Kind of makes you question whether the “value” of the painting had anything to do with how it looked.īut if all these events seem strange to you, they’re nothing compared to this year’s weirdest art craze: Nonfungible Tokens (NFTs). But based on the opinion of a consultant, a work of art thought to be worth $1,800 suddenly increased in value by $60 million. Nothing about the appearance of the painting had changed. The Spanish government intervened and blocked the sale. The estimated value of that “boom” increased the value of the painting from $1,800 to $60 million. How could he tell? “When I saw it, it went ‘boom,’” the London-based art consultant Marco Voena told the New York Times. Then someone claimed the painting might be a lost masterpiece by the great Italian painter Caravaggio. This spring, a small painting by a minor artist was listed for sale in Spain with an estimated value of $1,800. These types of stories aren’t limited to the U.S. The fakes fooled all the wealthy collectors, dealers and experts who had examined them, but after the fraud was exposed the painter fled to China to escape criminal charges. Trailer for the documentary Made You Look: A True Story about Fake Art (Uploaded to YouTube by What’s on Netflix) They claimed the art was by the world’s greatest abstract painters, such as Jackson Pollock and Mark Rothko, but in reality it had been painted by a Chinese immigrant, Pei-Shen Qian, who couldn’t make a living selling his paintings on the sidewalks in New York. But it turned out that the new buyer didn’t even mind.Ī few years earlier one of the most preeminent Manhattan art galleries admitted to selling over 60 fake paintings for $80 million. Footage from the auction showed the panicking Sotheby’s employees removing the picture from the wall and hustling it out of sight. As soon as the sale was completed, the picture dropped inside its frame into a secret shredder, which the artist had hidden there. Recently a painting by the artist Banksy was auctioned by Sotheby’s in London for $1.4 million. Garau has now been threatened with a lawsuit by another sculptor, Tom Miller, who claims that he invented invisible sculpture five years earlier! In June, an artist named Salvatore Garau sold an invisible sculpture - literally, a sculpture made of nothing but thin air - for over $18,300. The mystery of the Leonardo painting is only one of a series of highly peculiar events in today’s overheated art market. Some reported that the painting was secretly stashed away in Geneva, while others claimed it had been spotted on the yacht of a Saudi prince, cruising on the Red Sea. Some newspapers reported that the sale was part of an international criminal money laundering ring. Then the painting disappeared, failing to show up for its scheduled exhibitions. No one would admit to being the new owner. No one could figure out who spent all that money for the painting. That particular painting is not worth what was paid for it. He commented in The Observer newspaper, “why anyone would pay that kind of money for a piece that had questions about it is very strange. What made Syson decide that the painting was actually by Leonardo? Syson explained that when he looked at the painting it “seemed to hover somewhere between our realm and something spiritual.” That “hovering” didn’t persuade former FBI art crime specialist, Robert Wittman. Other experts doubted its authenticity, but the approval of the National Gallery increased the painting’s value by $450 million. How did the picture increase in value so quickly? British art historian Luke Syson decided that it was probably painted by Leonardo da Vinci, and he included it in an exhibition in London’s National Gallery in 2011. Twelve years later, the painting was resold for over $450 million. He sold it at a local auction house for $1,175 in 2005. He tried hanging it in the stairwell of his home for a while, but eventually decided to get rid of it. Basil “Tookie” Hendry, a construction contractor in Louisiana, didn’t like the small painting he inherited.
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