[INTERESTS] Infographic: The Ten Most Expensive Pieces of Art Ever Sold

Infographic: The Ten Most Expensive Pieces of Art Ever Sold
By Cliff Kuang

Last week, a mysterious rich man paid $104.3 million [1] for a six-foot tall sculpture by Alberto Giacometti, making it the most expensive piece of art ever sold. Following that news, GOOD and graphic-design firm Karlssonwilker [2] created an infographic of the ten most expensive pieces of art of all time. (Full-size here [3].) (The title, Not-So-Starving Artists, is deceiving because it's hard to starve if you're all dead. The real lucre goes to Christie's and Sotheby's, the two major auction houses.)

Obviously, the graph is a schematic, but here's the actual works, if you're curious to learn more:

1.Walking Man I by Alberto Giacommeti--$104.3 million


2.Boy with a Pipe by Pablo Picasso--$104.1 million

3.Dora Maar with Cat by Pablo Picasso--$95.2 million

4.Adele Bloch Bauer II by Gustav Klimt--$88 million

5.Triptych, 1976 by Francis Bacon--$86.3 million

6.Portrait du Dr Gachet by Vincent van Gogh--$82.5 million

7.Water Lily Pond by Claude Monet--$80.4 million

8.Le Moulin de la Galette by Pierre-Auguste Renoir--$78.1 million

9.Massacre of the Innocents by Peter Paul Rubens--$75.9 million

10.White Center (Yellow, Pink, and Lavender on Rose) by Mark Rothko--$72.8 million


A couple notes about the list--If you adjusted for inflation, Portrait du Dr Gachet by Van Gogh would be the most expensive, at over $134 million in today's dollars. Meanwhile, the most meteoric appreciate would have to go to Francis Bacon, who died in 1992 and whose Triptych was painted in 1976--at the peak of his career. Meanwhile, what's always boggled our minds is that these prices don't even reflect what might be the most valuable piece of art in existence--Part of the reason these pieces command so much money is that there's very few important works by major artists that aren't owned by museums. If New York's Museum of Modern Art or Paris Louvre sold even one of their most prized paintings---such as Starry Night by Vincent van Gogh or Leonardo's Mona Lisa--who knows what price they'd command.

http://www.fastcompany.com/1547403/infographic-ten-most-expensive-pieces-of-art