€54m painting breaks record

AN ARTIST is someone who produces things that people don’t need to have.

Andy Warhol once said that, but not even he imagined that one day people would be paying sums equal to the GNP of a small country for seemingly average art.

The auction record for post-war art was smashed twice in New York this week with almost €54 million being paid for Mark Rothko’s White Centre.

If all art deals with the absurd and aims at the simple, well, maybe it’s unavoidable that simply absurd sums are being paid for paintings.

No matter what way you look at it, right way up, wrong way up, side to side, hanging is probably too good for Mark Rothko’s painting of, well, nothing in particular really.

Nonetheless, while your average Joe or Joan might fail to see €54m worth of genius in shades of “yellow, pink and lavender on rose”, an anonymous phone bidder, did.

White Centre was sold by 91-year-old billionaire Manhattan philanthropist David Rockefeller, who bought the work in 1960 for less than €8,000.

The New York auction described White Centre as “the first fully realised painting in Rothko’s mature style, marking the point he achieved his breakthrough in the use of colour”.

Mr Rockefeller told the New York Times that much of the proceeds from the sale would go towards philanthropic causes.