, would be worth more than the total net output of many nation states. It’s as if to say, the cumulative efforts of an entire country are of less value than the rarefied brushworks of a long dead painter. Actually, at a billion dollars, the amortized value of each brushstroke competes only with the per word rate that lawyers charge in their racket.
In 2010, Pablo Picasso’s, Nude, Green Leaves and Bust (the image shown above) was bought for a cool one hundred six and a half million dollars. This was a painting of Picasso’s lover Marie Therese Walter, thereby making this painting the most expensive piece of soft porn ever. We could argue that the abstract work is laughably jejune, but obviously, we don’t know abstract art. Personally, if I was the girlfriend, I’d be insulted after sitting hours upon hours for this result and would probably have made Pablo get some glasses.
If we’re not making 9 figure incomes every year, it’s hard to imagine writing a cheque on which you’d need to tape on an extra piece to accommodate the zeros. As you can bet, the enormity of the sums paid would not work without insurance companies willing to offer coverage for the amount merely by paying them monthly premiums that look like phone numbers. It’s a racket and has little to do with refined tastes. There is no other explanation.
But the inherent beauty of a free market is that people are at liberty to pay whatever they feel an item is worth to them, whether it’s real estate, cars, rare coins, stamps, works of art, or even Pokémon tokens. Just remember that next time someone claims Bitcoin is a scam. In fact, if you used Bitcoins to buy paintings…..