Record Sale At Auction
The 1895 pastel-on-board version of the painting, owned by Norwegian businessman Petter Olsen, sold at Sotheby's for a record US$120 million at auction on 2 May 2012. The bidding started at $40 million and lasted for over 12 minutes when Leon Black by phone gave the final offer of US$119,922,500, including the buyer's premium. Sotheby's said the painting was the most colorful and vibrant of the four versions painted by Munch and the only version whose frame was hand-painted by the artist to include his poem, detailing the work's inspiration. After the sale, Sotheby's auctioneer Tobias Meyer said the painting was "worth every penny", adding: "It is one of the great icons of art in the world and whoever bought it should be congratulated."
The previous record for the most expensive work of art sold at auction had been held by Picasso's Nude, Green Leaves and Bust, which went for US$106.5 million at Christie's two years prior on 4 May 2010. When accounting for inflation, the highest price paid for art at an auction is still held by Van Gogh's Portrait of Dr. Gachet, which sold for $82.5 million in 1990, or about $147 million 2012 dollars. There have been reports that The Card Players, by Cézanne, sold privately for $250m in 2011, which can not be verified for the establishment of a record price.
Read more about this topic: The Scream
Famous quotes containing the words record, sale and/or auction:
“As to the thirty-six Senators who placed themselves on record against the principle of a World Court, I am inclined to think that if they ever get to Heaven they will be doing a great deal of apologizing for a very long time—that is if God is against war—and I think He is.”
—Franklin D. Roosevelt (1882–1945)
“People buy their necessities in shops and have to pay dearly for them because they have to assist in paying for what is also on sale there but only rarely finds purchasers: the luxury and amusement goods. So it is that luxury continually imposes a tax on the simple people who have to do without it.”
—Friedrich Nietzsche (1844–1900)
“The white American man makes the white American woman maybe not superfluous but just a little kind of decoration. Not really important to turning around the wheels of the state. Well the black American woman has never been able to feel that way. No black American man at any time in our history in the United States has been able to feel that he didn’t need that black woman right against him, shoulder to shoulder—in that cotton field, on the auction block, in the ghetto, wherever.”
—Maya Angelou (b. 1928)