Garçon à la pipe
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
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| Garçon à la pipe |
| Pablo Picasso, 1905 |
| Oil on canvas |
| 100 × 81.3 cm, 39.4 × 32.0 inches |
| Private collection |
Garçon à la Pipe (Boy with a Pipe) is a painting by Pablo Picasso, painted in 1905, during the 24-year-old artist's Rose Period, soon after he settled in the Montmartre section of Paris, France. The oil on canvas painting depicts a Parisian boy holding a pipe in his left hand.
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[edit] Ownership history
Owned by the estate of John Hay Whitney, on May 5, 2004 it sold for $US104.1 million at an auction in Sotheby's in New York City, after having been given a pre-sale estimate of $70 million by the auction house. It is currently the most expensive piece of artwork ever sold at auction.
Many art critics have stated that the painting's high sale price has much more to do with the artist's name than with the merit or historical importance of the painting. The Washington Post's article[1] on the sale contained the following characterisation of the reaction:
| “ | Picasso expert Pepe Karmel, reached in New York the morning after the sale, was waxing wroth about the whole affair. "I'm stunned," he said, "that a pleasant, minor painting could command a price appropriate to a real masterwork by Picasso. This just shows how much the marketplace is divorced from the true values of art." | ” |
[edit] See also
[edit] References
- ^ A Record Picasso and the Hype Price of Status Objects, Blake Gopnik, The Washington Post, May 7, 2004
