Juicy Art Bits
Thursday June 30, 2005
As if in response to my previous grumbling, here are some quasi-scandalous news items:
- Wealthy Ex-Mistress: One of Picasso's sold 20 sketches at auction and pocketed nearly $2 million (US). (Genevieve Laporte was a youngster during their two-year affair, and wisely moved on.)
- Suicidal Lover: A rarely-seen Modigliani portrait of Jeanne Hébuterne went for nearly $6 million (US) at auction at Christie's. (A very pregnant Jeanne leaped to her death shortly after Modigliani died of tuberculosis in 1920.)
- Suicidal Lover, Part II: In the same sale, Francis Bacon's Portrait of George Dyer Staring into a Mirror set a new record price for the artist: $8.77 million (US). (Dyer and Bacon were together from 1964 to 1971, at which time Dyer overdosed and died in their Paris hotel room.)
- A Movie Star and a Prostitute: And then there's Charles Saatchi, who is doing something he describes as, " ... turning the site of an off-screen event in a film star's life into a backdrop - thus suggesting the very public nature of their 'private' lives." (He bought a painting of the Los Angeles spot where Hugh Grant was arrested for lewd conduct. It will keep company with his other painting of the spot where Winona Ryder was arrested for shoplifting. I am not making this up.)
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