Bacon’s Study of Freud Sells for $142.4 Million

[bananas]

Source: New York Times



For at least 10 minutes Christie’s overflowing salesroom watched in rapt attention as a 1969 triptych by Francis Bacon sold for $142.4 million, described as the highest price ever paid for an artwork at auction.

Seven bidders vied for the painting – “Three Studies of Lucian Freud” – that depicts Bacon’s friend and rival, Lucian Freud, sitting on a wooden chair against an orange background. It ended up selling for $142,405,000.

The price surpassed the nearly $120 million paid at Sotheby’s in the spring of 2012 for Edvard Munch’s fabled pastel of “The Scream,” even after adjusting for inflation. It also topped the previous high sale for the artist at auction set in at Sotheby’s in 2008, just as the art market was peaking, when Sotheby’s sold a 1976 Bacon triptych to the Russian oligarch Roman Abramovich for $86 million.

The triptych was part of a group of works by Francis Bacon that were sold by an unidentified collector living in Rome to a consortium of investors. One member of that group, whom officials at Christie’s declined to name, is said to be the seller of the triptych.

<snip>

Read more: http://www.nytimes.com/2013/11/13/arts/design/bacons-study-of-freud-sells-for-more-than-142-million.html?_r=0

[spooky3]

1. The .001% are alive and well and buying stuff at auctions.

[rug]

2. I bet Freud's study of bacon would bring 300 million.

[nolabear]

3. But that wouldn't be kosher.

[rug]

5. Well, he wasn't practicing and it would explain a lot.

What does the belly of the swine really represent and why do we seek it so?

The pig trumps the id.

[jmowreader]

14. It represents our need for small, controlled acts of mayhem

When bacon is properly cooked, biting into it produces a crunch like the one you might hear when breaking something. So by eating bacon, you're fulfilling your need to break shit on occasion without actually breaking any.

As to why we seek it so...well, it tastes really good and that should be enough. As Freud is supposed to have said, sometimes a cigar is just a cigar.

[ErikJ]

4. Father of Science?

Wikipedia:
Sir Francis Bacon, 1st Viscount St. Alban,[1][a] Kt., QC (22 January 1561 – 9 April 1626) was an English philosopher, statesman, scientist, jurist, orator and author. He served both as Attorney General and Lord Chancellor of England. After his death, he remained extremely influential through his works, especially as philosophical advocate and practitioner of the scientific method during the scientific revolution.

Bacon has been called the creator of empiricism.[2] His works established and popularized inductive methodologies for scientific inquiry, often called the Baconian method, or simply the scientific method. His demand for a planned procedure of investigating all things natural marked a new turn in the rhetorical and theoretical framework for science, much of which still surrounds conceptions of proper methodology today.

Bacon was knighted in 1603, and created Baron Verulam in 1618 and Viscount St. Alban in 1621; as he died without heirs, both peerages became extinct upon his death. He famously died by contracting pneumonia while studying the effects of freezing on the preservation of meat.

[enlightenment]

7. Wrong Francis.

Understandably confusing, though.

[lastlib]

6. More proof that taxes on the basturds aren't hig enough.....

Jus' sayin'..........

[Nye Bevan]

8. British scientists have established that paintings such as these are ridiculously overpriced.

[Poll_Blind]

9. That's priceless and mostly true. I happen to own the most valuable painting in...

....the world (to me, quite a stroke of luck) and I could look at that thing for hours and hours at a time.

Found it at a garage sale for like $2. Never fell out of love with it. It's an old 1940's B&W photo of a handful of people graduating from a class of some sort and someone came along, I think someone who knew these people, and painted masks over them reflecting their personalities. All except for one, a woman who holds her mask at her side and stares boldly into the camera. I assume she was the artist, but I'll never know.

Fuck it's beautiful.

PB

[Psephos]

10. I would enjoy seeing that...perhaps you could post a pic. n/t

[TexasProgresive]

11. Well, that's not Freudian, that's Jungian

Let's have some bacon-make mine crisp,not soggy or hard.

BTW- I too would like to see your $2.00 masterpiece.

[idwiyo]

12. priceless!

[DFW]

13. If I had been offered the work for $75 million

And if I had been told it was a bargain at that price, I would have told you to stop taking LSD in such high doses.

Now, I know better, although it would still take me a while to scrape up "even" $75 million--a few millenia, I estimate.

On the other hand, though, auction companies do serve a purpose, and sometimes a good one. My friends in Dallas run the third largest auction company in the world (behind Sotheby's and Christie's). They don't sell things like $100 million paintings or $80 million diamonds, but they have handled some wild stuff that has gone for what seems to me like crazy numbers. I even confess to have bought a guitar out of one of their guitar auctions (a limited edition Rickenbaker 12 string electric hollow body guitar). It did not bring a crazy number, but $3000 was still by far the most expensive electric guitar I have ever bought (they have sold rare ones for up to $250,000).

One time I remember some penniless Iraq vet sent them down some old booklet he had found found in an Ohio flea market. It turned out to be an original copy of the Federalist Papers, and it brought $80,000. As this was all the money the poor guy had in the world, the Dallas guys waived the seller's fee, and gave him the whole hammer price. So, while some things are beyond all comprehension, the auction companies can sometimes be the good guys (though I know Sotheby's and Christie's can be a little snooty). The Dallas guys also buy cake for everybody once a month to celebrate all the birthdays their employees have, and order pizza in to all of their locations (4 or 5 in the USA) for all of their 400 employees once a month, too. Dallas definitely has worse places to work for. If I still lived Stateside full time, I'd rent a live-in apartment in their guitar warehouse, so it's a good thing I don't.