15 Ridiculous Paintings That Sold For Millions Of Dollars

Worst Paintings Sold For Millions

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Many people would probably agree that the Mona Lisa, painted by High Renaissance master Leonardo da Vinci, is priceless. Putting a price on a masterpiece of this caliber is nearly impossible; however in 1962, the Mona Lisa was insured for $100 million USD, the highest at the time. In today’s money, that would be somewhere around $700 million USD, easily making it the most expensive painting.

Painted by Jasper Johns, it was originally sold anonymously, the name of the buyer being made public after some time the painting spent at Matthew Marks Gallery. The artist belongs to a contemporary current, the painting being finished in 1959, and is currently considered a major influence on the nascent pop art movement. The interesting feature of this piece is the fact that colors are used as words, being painted in different colors than what they actually mean, this attitude being called by some to be “utilitarian”.

“Card players”, another painting that went to Qatar Museums, was sold in 2012, for $ 250 million by the Greek billionaire Georg Embrikos. Paul Cezanne painted this painting in the period from and this is the third picture in the series. A French artist has created a series of 5 paintings in which men play poker. Among the listed top 89, only 3 are paintings by non-Western artists. They are traditional Chinese paintings by Qi Baishi and Wang Meng. In particular, Qi Baishi’s Twelve Landscape Screens was sold for $140.8m in 2017. Though just missing the list, notably, the Chinese-French painter Zao Wouki’s oil painting Juin-Octobre 1985 was sold for $65m in 2018.

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But trying to be devoid any emotion with this little piece, we feel like modern art has taken a dump. What I’m trying to say is if you saw this at a garage sale, you’d first laugh at it, and then get pissed off. So in conclusion, keep drawing shitty things and then one day someone will pay you millions of dollars for your dumb ass paintings. And make one of the most expensive paintings of all time, a cool $140 million. Oops, did I accidentally put a red box in the middle of this blog?

  • The interesting feature of this piece is the fact that colors are used as words, being painted in different colors than what they actually mean, this attitude being called by some to be “utilitarian”.
  • In 2010, a man broke into the Musee d’Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris, and managed to steal five Picasso paintings that were on display there, including the piece known as “The pigeon with green peas”.
  • It’s a red square, something you could do during your lunch break.
  • His so-called Everdays are often set on alien worlds—or possibly on an alien-looking Earth, where commercialism and people have run amuck.
  • The painting became rather controversial in the 1970s, because it was refused for exhibit at the Tehran Museum of Contemporary Art.

Called “Rhein II” and taken by Andreas Gursky, the picture above is the world’s most expensive photograph. Sold in 2011 at Christie’s for $4.3 million, Rhein II broke the previous record for the price of a photograph, which was set by Cindy Sherman’s “Untitled #96? The auction doesn’t explain why such a seemingly simple, somewhat boring picture would be sold for such a high price, but hey, art is art. The cubes initially sold for $10, but Gignac raised the price to $25 when people started perceiving the containers as souvenirs from New York.

To keep my answer as simple as possible — because debates about what makes art valuable are rarely much fun — I tend to say that the bigger the dimensions of the piece, the higher price tag I give it. The Empire State Building is one of New York City’s most iconic landmarks, and as of 1986, it has been designated as a National Historical landmark. This building was completed in 1931, and possesses 102 floors, as well as a distinct Art Deco style; and as a whole, it is worth roughly 2 billion dollars. The news outlet made the point they wanted, and being the nice people that they were, returned the building the following day. One such masterpiece, is the painting called “Madonna of the Yarnwinder” which prior to its theft in 2003, was located in Scotland in Drumlanrig Castle.

Most Expensive Painting Ever Sold (200

So, the word “red” is painted in orange, white in red, orange in white and so on. In the following article, we’d like to point out the 10 most expensive paintings ever to be purchased. They range from extremely well known artists to more obscure ones, and from privately sold ones to others that were purchased from famous auctions. In 2015, Roy Lichtenstein’s Nurse became the most expensive work by the artist ever sold at auction.

worst paintings sold for millions

For many years, the painting was considered lost, and when it was finally found, its authenticity was not recognized for years. In 2017, the auction house “Christis “still called” the Savior of the world ” the last work of da Vinci. The Prince of Saudi Arabia purchased the masterpiece for $ 450 million, making it the most expensive most expensive painting in the world. It’s impossible to know how many masterpieces have gone missing over the course of time, whether they were stolen, incorrectly thought destroyed or simply lost. The eight works on this list, all estimated to be worth millions of dollars, popped up in some surprising places—garages, attics and thrift shops—and some were purchased for only a few dollars. One or both of the paintings may thus occur higher on this list. The paintings transferred to the dealers include a late Monet entitled Corona from around 1920; Renoir’s Reclining Nude of 1902; Kandinsky’s Autumn Landscape, Murnau from 1908, and Picasso’s Striped Bodice from September 1943.

Top 10 Most Valuable Paintings Ever Sold

Within weeks after a private viewing in Vienna in September 2012, Rybolovlev agreed to pay $183.8 million via his dealer Bouvier. At the same time, Bouvier was negotiating and eventually succeeded to buy the painting for $112 million from Ursula Ucicky, widow of Gustav Ucicky .

With influences from Greek mythology, mainly the story of Prometheus, it can also be considered an interpretation of The Orestia, Aeschylus’ trilogy. The painting was displayed in Russia in 2010, in Moscow, at the CCC Gallery. Another notable sale from the Rockefeller Collection at Christie’s in 2015, Henri Matisse’s Odalisque couchée aux magnolias set an auction record for the artist. Including buyer’s premium, it surpassed its pre-sale estimate of $70 million. The nude showcases his experimentation with color and dimension.

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Painted in 1951 by Russian-American painter Mark Rothko, the abstract work No 6. privately sold in 2014 for $186 million USD, setting a record high for the artist while simultaneously making it one of the most expensive paintings ever. Known for his canvases featuring vibrant colored rectangular shapes, Rothko’s painting was sold to Russian billionaire Dmitry Rybolovlev, a sale facilitated by art dealer Yves Bouvier. Believing he was misled about the price of the artwork, Rybolovlev is now in a legal dispute with Bouvier. The year was 1891, and it was the first time Paul Gauguin traveled to Tahiti, starting his love affair with the country and its women. An inspiration to many modern artists, Gauguin painted the post-impressionist Nafea Faa Ipoipo (When Will You Marry?) in 1892.

Modern art is known for having many hidden masks inside it which is hard to reveal but has a great significant meaning to understand. Your support allows me to continue pursuing my passion in life and I cannot say enough how much my family appreciates it. As an experienced writer and editor, I can promise I’ll always strive to leave you with clean, concise work that is easy to read and improves your day and hopefully those close to you that you share the list with. Please feel encouraged to comment on my work on Facebook, including potential ideas for what you’d like to see. The painting may have been for Paul, but it currently resides at Seiji Togo Yasuda Memorial Museum of Modern Art in Tokyo. If you are going to spend $39.7 million on a painting, you better make sure you’re getting an original.

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But, in 2012, Qatar decided to purchase the piece for an astonishing $250 million. The painting had previously been sold for $17 million in 1988, but the value clearly only increased with time.

Alberto Giacometti’s human-scale bronze sculpture of a pointing man sold for $141.3 million. In just 11 minutes, bidding for a Picasso surged from $100 million to $160 million before settling at $179.4 million, the most expensive work ever purchased at auction. Led by Beeple, the NFT market has now exceeded more than $400 million in transactions during 2021, several fold more than occured during all of last year. Much of that has flowed to NBA TopShot, a trading-cards site using NFT technology. And in another clear sign of the mounting mania, the second-most expensive NFT ever sold traded hands less than 24 hours ago, a CryptoPunk, one of the most popular NFT collectibles.

Depicting two women sitting among a colorful landscape of gold, green and blue, the artwork sold in 2015 in a private sale for approximately $300 million USD, tying it with Interchange as the most expensive work ever sold. While the purchaser is not confirmed, many in the art world believe that is now in the possession of the Qatar royal family. The painting was sold at private auction in 2015, the price of the painting is 200 million dollars. Art critic Robert Coates called Pollock’s work “abstract expressionism”.

The 20 Most Expensive Paintings In The World

All of this lends reassurance to the buyer of the artwork that it is authentic. Wherever there is public attention, be it in the form of newspaper articles or books, or scholarly articles or radio interviews, so the prestige of the artist tends to increase. For new, upcoming artists, their inclusion in the collection of a major museum will signal that their work has been endorsed by the wider art world. Factors like these and many others can lead an artist to develop a more favourable reception among the public and the art buying market. In short, there’s hardly ever an exact correlation between time spent on a painting and its price tag.

But then this thing also bothers me how these ugly looking paintings have been sold for a million dollars and who has purchased them? Have a look at these 5 paintings that were not only sold for an astonishing amount of money but also, many of them are pieces of art that you are going to swear you’d be able to have created at home.

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Some art pieces are really a mysterious thing to understand and sometimes we don’t understand what can be the artist message by using such a “simple idea” to create a painting that then is sold by millions. Here are some paintings sold for millions and you actually don’t understand why.

worst paintings sold for millions

The painting is supposed to reinforce a metaphysical concept of the painting that is evident through its reconstruction. The painting was created by Paul Cézanne and was one of five of his works. The other four were residing in established art institutions at the time of Qatar buying this painting. When you try to consider who on earth would spend $250 millionon this painting, your mind probably doesn’t jump to a country.

The 1964 composition was painted on a four-foot square canvas and had previously garnered $1.7 million at Sotheby’s in 1995. The Pop artist was known for his bold paintings with comic book-style themes. At the age of 25, Pablo Picasso painted this piece of a Parisian boy.

He died in 1988 at the age of 27, a few years after creating this painting. At the time of the Sotheby’s auction in 2017, the painting was expected to fetch $60 million. Instead, it was acquired for over $110 million — nearly double the initial estimate — setting the record for the highest price ever paid for an American artist at auction. The sale was at the time a record auction price however, it has since been surpassed by some of the other paintings on the list. “5,000 Days” was the first completely digital NFT sold by Christie’s, and the first-time the centuries-old auction house agreed to accept payment in Ethereum, a popular cryptocurrency. Unsurprisingly given the rapacious sale, Christie’s quickly said it expects to hold more digital art sales in the future.

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