How to understand a "blank oil painting" valued at 100 million yuan

"Art is becoming more and more blurred. The standard of artistic judgment, the exploration of artistic forms and the market price are adjusted at any time. Therefore, an almost blank painting will become impossible to judge. "

The security of art museums is included in art history.

Sotheby's will auction Robert Lehman's Untitled in new york on 201165438. This is an oil painting of 124cm× 124cm. Thick white paint filled the square canvas, and traces of green and blue were faintly visible on the white surface. The valuation of the auction house is150,000-20 million USD (about 90 million-120,000 RMB).

Almost blank oil paintings are estimated to be expensive, and public opinion is in an uproar. Some netizens ridiculed the weather in Beijing: "I saw a few photos of Beijing smog and instantly understood that Robert Lehman's painting value was 65.438+0.2 billion."

Robert Lehman, who wrote Untitled Sky Price, actually had an inspirational artistic career. Lehman worked as a security guard at MoMA in new york for seven years. During this period, he created a series of untitled works. This white "Untitled" with an estimated value of over 100 million was completed on 196 1. At that time, Robert Lehman, 3 1 year-old, had just finished his security work.

MoMA in new york collected 28 pieces of Lehman's works, and 1993 held a retrospective exhibition of Robert Lehman. The New York Times commented: "Robert Lehman has been focusing on exploring the diversity of white-different kinds and shades of white pigments applied to different white surfaces." "Robert Lehman's art reminds us that for all paintings, the most important thing is pigment, size and color."

The highest auction price of Robert Lehman's work was another white painting eight years ago, which fetched $9.6 million. The film Untitled was shot by collector 1988 in Sotheby's, and the transaction price was $550,000. Sotheby's believes that Lehman's works are undervalued and they are confident of breaking the record again.

Looking back at the auction records of contemporary art, it is precisely abstract expressionist works that dominate. 20 12 On May 8, at Christie's in new york, mark rothko's oil painting "Orange, Red and Yellow" depicting the sunset was sold for 86.88 million US dollars (about 547 million RMB), setting a record for the highest auction price of contemporary art.

Sotheby's10/0 17, there were 9 white works in the Italian art auction held in London, with a total valuation exceeding150,000. The artist Lucio fontana was a pioneer of minimalism. His "Concetto spaziale attese" (space concept, waiting) is a white canvas cut with a knife, which is valued at 654.38+0.5 million-2 million pounds. In this auction, fontana also has two paintings and eleven paintings on two canvases, two with an estimated value of 550,000-750,000 pounds and eleven with an estimated value of 2.2-2.8 million pounds.

Compared with the public's surprise at Untitled, the art circle is much more rational and calm. Bing Xu, an artist, said, "I like abstract paintings in the middle of last century very much. The brush strokes are very textured and beautiful. Looking at it now, the connection between these works and tradition is becoming more and more obvious and more valuable. "

The artist Zhang said: "Once a work of art exceeds a certain price, it will become an event. Auction is a matter for buyers and sellers. If the price is acceptable, that's good. If there is no deal, then there is only a clear price tag. Klimt's paintings once set an auction record, but are they really worth that much money? The value of art has nothing to do with price. "

Zheng Gu, a photography critic, pointed out the complexity behind the auction of artworks: "The competitive atmosphere in the market auction, the number of surviving works of artists and other complex factors determine the price of artworks, but the normal value is another matter. "

Lu Rongzhi, curator and art critic, said: "Robert Lehman's Untitled is a classic work marked by western art history, even if it is a urinal or stool."

"I'm afraid we have to accept it."

It is not uncommon for works that are more "outrageous" than blank canvases to be collected and sold at high prices. 196 1 year, Italian artist Piero manzoni made 90 sealed cans with the label "artist's excrement", claiming that they contained artist's excrement, and priced them by weight according to the gold quotation at that time. The artist emphasized that opening cans would destroy its artistic value. For a long time, I didn't know what was in the jar. In 2007, the tank 18 was auctioned for124,000 euros. Later, manzoni's collaborators revealed in the newspaper that these jars were all filled with gypsum.

The most famous is marcel duchamp. Duchamp is good at making only minor changes to industrialized products, or simply taking them to the exhibition intact. 19 17, Duchamp paid an entrance fee of $6, and anonymously sent the urinal he bought in the store to the exhibition of American independent artists. He turned the ceramic urinal upside down and put it on the table. On the bottom side was written "RMUT", a bathroom design company, and named his work "Spring". This became a landmark event in the history of modern art. At that time, the chairman of the Independent Artists Association complained to Walter Arensberg, a collector who supported Duchamp's exhibition: "If a person sticks horse manure on the canvas, do we have to accept it?" Arensberg replied, "I'm afraid we have to accept it."

In 2006, 500 authoritative British artists, art dealers, art critics, museum and art gallery staff formed a huge jury, and selected the five most influential works of art in the British art world in the 20th century. Duchamp's Fountain won 64% of the judges' votes, surpassing Picasso's Girls in avignon and guernica, ranking first.

"Art is becoming more and more blurred. Contemporary art constantly breaks through existing concepts and rules, and endows some things that can't be judged by existing knowledge. The standard of artistic judgment, the exploration of artistic forms and the market price are adjusted at any time. Therefore, an almost blank painting will become impossible to judge. " Bing Xu told Southern Weekend reporter.

2065438+011654381October 8th, the work "Rhine II" created by artist Andres Guski in 1999 sold for 4.3 million US dollars at Christie's in new york, setting a new record for the auction of photographic works and becoming the most expensive photo in history.

Rhine Ⅱ enlarges the synthetic image to a huge size (238×387cm). The industrial buildings in the photo were removed by the author by digital means, leaving a quiet and melancholy abstract picture-roads, grasslands, gray rivers and gray sky. Guski said that he was worried about the possible contemporary landscape of the Rhine. In the eyes of critics, Guski tried to explain the enigmatic interactive elements in human existence. The public is puzzled: why can a digital photo with "PS" shoot sky-high prices?

Zheng Gu explained: "Investing in contemporary art is different from investing in contemporary photography. Guski's Rhine II was created according to the concept of contemporary art by means of photography in the field of contemporary art, which is very different from traditional shutter photography. " Rhine Ⅱ seems simple, but in fact it is an extremely complicated task. First, you need to shoot along the Rhine River, and then splicing multiple photos on the computer, just like painting, but instead of using a brush, you use a cursor to construct shapes on the computer to correct perspective deformation. This is a bright room operation in the digital age, which can't be completed in a dark room in the film age. "

Zheng Gu called Guski's unique creation "photographic mural". This kind of works are the same as Pollock's abstract Expressionism painting in external form, and tend to converge with contemporary art, for example, both tend to be large-scale. "Even works that are completed in an instant, even works that look almost empty, reflect the artist's life-long creative experience."