You Break It, You Buy It…
Steve Wynn, the American casino mogul and briefly proud owner of the world’s most expensive work of art, has decided to keep and restore the Picasso painting that he accidentally damaged shortly after he sold it for a record price.
Mr Wynn had agreed to sell Picasso’s Le Rêve (The Dream) to Steven Cohen, an art collector, for $139 million (£74.7 million). But as he was showing it off in his Las Vegas office this month to guests including the screenwriter Nora Ephron, he struck the 1932 portrait of Picasso’s mistress Marie-Thérèse Walter with his right elbow, leaving a 2in tear.
“There was a terrible noise,” Ms Ephron wrote in her blog. Mr Wynn, who suffers from an eye condition that affects his peripheral vision, exclaimed: “Oh, s***. Look what I’ve done. Thank God it was me.”
Wow…
So now you know one of the reasons I don’t own highly expensive pieces of art: the risk of damage is too worrisome. Of course, the other reason is that my accumulated wealth and discretionary income do not support the purchase of a $139m painting. My budget is more along the lines of Kinkade than Picasso.
Ouch!! I have to settle for bitmaps