Lucian Freud, “Benefits Supervisor Sleeping,” 1995
“Freud’s Heavyweight Nude Gets $35 Million Price,” alleges the headline (which may well be rewritten by the time your read this) for today’s online art-market commentary by Martin Gayford in Bloomberg.
That’s more than you or I know, since the Christie’s auction where Lucian Freud‘s “Benefits Supervisor Sleeping” (above) may flirt with the auction record for a living artist hasn’t happened yet.
Gayford merely (and correctly) observed that “the auction house [is] expecting the 1995 work
to fetch up to $35 million” when it is offered on Tuesday evening. The current auction record for a living artist was set last November, when Sotheby’s sold another heavyweight, Jeff Koons‘ “Hanging Heart,” for $23.6
million.
What would Freud’s illustrious ancestor of the psychoanalytic fame have to say about these slips?