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Leonardo Da Vinci Painting Sells for $450.3M, Shattering Auction Records

nytimes.com

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Re: Leonardo Da Vinci Painting Sells for $450.3M, Shattering Auction Records

#51

Post by crazygringo »

ktta wrote: post #26
comboy wrote: post #17

Marketing wins everywhere. Paintings, IT, open source projects, startups, everything. It seems to be responsible for 90%+ value in worryingly many cases. It may be getting worse. I think in the next few years we will see rise of companies that help customers make decent choices that are not solely based on advertising. We have many user review based solutions but it just doesn't work with most things (not even touchi…

“When information is cheap, attention becomes expensive.” ― James Gleick We've come to a point where we're inundated with everyone trying to push their own agenda that it is difficult to both sort the BS out, while also becoming impossible to really appeal/reach out to the people who would appreciate and benefit from what one has to offer. >I think in the next years we will see rise of companies that help customers m…

> Case in point - is the 'undisclosed buyer' really benefiting $450.3 mil worth?

Of course not! They are benefiting from whatever the difference is between $450.3M and what they expect to sell it for in the future, discounted to present value.

Which means they might either expect to make money on it, or at least not lose too much on it.

For some people, buying art aren't isn't too different from buying stocks... except you can't do anything to enjoy equities hanging on your wall.

Re: Leonardo Da Vinci Painting Sells for $450.3M, Shattering Auction Records

#52

Post by toyg »

raldi wrote: post #35
brm wrote: post #10

Fascinating to watch Rybolovlev move money in the open like this with the help of the art market apparatus. What a time to be alive. If you're not keeping track this was almost double the price expected for a da Vinci of questioned provenance sold by the fertilizer magnate who bought Donald Trump's Palm Beach mansion for double the estimated price and then never lived in it.

Your summary was a little too clever for its own good, and I'm having trouble following. But I do find the idea intriguing that rare art presents a unique and seemingly-safe, almost "perfect-crime"-level opportunity for money laundering and bribery. Could you dumb it down a little? Who are you alleging was the ultimate source of this money, and what was their real objective?

Even if the seller is not “in” any scheme, this could be money-laundering in action: buy an asset in cash from a seller that won’t ask too many questions, then resell it for a little bit less - voilà, clean money without losing much of it.

If the seller is actually “in”, the price might actually include some sort of commission for other services of dubious nature. This happens all the time in sports and other “emotional” markets.

Re: Leonardo Da Vinci Painting Sells for $450.3M, Shattering Auction Records

#54

Post by l33tbro »

Funny that Da Vinci remains the most bankable 50 years after he first sky-rocketed the perceived value of art.

Basically, In 1962 the Mona Lisa was loaned to Metropolitan Museum of Art by the Louvre. Huge marketing campaign resulted in over a million of Americans going to see it, ushering in the new era of art as mass spectacle/consumption.

Obviously there were other factors involved - but Robert Hughes made an amazing documentary about this subject called the Mona Lisa Curse, which you can watch online [1].

[1] https://vimeo.com/62973616

Re: Leonardo Da Vinci Painting Sells for $450.3M, Shattering Auction Records

#55

Post by _kyran »

comboy wrote: post #17

Marketing wins everywhere. Paintings, IT, open source projects, startups, everything. It seems to be responsible for 90%+ value in worryingly many cases. It may be getting worse. I think in the next few years we will see rise of companies that help customers make decent choices that are not solely based on advertising. We have many user review based solutions but it just doesn't work with most things (not even touchi…

In Australia we've got https://www.choice.com.au/ that provide in depth product/service comparisons and also advocate a lot on behalf of consumers with the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission.

They're also independant and I trust that they don't have any ulterior motives.

Re: Leonardo Da Vinci Painting Sells for $450.3M, Shattering Auction Records

#56

Post by drcode »

blunte wrote: post #33
comboy wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> What else is there? Storage of value. If you want to diversify, you may want something easy to move/hide for some scenarios. I'm not saying this painting works great for that purpose, just that that's one of the things that may make people want to buy it.

If you have $4bn, unless you're investing in Beanie Babies, you really don't have to struggle to find stable stores of value. At that stratosphere of wealth, an art piece is not about diversification. It's a bit like buying a 200m yacht to surpass all other private yachts. What I find amusing is that even the ultra rich people are statistically NEVER the richest people. There are perhaps 5 people in the world who cou…

I agree- I would estimate 95% or more of really rich people are mostly indistinguishable from an upper middle class person from the outside: Sure, they have maids and maybe fly their own plane or have an expensive classic car but there are these 5% of rich people who somehow have a strange compulsion to advertise their wealth as widely as possible and they're the ones who have the 100 mil yachts and go to these sorts of auctions (the exception maybe being Bill Gates' Da Vinci notebook purchase... likely Bill just thought those were super cool)

Re: Leonardo Da Vinci Painting Sells for $450.3M, Shattering Auction Records

#57

Post by kunimu »

comboy wrote: post #17

Marketing wins everywhere. Paintings, IT, open source projects, startups, everything. It seems to be responsible for 90%+ value in worryingly many cases. It may be getting worse. I think in the next few years we will see rise of companies that help customers make decent choices that are not solely based on advertising. We have many user review based solutions but it just doesn't work with most things (not even touchi…

> Marketing wins everywhere. Paintings, IT, open source projects, startups, everything. It seems to be responsible for 90%+ value in worryingly many cases. It may be getting worse.

Although I agree with your message (and very much so, I'm reading Herbert Marcuse's "One Dimensional Man", which among other things laments the rise of technological rationality, and the failure of capitalism to optimise for needs by creating False needs), your premise is that there is some fairness in the way values are traded. Although the law of value (assuming the classical law of value) holds for freely reproducible commodities, this sense of long run equality of the socially necessary labour input and the amount for which goods are exchanged does not apply to commodities that can't be reproduced. There is no fairness here other than the whims of speculators. The value of the good may range from nil to infinity. This is a normal part of capitalism, and it's nothing new. It happens regardless of marketing.

Re: Leonardo Da Vinci Painting Sells for $450.3M, Shattering Auction Records

#58

Post by username223 »

khazhou wrote: post #44
mrb wrote: post #3

I think the buyer probably had a net worth at least ≥ $4.5 billion (I wouldn't spend more than 10% of my wealth on a single painting.) According to https://www.forbes.com/billionaires/list/ there are only ~380 persons that would qualify. Any one knows who is the buyer?

You wouldn't spend more than 10% of your wealth on a Da Vinci?

Nope. Let's say I'm worth between $10k and $10m, i.e. somewhere in the range of a normal human. I would be crushed by the maintenance costs, even if I kept it in a Swiss vault instead of on my wall where I could actually look at it. The only reason I would spend 10% of my net worth is to immediately sell it to a Russian oligarch for a fat profit.

Re: Leonardo Da Vinci Painting Sells for $450.3M, Shattering Auction Records

#59

Post by sytelus »

What is interesting is that if this painting was attributed to someone unknown, its price would have fallen off the cliff even though there would have been zero material change in goods that buyer would be receiving. This says a lot about our hero worship tendencies. People are going to look very hard to see what is so special about this painting.

Re: Leonardo Da Vinci Painting Sells for $450.3M, Shattering Auction Records

#60

Post by ktta »

crazygringo wrote: post #51
ktta wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

“When information is cheap, attention becomes expensive.” ― James Gleick We've come to a point where we're inundated with everyone trying to push their own agenda that it is difficult to both sort the BS out, while also becoming impossible to really appeal/reach out to the people who would appreciate and benefit from what one has to offer. >I think in the next years we will see rise of companies that help customers m…

> Case in point - is the 'undisclosed buyer' really benefiting $450.3 mil worth? Of course not! They are benefiting from whatever the difference is between $450.3M and what they expect to sell it for in the future, discounted to present value. Which means they might either expect to make money on it, or at least not lose too much on it. For some people, buying art aren't isn't too different from buying stocks... exce…

>For some people, buying art aren't isn't too different from buying stocks

You are making it look like there's no emotion involved. Buying art in my opinion is mostly an emotional one, unless you're lucky and getting a Monet in a yard sale (which you admit by saying 'you can't do anything to enjoy equities hanging on your wall.'). Also, it is definitely not a logical rationale like buying stocks. Atleast not a stable one.

For half a billion dollars there are better ways to invest, and diversity. Without risking a single point of failure like here.

Also, what guarantee is there that this will appreciate? What's stopping from this painting's value from dropping to zero in a decade or two? Other investments do too, but that's where the diversification part comes in. Art definitely has it's place in the future, but a specific piece isn't worth risking half a billion dollars over.

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