I happen to like modern art but there are times that the price of such work leaves my head spinning. That was the case with Carl Andre’s stack of 120 firebricks. In 1966, the Tate Museum was criticized for buying the pile of bricks for $3600. That proved a bargain when another version of the pile of brick was sold at a Sotheby’s auction in 2008 for $1.1 Million. Now, an unmade bed by Tracey Emin has sold for $4.25 million.
It turns out Mom was wrong. You can get somewhere by not cleaning your room. “My Bed” is replete with cigarette butts, crumpled sheets and underwear — enough to drive many mothers perfectly insane (though to could easily imagine my grandmother walking into the museum and making the bed instinctively and finding herself on the hook for millions).
Emin’s 1998 work came in at well over the expected price, though that price was only 1 million pounds below the selling price (which is about $4.25 million above the price most people would have put on the piece).
In fairness, I do find the concept of Emin using her bed and such debris from her life as a type of self portrait to be interesting, but $4.25 interesting? Before the auction, Emin told the press that “I feel quite sad, and I feel that it’s like a fragment of time.” I can understand that but it is amazing what millions of dollars will do for solace in the loss of your unmade bed.
In the meantime, I am going to keep this story away from the kids.
99guspuppet
How about this for a start:
A withered tree with leaves of hyper-inflated currency notes such as $1,000,000,000,000 Zimbabe Dollars, having Tulip Bulbs as its fruit, and about to topple onto an effigy of Herbert Hoover.
Love the concept…. I will start on Herbert. Will he be hanging under the tree ?
to Darren Smith …….. Brilliant ! Perhaps you and I can collaborate on creating *piles of tulip bulbs. We could do a grand exhibit in the Nederlands.
*( or glue them to a wall , or put them in the mouths of stuffed animals / humans , make a faux meal course consisting of tulips ….. I await your suggestions )
I do this as a hobby
Swinger???
Mespo, I was like you as a young man. I lived one year in the dorm. Every week we would get new towels, sheets and pillowcases after turning in the old ones on Friday. I would use the towels, but the sheets often went unused, like Clemenza and the boys “going to the mattresses.” It was when I got to ~30 that I started making the bed. My wife didn’t care either way, but I was working 16 hour days. It started off the day positively and @ the end of a long day, a nice made bed. I’m mostly retired, but still make it and appreciate it. My wife doesn’t care.
The only time my bed gets made is if company is coming over that is going to visit the bedroom. Other than that, fugitabutit.
I think Marcel Duchamp’s “Fountain” really captures what has become of these prices for rather questionable art.
Read a summary of this HERE.
The all-time best art fleece resides in the Chicago Art Institute. It is a blank, white canvas.
Surprisingly, they are not auctioning off portraits of Tulip Bulbs.
This falls under the Damien Hirst school of art. And luckily Damien’s stock has beren dropping as well as the price on his ‘art’ work. People will buy this and display it, but they are really just pretending they understand it. It is NOT art and it is NOT understandable. The really smart friends will keep their mouths shut but think, damn did they get taken to the cleaners!
There is a huge painting (and I use the term painting loosely) in the Malibu Museum of Art. It is all-white. The title is ….. wait for it…. SNOW. The museum paid over a million dollars for it.
Meanwhile, “crumbling schools….”
Annie ~
That thought immediately popped into my head also.
The emperor has no clothes.
nick:
I hate making beds. I once slept an entire semester atop my comforter as my own advocacy of sheer laziness. I think it was a semester. It was the 70s and things are hazy.
Everything may be beautiful but everything is not valuable:
I always make our bed. Starts off the morning in a positive manner.
Often the adage “art is in the eye of the beholder” is really, really, really confirmed.
A fool and his money are soon parted.
My unmade bed is a bargain at only $500,000…without cigarette butts. Non-smoker discount.
In poker we call it someone has more chips than brains
If that’s really what her bed and environs look like, she appears to be a rather slovenly housekeeper…Maybe with all that money she’ll be able to hire a maid to make up the bed for her from now own… No, wait!!! – then she wouldn’t be able to do another “modern art installation” entitled “My Kitchen.”