This as just reminded me of another news from 2014.
Stolen paintings hung on Italian factory worker's wall for almost 40 years
https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2014/apr/02/stolen-...
Leonardo Da Vinci Painting Sells for $450.3M, Shattering Auction Records
141–150 of 152 posts
Re: Leonardo Da Vinci Painting Sells for $450.3M, Shattering Auction Records
#142For anyone paying attention, the seller of the painting is Dmitry Rybolovlev. How did Rybolovlev amass so much money? Through pollution. His company Uralkali is listed as one of the top polluters in Russia. This is how externalities work: He keeps the profits, you (literally) eat the losses. Perhaps this detail is the biggest story here.
Even for a Russian oligarch, context is relevant.
It's not his company. He hasn't owned it since 2010. The roots of Uralkali go back 80 years, he owned it for 15 years.
Uralkali is 20% of the global potash market, without their mining a billion people wouldn't have food - at a minimum - given the present 7.6 billion world population. Russia has become a wheat juggernaut [1], to put it mildly; without their food production, the developing world will not develop given the population growth occuring.
That doesn't defend the pollution, it does however bring some very important context to the situation that you entirely neglected.
[1] https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-11-15/europe-is...
Re: Leonardo Da Vinci Painting Sells for $450.3M, Shattering Auction Records
#143Marketing 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…
Well said. It's easy to take all the in-depth information we have available for granted when it comes to tech buying decisions, but once you try to research more traditional products (I was looking for a new fridge the other day) you end up in a sea of worthless search engined optimized and affiliate link-ridden sites disguised as review sites.
User reviews won't work either since most of them have the experience of less than a handful of comparable products, at best, or value completely different attributes - if they aren't fake.
Even communities you'd expect to feature lots of expert knowledge often turn into an echo chamber: Subreddits discussing certain product categories quickly settle for a very limited selection that gets reommended over and over again.
I agree with you. A service that provides guidance and is dependent on the customers' satisfaction, not commissions or other vendor-related incentives, should be very valuable, if not downright necessary.
Re: Leonardo Da Vinci Painting Sells for $450.3M, Shattering Auction Records
#144You could buy three F-22 Raptors with that kind of money. Well, Congress would never approve the sale, but this painting went for triple the per-copy price of the F-22, according to Wikipedia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lockheed_Martin_F-22_Raptor I might be biased, but I know what I would pick if given the option, and it cruises 1,200 mph.
You could also seriously improve the well-being and living conditions of the populous of a small to medium third-world country. But, hey, who am I to judge...?
The buyer of the Da Vinci painting could have also done that. The difference is, instead of me having fantasizing about having $450mm, he/she actually has the money and didn't do it. And you're judging me?
Re: Leonardo Da Vinci Painting Sells for $450.3M, Shattering Auction Records
#145You could buy three F-22 Raptors with that kind of money. Well, Congress would never approve the sale, but this painting went for triple the per-copy price of the F-22, according to Wikipedia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lockheed_Martin_F-22_Raptor I might be biased, but I know what I would pick if given the option, and it cruises 1,200 mph.
Trying to compare a piece of art, history and culture, with a weapon of destruction. Great job.
Well I think having a hangar with three F-22's in it would be pretty dang artistic. We're talking about spending money on frivolous stuff, at least mine can be used for transportation.
Re: Leonardo Da Vinci Painting Sells for $450.3M, Shattering Auction Records
#146What high art, diamonds, and bitcoin have in common? They all would have a much much much lower value if they weren't so good for money laundering.
Re: Leonardo Da Vinci Painting Sells for $450.3M, Shattering Auction Records
#147What 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.
You're implying that a painting has any inherent value (it does not). Just like everything else in the material world, it only has contextual value. Before the 1900s, aluminum was valued more than gold. Today, it is one of the cheapest metals around. Nothing changed but the context in which we were able to extract it. In the case of this painting, the context is what makes it valuable - the last known privately owned…
I would assume an increased availability of aluminum because of better or cheaper production processes makes the price drop?
Re: Leonardo Da Vinci Painting Sells for $450.3M, Shattering Auction Records
#148Earlier quoted context omitted.
>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…
There is centuries of data about how this asset has appreciated. It has a brand that has endured 500 years. Most of the stocks you will invest in, probably won't exist in 50. What could you possibly want to diversify against? It has outlasted Governments, new technologies, and new ideologies. Diversification is a durability strategy and this painting has proven durability across a multitude of change.
Well, unless somebody proves this is a fake. Its authenticity has been questioned.
Re: Leonardo Da Vinci Painting Sells for $450.3M, Shattering Auction Records
#149Is it just me that feels like this is rather a symptom of money being devaluated by the day?
This may sound ridiculous, but it reminds me of a private server of Lineage 2 (RPG) when old admins returned to the game as normal players and had almost infinite currency and completely ruined the server economy by simply buying rare stuff, with limited supply, at any price.
I make this analogy for the housing market, art, soccer players, cryptocurrency, and many other markets where you have limited supply - which is where you actually see how much washed money is starting to show up...
It's scary and no ones talks about this.
Edit: btw the solution for the private server economy disease was to wipe it - real life markets can't be wiped.
Re: Leonardo Da Vinci Painting Sells for $450.3M, Shattering Auction Records
#150Earlier quoted context omitted.
> If it were up to people like me and you, there'd be no art to inspire people in the first place. Art would still exist but some master pieces wouldn't exist. I agree that patronage has allowed artist to produce magnificent art piece but is not the case for all masterpieces.
You only have to casually witness the art world - even just at a local level - to see that speculation by wealthy buyers sustains it, and also, that it costs a lot to produce art as a professional. So maybe without patronage some level of art would exist, but it wouldn't exist as a community without people ultimately paying a lot of money for work. Furry porn producers would continue to make a mint though.
The fact that patronage can be good for the Arts is not in question but if you do a search for great artist that die in poverty and unrecognized during their lifetime you will find plenty of very famous name.
My rapid search brings me El Greco, Claude Monet, Johan Sebastian Bach, Franz Kafka, Johannes Vermeer, Edgar Allan Poe, Herman Melville, Vincent Van Gogh from http://www.toptenz.net/top-10-now-famous-artists-died-ignomi... ; I think it wouldn't be fair to consider them minor artist.
Art co-exist with society for more that 17,000 years if you consider Lascaux. It doesn't make sense to reduce Art to profitable or bankable Art.
To produce Art can be expensive and can be cheap, without money you will not produce beautiful marble statue or Faberge eggs but Art doesn't do be expensive.