The Most Expensive | Acrylic on Canvas | 28" x 22" | $25,000
Art & Football: Big Business
What would you buy with $250 million?
Would you invest it in a painting or maybe in two football players for your team?
In 2011, the Qatar family acquired one of Cezanne’s paintings from his series “The Card Players” for the amount of $250 million. It’s now considered the most expensive painting ever sold!
In 2009, the Spanish football club; Real Madrid, acquired Cristiano Ronaldo for the amount of $117 million. Cristiano was the most expensive player ever transferred in football history at that time. However; after a long negotiation this summer, Real Madrid agreed to pay $132 million for the Welsh player Gareth Bale from the English Premier League team, Tottenham Hotspur; setting a new record for the most expensive football player in history.
For many reasons, I find the business of art & football very similar. Although football can be ephemeral, the way business is done is very similar demonstrating that sometimes value isn’t a link to quality. The value of a painting in an auction is not really the value of the panting. It’s the value between two people bidding against each other because they want THE painting. Similarly, this happens at a football draft between two clubs bidding against each other for a football player that they really want. At the end of the day, it is not about the art or the football player; it’s about making a statement.
In this painting, I tried to combine both scenarios in one. I display the setting from Cezanne’s most expensive painting: ‘The Card Players’, replacing the original faces of the card players, for the most expensive football players in history; Cristiano Ronaldo (on the left) and Gareth Bale (on the right)
What would you buy with $250 million?
Would you invest it in a painting or maybe in two football players for your team?
In 2011, the Qatar family acquired one of Cezanne’s paintings from his series “The Card Players” for the amount of $250 million. It’s now considered the most expensive painting ever sold!
In 2009, the Spanish football club; Real Madrid, acquired Cristiano Ronaldo for the amount of $117 million. Cristiano was the most expensive player ever transferred in football history at that time. However; after a long negotiation this summer, Real Madrid agreed to pay $132 million for the Welsh player Gareth Bale from the English Premier League team, Tottenham Hotspur; setting a new record for the most expensive football player in history.
For many reasons, I find the business of art & football very similar. Although football can be ephemeral, the way business is done is very similar demonstrating that sometimes value isn’t a link to quality. The value of a painting in an auction is not really the value of the panting. It’s the value between two people bidding against each other because they want THE painting. Similarly, this happens at a football draft between two clubs bidding against each other for a football player that they really want. At the end of the day, it is not about the art or the football player; it’s about making a statement.
In this painting, I tried to combine both scenarios in one. I display the setting from Cezanne’s most expensive painting: ‘The Card Players’, replacing the original faces of the card players, for the most expensive football players in history; Cristiano Ronaldo (on the left) and Gareth Bale (on the right)
What's your opinion?
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