According to Bloomberg, Liu often pays for his expensive art purchases with his American Express credit cards, earning millions of credit point.
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The painting was completed nearly a century ago, as Modigliani deteriorated from alcoholism; in 1920, at the age of 35, he died from tubercular meningitis. The night’s sale of 34 lots brought $491.4 million. Just before the sale, Christie’s announced that a third party had stepped forward to share the risk – as well as any proceeds above the guaranteed price. It was the second highest price ever achieved at auction for a work of art. A crowd gathered outside the gallery’s window and outraged police ordered the exhibition to shut down immediately.
Another highlight of the sale was a work by Paul Gauguin, Therese, which fetched US$30.97 million, setting a new world auction record for a sculpture by the French artist.
The final price was $170,405,000 including Christie’s’ commission of just over 12 percent.
When I first became aware of the breast-blurring, my initial instinct was to let out a low bellow, like a wounded and hungry animal, then go all She-Hulk and destroy my computer. The artist is known for portraits and nudes in a modern style characterized by elongation of faces and figures. Courbet’s 1862 canvas, “Femme nue couchee”, was estimated at $15 million to $25 million.
Roy Lichtenstein’s “Nurse”, not seen on the market for 20 years, sold for $95,365,000 at the same Monday night auction as “Nu Couche”.
Five bidders drove the price of a nude painting up to a whopping $170,405,000 at Christie’s Auction House in London yesterday. Unlike the nude at Christie’s, Modigliani’s woman at Sotheby’s was fully robed in black, and at $42.8 million, cost four times less. The museum mainly displays Chinese art and cultural artifacts, but Liu and his wife have made two other large buys at auction last year.
Investigators were looking into witnesses’ reports that a man ran from the scene, he said.
“I don’t care about the value, nor do I care about the money I spent buying it in the first place”.
Though the name of the buyer was anonymous at the time of the auction, Bloomberg later revealed that Modigliani’s masterpiece was now the possession of Chinese billionaire Liu Yiqian.
Notable: Created in 1963-1964, the large monochromatic, human-sized, egg-shaped canvas is punctuated and perforated with irregular holes, some craterous in shape, and covered in bright yellow oil paint. “If they continue to attract very major property we may see more sales with this approach”. “How was that his muse?” the New York dealer Henry Zimet asked the Times.
Sotheby’s last week sold US$377 million in its own hybrid evening sale, Masterworks, from the collection of its former chairman A. Alfred Taubman.
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