This Week, 10 Artworks Sold for $605 Million
Several records were broken at the major auctions in New York City.
During a week in which Donald Trump brought the U.S. deeper into a trade war with China and Wall Street’s behavior flashed increasingly urgent warning signs, Christie’s, Sotheby’s, and Phillips sold nearly $2 billion worth of art in less than five days.
As record after record fell— the most ever paid for a living artist at auction ($91 million for Jeff Koons’ Rabbit), the highest price ever paid at auction for work by Claude Monet, Jonas Wood, Louise Bourgeois, Robert Rauschenberg, and Frank Stella—it was hard not to wonder if the world’s richest know something Wall Street doesn’t, or if they’re simply immune to market fluctuations altogether. (A third theory: market volatility actually benefits the art buying upper-class.)