Auction Sets Living Artist Record

[Troy]

An oil painting by the German artist Gerhard Richter has sold for £21m ($34m) - an auction record for a work by a living artist.
Abstraktes Bild, painted in 1994 , which was owned by rock star Eric Clapton, has been described as a "masterpiece of calculated chaos".

The artwork, expected to fetch £9-12m, was sold to an anonymous bidder at Sotheby's in London on Friday.

A round of applause broke out as the painting went under the hammer.

Gerhard Richter, 80, who lives in Cologne, is considered by some to be the world's greatest living painter.

I don't get it at all. I have looked at it for some time and I don't see how it could be worth this much. To me it looks like the aftermath of when the council try to clean up grafitti and this is the crap that gets left over after the cleaning solution causes the paint to run. Art is incredibly subjective and this just doesn't do it for me.

Anyone like the look of this painting?

 

[Killz]

Art is all status, I've believed that since day dot. It's like an advertisement/hype game. Art changes hands between artists and megastars of the world and so it increases in value based on it's owner and then based on trivial things such as the length of time since it had been created. I genuinely believe artists are trying to convey something but I think a lot of art consumption is pretention.

As for this, yeah, it's "nice" I guess, I sort of like messy things when it comes to art. But the gulf between nice and 21 mill is extraordinary. If I was a pretentious billionaire sat on more money than I knew what to do with then maybe sure but otherwise, no.

And don't get me started on 'modern art' either..

 

[Rated R Superstar]

Yeah, I honestly believe it only got that much simply because Eric Clapton had it. It does look like a good piece, not something I would have in my house because it looks so angry, but a good piece regardless.

 

[Kiffy Lube]

I think it's a nice piece of art but I don't own things like that. I have much better stuff I'd waste that kind of money on even if I had that kind of money to blow.