The avant-garde and money
Art Market | After the collapse of Lehmann Brothers, which became the symbol of the Financial Crash on the 15th September 2008, the contemporary art market seemed to avoid a similar slide into the abyss.
In the very exclusive context of rare yet high profile artworks, 2009 was the scene of a handful of spectacular success stories. For example, on the 11th November last year, Andy Warhol’s « 200 one dollar Bills » smashed its reserve price, and sold at a Sotheby’s auction for a record $43,762,500. This print became symbolic for a variety of reasons :
-Its historical value; it was one of the first screen prints on canvas in 1962.
-Its subject matter, the dollar bill as an avatar of rising American power and its ability to replicate itself.
Its rarity : there are only two large scale examples of it.
But most of all, it had belonged to Robert and Ethel Scull. These two collectors, both socially upwardly mobile and nonconformist, started […]
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