Art and Money: Visualizing the Price of Art in Terms of Cash

Art and Money

Money makes the world go round. In every field money helps to fund research, obtain resources, and of course pay people for all their hard work. When it comes to the sale of art money is also a hot topic issue. In 2017 Salvator Mundi by Leonardo da Vinci (c. 1500) became the most expensive painting ever sold. It sold for a cool $450.3 million. It can be hard to visualize the insane amounts of money spent on works of art-so we are going to place the equivalent of cash next to each work of art. Also, just for fun we’ve attached some interesting visualizations of incredibly large amounts of cash as well. (All the cash shown is in $100 bills). Thanks for taking the time to bask in the glory of the Humanities!

#1 Salvator Mundi

Salvator Mundi sold in 2018 for $450.3 million at Christie’s auction house in New York City on November 15, 2017. The current owner of this work is Abu Dhabi Department of Culture & Tourism.

#2 Interchange

Coming in at a close second is Interchange (Interchanged) by the abstract expressionist painter Willem de Kooning. The work was painted in 1955 and fetched a whopping $310 Million in a private sale in September 2015. The current owner of this work is Kenneth C. Griffin.

#3 The Card Players

In third place is one in a series of paintings by Paul Cézanne. The series is known as The Card Players. It was sold in a private sale in 2011 for $272 million to the State of Qatar.

#4 Nafea Faa Ipoipo

In fourth place is Paul Gauguin‘s work Nafea Faa Ipoipo painted in 1892. It was sold in a private sale in 2014 for $217 million to the State of Qatar.

#5 Number 17A

Number 5 is Number 17A is a painting by Jackson Pollock the famous abstract expressionist. It was painted in 1948. This work was sold in a private sale to Kenneth C. Griffin for $207 million.

Top Five combined sale price of $1.45 Billion (usd)

The top 5 highest most expensive paintings total to be roughly $1.45 billion (who says the arts cant pay the bills! too bad the artist never lived to see that kind of payday!) So now let’s take a look at how much cash that would be.

$10 million

Here is $10 million of neatly stacked one hundred dollar bills. You’d need seven of these to pay for the 99th most expensive painting sold (Jeanne (Spring), painted by Édouard Manet in 1881 that was sold for $67.4 million to the Getty Museum in 2014)

$100 Million

How about $100 million? It would fit mostly on one pallet and stand under 2 meters in height. This could get you a Van Gogh and leave you a few million in change. Van Gogh’s A Wheatfield with Cypresses sold in 1993 for $96.7 million (adjusted from $57 million at time of sale) in a private sale to Walter H. Annenberg.

$207 Million

This cash was seized in Mexico and is valued at $207 million. Just add another room and you still couldn’t afford the Da Vinci painting. But you could afford Gustav Klimt‘s 1904-07 work Wasserschlangen II which sold for $193 million in 2013 in a private sale to Dmitry Rybolovlev. (money source).

$1 Billion

Let’s move up to $1 billion (in $100 bills). with this you could buy the 2-5 of the most expensive paintings. listed above.

$1.5 Billion

If you’ve got Oprah money why not buy the whole lot? Here’s $1.5 Billion. Enough to cover all of the top 5 most expensive works shown above.

$1 Trillion

Amazon was recently valued at over a $1 Trillion (Apple was the first to do so). Although it might not be a work of art (to the fine art folks) I’m sure some folks who work in the art of moneymaking would consider it to be so. So what does $1 trillion in $100 bills look like? Take a gander for yourself…

$3.818 Trillion

And one more for all the marbles. In 2011 the Us government’s annual budget was $3.818 Trillion. Here’s what that would look like. Now that could buy a whole lot of art!

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**All money source pictures can be found here , here, and here