Originally published at: https://boingboing.net/2019/05/14/monet-money-landscape-paintin.html
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Monet? Mo’ like Lessnet!
[My work here is done.]
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My kid could paint this.
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The funny thing is approximately zero late 19th century children’s paintings look anything like this.
I am not gaga over the Impressionists by any stretch of the imagination, but Claude Monet’s work was seismic in its influence on subsequent visual art, and I am always in awe when I see his paintings in person. (The books do not do the water lilies justice… the scale!)
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The question is not whether the painting is worth it, but is that $110.7mil “clean” money, or is this purchase yet another way of someone laundering some rather nasty money?
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I’m calling b.s., too. One advantage of high bids is that other works the collector owns by the same artist will increase in value because of the successful sale. Not to mention it’s a great tax dodge, and the painting will probably wind up in a storage facility in the Netherlands.
Then there’s the game of bragging rights that the ultra-wealthy engage in…
I wonder if the rich taste better if you eat them with Hollandaise sauce?
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Yeah art in person brings out so much more. My wife and I own a couple originals from local artists in the Minneapolis area. The texture, detail, and depth of the original gives you so much more than a print does. The scale of truly large paintings is worth experiencing too. I remember my first encounter with Chuck Close’s big self portrait (67-68) and yellow raincoat portrait. They stood huge in the gallery and were amazing to take in in person.
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These stories always make me glad (for once) that I live in the digital age, so the super-rich get to play their silly games one-upping each other on art prices (and probably laundering some money in the process) while I can still do what the art is actually about: watch the pretty picture.
*t’s a pity, though, the super rich never play this game with artists which are still alive, so the money would actually be useful instead of just circling around in the clique of art buyers.
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If a collector is buying a work sold by another collector, the artist won’t get any of the money unless the sale takes place in a jurisdiction with droit de suite legislation.California used to have such a law, but it was struck down as unconstitutional in 2012
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https://www.guinnessworldrecords.com/world-records/most-expensive-living-artist-at-private-sale
Hmm, not one-boxing. It’s a painting by Jasper Johns, Flag (1958) sold for $110 million in 2010.
So, they do occasionally. Granted you don’t tend to get as much for paintings by a living artist since there isn’t the scarcity factor. After all, they might pop out another 1000 paintings, Monet isn’t going to.
Plus not everyone agrees that Hockney is a brilliant artist whereas pretty much everyone (in art) agrees that Monet was, if only because he’s safely dead and no longer pissing people off.
But as GagHalfunt says, the artist tends not to get anywhere like that sort of money.
They do get some benefit since if their paintings are known to sell for a fortune, they can flog as yet unpainted or not yet sold paintings for a much higher figure.
Doesn’t tend to help as much as it might since you normally have to work an entire career to get the sort of recognition that gets you those massive prices so you’ve probably done most of your creative work by that point already.
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You’re right of course. The second part of my post was thrown in tongue-in cheek, while the first part was the point I was trying to make 
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These days I always assume any purchase like this is drug money; just like how, back during the Gilded Age, I’d have assumed a purchase like this was Oil Money or Steel Money (real Monopoly Money).
@knoxblox “I wonder if the rich taste better if you eat them with Hollandaise sauce?”
@mocon “Show me the Monet!”
@Lanthade I agree about scale; Rothko really doesn’t work on a postcard.
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Apparently the nice thing about these impressionist paintings is “They’re so evocative, so romantic and so easy to live with”
In other words, they go well with almost any interior decor. That’s important.
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I was stunned when I saw the waterlilies at the National Gallery in London decades ago; they are ENORMOUS!
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I remember seeing a Picasso. I dislike Cubism, but the genius in the work was clear when seen in person.
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I felt the same when I saw a Pollock. Still not a huge fan but much more engaging in person.
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It really is puzzling how one person can put some marks on a page or a canvas, and they are just marks on a substrate, but someone else, Rembrandt/Picasso/Pollock can make similar marks, and the genius is recognizable. Not just talent, but genius.
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Damn it, there really is a Simpson’s clip for everything.
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I saw a Picasso exhibition some years ago, and there were a number of paintings and sketches and whatnot there that I looked and went “Eh”. And then, just as I started to wonder if Picasso was overrated, there would be some work of his that made me stop in my tracks and just stare in awe.
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