Courtesy of artsjournal.com, my invaluable host (which you can visit by clicking on the artsjournal.com logo in the upper left-hand corner of this page), this wonderful story from ARTnews Online about the ten works of art currently in private hands that are most coveted by collectors and curators. The piece includes some jaw-dropping numbers:
“We all have our wish lists but we don’t go around talking about them. It gets in the way of our getting the work,” says Miami art collector Donald Rubell. “We hope that when our friends die, their children won’t like their art. Those are our silent wishes.”
Jackson Pollock’s Lucifer, a prime 1947 drip painting owned by the Anderson Collection in San Francisco, is so coveted it could fetch $50 million or more, sources say, were it ever to come on the market. (Don’t hold your breath: entertainment mogul David Geffen, who owns Pollock’s coveted Number 5, 1948, offered the Andersons $50 million for Lucifer in the mid-1990s, according to sources, and was rejected.)
Shipping magnate George Embiricos owns C