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FORBES ASIA MARCH 2020Forbes Life
EYE OF
THE BEHOLDER
A look back at the ten most expensive sales
of artwork over the 2010s.By Susan Adamshe overflow crowd at Christie’s auction
house broke into applause when the gavel fell
on the blockbuster art sale of the decade. On
November 15, 2017, a Saudi prince agreed to
pay $450 million—nearly half a billion dol-
lars—for “Salvator Mundi,” a 500-year-old portrait of Jesus
Christ hyped by Christie’s as “The Last da Vinci.” No matter
that many art scholars believed the work was a product of
Leonardo’s studio rather than the master himself.
Since the sale, the painting seems to have gone missing.
The Louvre Abu Dhabi abruptly canceled a scheduled un-
veiling in September 2018. The latest speculation is that
Saudi Arabia’s ruler, Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman,
whisked away the painting on his private plane and stowed
it on his $500 million yacht, Serene. Is “Salvator Mundi”T
the most expensive artwork ever sold? It’s un-
clear. Although auction houses trade their trea-
sures in public, most transactions remain pri-
vate. Still, record-breaking sales have a way of
coming to light.
After combing through much data, here’s a list
of the highest-priced known art deals in each
year of the last decade. In second place: “Inter-
change,” a 1955 work of abstract expressionism
by Willem de Kooning, which fetched $300 mil-
lion in September 2015. Chicago hedge fund ti-
tan Ken Griffin reportedly paid entertainment
billionaire David Geffen’s foundation a total of
$500 million for two works. The second was
“Number 17A,” a 1948 painting by Jackson Pol-
lock. Griffin loaned both works to the Art Insti-
tute of Chicago, where he is a trustee.
Paul Cézanne’s “The Card Players” brought the
third-highest price of the decade. In 2011 the na-
tion of Qatar paid the estate of the late Greek
shipping magnate George Embiricos $250 mil-
lion, according to Vanity Fair. In the 1890s Cé-
zanne painted a series of four versions of Pro-
vençal farmhands relaxing over a game of cards.
The other three are in museums, including New
York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art. If there’s a
lesson from the decade’s sky-high prices, it’s that
the art market’s ceiling keeps ascending.ISABEL INFANTES/PA IMAGES/GETTY IMAGES1