Femme Assise Dans un Fauteuil by Picasso. Estate of Pablo Picasso/Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York
Odds are 3-to-1 that when Edvard Munch’s “Scream” comes up for sale at Sotheby’s on Wednesday night, it will fetch $150 million to $200 million. And there’s a 3-to-2 chance that pastel will become the most expensive artwork ever sold at auction, breaking the current record of $106.5 million set two years ago at Christie’s for Picasso’s “Nude, Green Leaves and Bust.” As for who will buy “The Scream,” bets are 5-to-2 that it will be a Russian, 3-to-1 an Asian or European and 4-to-1 an American. That’s the thinking, anyway, from Ladbrokes, the British bookmaking chain, which has been analyzing the fate of what Sotheby’s is billing as the most recognizable image in art history after the “Mona Lisa.”
Art isn’t generally Ladbrokes’s métier, but laying odds on just how much this work will get has even captured the attention of gamblers used to putting their money on horse races or boxing. Jessica Bridge, a spokeswoman for the company, said that the bookmakers “apply the same math and algorithms we do for football or hockey.”
While it is certain to be the big draw, “The Scream” is not the only highly recognizable work up for sale at Sotheby’s, Christie’s and Phillips de Pury over the next two weeks. Other highlights include a classic red abstract Rothko canvas; a Warhol image of Elvis Presley; a Picasso portrait of Dora Maar, the artist who was his lover and muse; and a watercolor of one of Cézanne’s famed Card Players.
You can read the full article via NY Times here.
You Might Also Like...
Some 200 paintings and other works acquired by the Steins go on display Wednesday at the sumptuous Grand Palais, where Matisse's "Femme Au Chapeau" (Woman with a Hat) scandalized visitors ...
READ MORE
The theme of an earthly paradise, or Arcadia, has been popular in theater, poetry, music, and art since antiquity. In France during the early 1900s, this idea of a mystical ...
READ MORE
Houston police are searching for a man now charged with vandalizing a 1929 Pablo Picasso painting in an act that was caught on video.
Uriel Landeros of Houston was charged Friday ...
READ MORE
Police in Texas are searching for a man who vandalized an original Picasso painting at a Houston art museum.
The man was seen on a museum surveillance camera spray-painting Pablo Picasso’s ...
READ MORE
Paul Cézanne created nearly 200 paintings that explored themes of the human figure in landscape, but it’s his paintings of bathers that have had the most lasting and profound impact. ...
READ MORE
The Walters Art Museum announces today the planned gift by Robert E. Meyerhoff of 21 works of art depicting flowers assembled by his late wife, Jane B. Meyerhoff. This collection ...
READ MORE
For nearly six decades a Cézanne watercolor depicting Paulin Paulet, a gardener on the artist’s family estate near Aix-en-Provence, was familiar to scholars only as a black-and-white photograph. No one ...
READ MORE
The Public Catalogue Foundation (PCF), in partnership with the BBC, today announced that all oil paintings in National Museums Liverpool have been added to the Your Paintings website for the ...
READ MORE
Over 200 Paintings And Other Works From The
Gauguin, Cézanne, Matisse: Visions of Arcadia at Philadelphia
Houston Man Charged With Vandalizing 1929 Picasso Painting
Vandalism of Picasso Painting Caught on Cell Phone
Paul Cézanne’s The Bathers
The Walters Art Museum Announces Gift From Robert
A Cézanne Resurfaces, Shedding Light on a Series
3,000 Oil Paintings From National Museums Liverpool Join
