Bacon sells for £23million

Abaddon

Deity
Joined
Apr 20, 2002
Messages
31,182
Location
NES/FG/SF Activity:Arguing the toss
Francis Bacon painting of Lucian Freud sells for £23m
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/entertainment-arts-12426999

_51197489_011162867-1.jpg

A painting by Francis Bacon of his friend and fellow artist Lucian Freud has sold at auction for £23m ($37m) - three times the pre-sale estimate.

The triptych, Three Studies For A Portrait Of Lucian Freud, went to an anonymous buyer at Sotheby's in London.

Cheyenne Westphal, from Sotheby's, said it was "an artwork that radiates 'wall-power'".

The sale also saw a Salvador Dali painting reach £13.5m - a new record for any Surrealist work at auction.

The price for Portrait de Paul Eluard smashes the previous record for Dali of £4.1m, which was set in London just 24 hours earlier.

Bidding war

Bacon and Freud met in 1945 and became close companions, painting each other on a number of occasions.

Three Studies For A Portrait Of Lucian Freud has been kept in private since shortly after its completion in 1965.

It was expected to sell for between £7m and £9m, but when it came up for auction on Thursday the price was driven up by more than 10 competing bidders from four continents.

It eventually went for a £23,001,250, including the buyer's premium.

Ms Westphal, chairman of Contemporary Art Europe at Sotheby's, said: "This striking painting has everything a collector in the current market is looking for.

"It is an artwork that radiates 'wall-power' with its brilliant colour and dramatic brushstrokes.

"It narrates one of the most impressive artistic relationships of the 20th Century between two titans of British art and is desirably fresh to the market having remained in the same collection for almost half a century."

Is this the best Bacon in the world? Personally, I just don't get it. I'd prefer to pay someone to make me a perfect bacon buttie every breakfast for the rest of my life..
 
Misleading title made me hungry for dead pig meat.

There is nothing wrong with this title. In fact, it may just be the best title ever in the history of titles. Bacon, anyone?
 
If I had 23 million to drop on something, it certainly wouldn't be a painting. Maybe I'm not refined enough.
 
Damn, now I'm hungry.

Misleading title is misleading.
 
I love Francis Bacon

If you aren't positively unsettled by that image in the OP, you're doing it wrong.
 
Misleading title made me hungry for dead pig meat.

When I saw the title I knew it was about a painting and my best guess wa that it was by an artist called Bacon, and I was not disappointed.
 
You know, I think Ken Watanabe might have liked this painting

or perhaps Joseph Gordon-Levitt
 
Definitely a misleading title! But it got me to view the thread, otherwise I never would have heard of this artist.

Bacon and Freud met in 1945 and became close companions, painting each other on a number of occasions.

This threw me off too, because at that point I was thinking of Sir Francis Bacon, who I hadn't known was an artists and didn't think had achieved immortality.

I wouldn't have spent £23million on a painting either, though. Bacon for £23million a piece is too much for me, I'll take the less than $1 a piece at the supermarket instead.
 
If I had billions of dollars to spend how I please I still wouldn't spend it like that on some crappy paintings. Personally though if I had that much money I don't know what I would spend it on either.
 
For a moment I thought it would be something like a half eaten bacon sandwich from one of those modern artists who says it's a piece of art, then ends up winning the Turner Prize and being sold for millions.
 
France's bacon (or Canadian for that matter) is not the best in the world; that title falls to the US. I'm not impressed with the painting; my $37MM would be spent some nice house on a tropical island.
 
Back
Top Bottom