Thursday, November 5, 2009

Most Expensive Paintings

How Much Would You Pay?





This painting was reportedly sold for $140,000,000 dollars. It is by Jackson Pollock, and is an example of his famous "drip" method. This is the most money a painting has ever sold for at an auction.


When I look at this painting I can think of thousands upon thousands of paintings that are of a higher quality, in my opinion. It just baffles me that a painting like this, and paintings in general can be sold for such unbelievable amounts of money.


It is true that the art collecting world is a rich man's game, and that if you want a painting by a famous artist, you will have to pay...by the millions.






This next painting is by Pablo Picasso, entitled "Garçon à la Pipe". This painting was sold for $104,100,00 in 2004. Even though this price for a Picasso was not out of the question, it was seen as surprising since it was not an example of his famous cubist technique.















Vincent Van Gogh makes the "top 10 most expensive paintings of all time" list 3 times. With this painting, "Portrait of Dr. Gachet", being sold for the most out of his works. Sold for $82,500,000, the purchaser wanted to be creamated with the painting when he died, although the painting was never burned after his death. But I can't blame the guy for trying to take it to his grave after paying that much money for it.




After all of my research I found out that only one painting, out of the top 10 most expensive, was out of the 19th or 20th century, whcih could mean that people value modern art more now...or perhaps only because all of the ancient art is in museums these days.

Our Very Own Architecture


Close to Home

I have been interested in the architecture of the Denver Art Museum ever since I went there for the very first time. I am a big fan of old Renaissance architecture, which is usually very symmetrical and orderly, so this building was quite a shock to me. It was so different than what I was used to seeing that it made me looked at architecture differently.






I really liked how the building seemed to be shooting out in all directions, with no real rhyme or reason to it. It was random. Yet with a real plan to it.




All of the angles and movement of the strcuture made it look completely unique from different viewpoints....inside and out. This picture suggests that some people might fall off the ledge!


The Denver Art Museum really is a one-of-a-kind building, and I am really proud to be able to say that it is located in my home town.

3-D Tattoos

Skin Art
One of my friends recently got a tattoo, so I became interested in some of the extreme extents that tattoo artistry can go. These are a few of the pictures that I thought were very eye-opening. The first picture looks incredibly realistic; it seems like it is actually ripping through the skin. I liked it because it seemlessly was one with the person and didn't look like it was just pasted on them.



This next tattoo also looked very realistic, and I felt as though the spider was just standing on the person's shoulder. I think the artist did a great job of shading to portray a sense of three dimensions around the subject. I also liked the placement of this tattoo. Any other place on the body might have looked akward, but having the spider on his shoulder made it that more believable. I know I did a double-take when I first looked at this.