Final Hammer: The $95-million (plus buyer’s premium) Picasso
It’s so easy to be cynical about moguls who lavish incredible sums of money on works of art, especially if you happen to be an impecunious art critic who can’t afford a square inch of a 1932 Picasso. (I surely fall into that category.)
If you read Holland Cotter‘s jaded commentary in today’s NY Times about the $106.48-million Picasso, you would think that whoever bought “Nude, Green Leaves and Bust” at Christie’s on Tuesday was looking for “trophy art” and “a mention in the news,” but wouldn’t know a truly important work by Picasso if it hit him on the head (or the elbow).
“It’s an entertaining picture,” sniffs Cotter about the much admired painting, “…though it’s not what’s great, meaning original, in his art. His
toughness is. The seed of that is found in early Cubist painting and collage.” I prefer Cubism too, and while I enjoyed the energetic pictures at Gagosian’s Mosqueteros show of late Picasso last spring, I thought those fanciful, wacky works were overpraised. Chacun à son Pablo.
Do we know for a fact that the anonymous purchaser actually deserves Cotter’s condescending decription? Is it just possible that whoever bought the most expensive artwork ever auctioned is a person of both enormous wealth and refined taste, who loves and appreciates art for the right reasons and can afford to indulge that passion?
Maybe. Maybe not. In any event, isn’t this money better spent on art than on frivolous adornments and other forms of vapid, transitory conspicuous consumption? Maybe this person (or entity) will eventually donate or bequeath this “trophy” to a museum. Already a big chunk of the purchase money is being funneled to the Huntington Library, Art Collections and Botanical Gardens in San Marino,
CA, which is an heir of the estate of the former owner, Frances Brody. So the megabucks purchase (thanks to the legator) is in a substantial way benefiting the public.
As for my personal take on all this: I’m jealous, not disdainful, of someone who has the resources to indulge a desire for art at any price. (If only I could!) I’m also regretful that museums have been largely priced out of the masterworks market by such buyers.
But I’m also hopeful that the next resting place for Picasso’s sleeping mistress may be a museum, or that her future travels may in some other way redound to the public’s benefit.
That’s not such a farfetched wish.