artdaily - Sotheby's contemporary art sale

I see on artdaily today there was a video clip showing a Sotheby’s contemporary art sale including some photographs by Andreas Gursky - http://www.artdaily.com/
These prices seem obscene. Any thoughts?

These things are better investments than stocks at the moment. Not surprised at all.

It's all about conspicuous consumption. Only a fool would invest that kind of money in something too big to properly archive and that is going
to fade in a few decades on display, if not far sooner. People who can afford that kind of thing generally don't care. It's about keeping up with
the Jones's and obviously being rich enough to waste as much money as your peers. But the just the mounting of these big installations can
be fairly expensive. Basically deluxe wallpaper, which they'll just switch out when they change the color of the sofa. I see the mega-rich do
the same thing with expensive handcrafted furniture. One dude (whom I won't name) ordered up $320,000 worth of teak benches from a friend
of mine, and instead of refreshing the finish the next year, simply had them hauled to the dump and ordered a new set. Another gazoonionaire cut down half the world's supply of Port Oxford cedar to build a house he never even bother to live in. I see this kind of thing
all the time in this part of the world. It's more about ego than anything else. They do it because they can.

Where are you Drew?

i am guessing if it is a color image the artist will replace it if it changes from its original state.
i know i do ...

I think Drew sometimes lives in OZ sometimes Middle earth.
I conclude that he is the most interesting man on earth.


QUOTE=Klainmeister;1515809]Where are you Drew?[/QUOTE]

Gursky is the visual artist whose large photograph Rhein II sold for the world record highest price of USD $4,338,500 in November 2011.

He uses photography for what he does, but his target is the portion of the art market which large museums and very wealthy collectors inhabit.

He "competes" more in the rarified art world of high dollar modern painting and sculpture and multi-media work than in the photographic art world.

Perhaps he should concentrate on large scale Arial photography of world famine and use the sales to try and alleviate the cause and effect? Or am I being simplistically naive?

Go down the list of the five richest men in the world. At least two of them have been clients of mine in the last week, maybe three of them.
It's called geography, and I'm not exaggerating. Once in awhile the gazooniaire shows up in person. I've had one of em - whose time is so valuable it isn't worth the effort to pick up a hundred dollar bill - sit down with me and haggle the price of a door lock for six hours straight!
Build a $300 million dollar yacht - and set it aside because you want a bigger one with a full-size basketball court on the deck, then immediately
forget that one because you found out some Arab sheik owns something more expensive, so you build a billion dollar yacht. ... those are the
minor purchases... And that's just one of those guys. Build an entire village for your hobby and abondon it and build another one, and yet
another one in an exotic tropical location ... A Gursky print would be pocket change to some of these guys.

Keep thirsty my friend

DREW WILEY said:

Go down the list of the five richest men in the world. At least two of them have been clients of mine in the last week, maybe three of them.
It's called geography, and I'm not exaggerating. Once in awhile the gazooniaire shows up in person. I've had one of em - whose time is so valuable it isn't worth the effort to pick up a hundred dollar bill - sit down with me and haggle the price of a door lock for six hours straight!
Build a $300 million dollar yacht - and set it aside because you want a bigger one with a full-size basketball court on the deck, then immediately
forget that one because you found out some Arab sheik owns something more expensive, so you build a billion dollar yacht. ... those are the
minor purchases... And that's just one of those guys. Build an entire village for your hobby and abondon it and build another one, and yet
another one in an exotic tropical location ... A Gursky print would be pocket change to some of these guys.

Click to expand...

Whether the prices "are obscene" depends if a person is buying them, or selling them, I'm sure the sellers like them

DREW WILEY said:

Go down the list of the five richest men in the world. At least two of them have been clients of mine in the last week, maybe three of them.

Click to expand...

Drew, next time you meet these guys, be sure to tell them it's such a pity they can't afford a print by Cliveh.

That's the problem with this part of the world, Bob ... the money is here, and these guys spend staggering sums of it, and have in fact kept
many of my friends employed making everything from their furniture to houses to boats to five million dollar barns for their racehorses - for at least a couple decades ... and now carbon fiber racing yachts .... but they aren't very interested in framed art like the East Coast establishment. They're basically a bunch of rich eccentric techie geeks. Lots of people are intellectually interested in fine photography around here, and pretty savvy about it, but art collecting as such is more a little old ladies' hobby, and the artist involved sure as heck has to have been dead for quite awhile. I'd had lowly millionaire types buy my prints; and even an investment banker flew clear across the country
to buy a print from me once for his wife's birthday present. But the local auction houses just have modest period success selling the work of even canonized photographers of days of yore. ... and it's more likely to be an 8x10 contact print that sits in a little box under someone's
bed. Given the right venue, a big expensive stuff can be sold around here... but my own gig for that kind of thing went away some time back
when the people who owned it as well as their photography director did what we all eventually do - got old and croaked.... and the heirs
had the choice to keep running an expensive gallery or cash in on some of the most valuable real estate in the area, right when techie companies were starting to pay top dollar for downtown highrises. So Plan B.. Plan C.... Plan Dminus....etc.... still plotting.....

The ultra-rich can be pretty strange, Cliveh.... you'd probably get a better price for a print from an average working stiff than from a billionaire.
They sometimes expect things for free, like some Medieval leige lord. I know one who stiffed his loyal house painter of six months of wages,
but then gave his janitor a fifty thousand dollar Christmas bonus.... you just never know...