Category:
Overpriced Merchandise
The 1964 painting "Hurting the Word Radio #2" by
Ed Ruscha is valued at $53 million.
It's reportedly one of the most expensive works of art owned by Jeff Bezos.
image source: google arts and culture
The value surprised me when I read about it, though it probably shouldn't have because sky-high valuations for works of modern art are by now, as Chuck Shepherd would have said, "no longer weird."
Even so,
as the Center for Art Law notes, Ruscha created hundreds of words on canvas over the decades. How did this one get singled out to be worth so much? Ruscha himself never promoted it as special. (Nor does he directly benefit from its current valuation.)
The Center for Art Law suggests that the work's "impeccable and unimpeachable" provenance may have a lot to do with the high price tag. In an art market awash in fraud, undeniably authentic works command a high premium.
Balenciaga
recently debuted a "towel skirt" that retails for $925. It's been receiving quite a lot of attention.
Ikea spoofed if by coming out with a
"VINARN towel skirt".
A writer for Vogue
tried wearing it on her morning commute. She wrote, "It looked like I’d locked myself out of the house while doing the bins... Only the bins were across town."
Ocean Fathoms promised its customers truly superior wine (for the price of $500/bottle) based on its unique method of aging the wine: in the ocean. It dropped the wine bottles to the bottom of the Santa Barbara Channel and brought them up a year later.
From its website:
The Santa Barbara Channel offers not only the perfect environment for the aging process of wine, but is sits in a rich sea-life transition zone, where cold arctic waters meet warmer waters from the equator providing more than 100 species of flora and fauna unique to this location. The combination of flora and fauna attracts an abundance of sea-creatures and sea-life which ultimately adorn our bottles.
It is also the interaction between the submerged wine cages and the set of special characteristics of the Channel Islands’ environment that gives Ocean Fathoms a superior product. We sourced the absolute best location on planet earth to age our superior wine.
One problem. It never got permits to do any of this. The Bureau of Alcoholic Beverage Control seized and destroyed 2,000 bottles of the wine.
I wonder if the ocean-aging actually made any difference. My guess is that it's just the latest wine-industry gimmick.
More info:
Food & Wine
We've posted about ripped jeans before. But these take the concept to a whole new level of grottiness.
You can purchase them via Bergdorf Goodman for only $2,450.
Recently a box of 40 Sato Nishiki cherries, grown in Yamagata, sold for close to $10,000.
More info from SoraNews24.com:
On January 5, at Ota Market’s first wholesale auction of the year in Tokyo, produce wholesaler Funasho Group claimed the winning bid for Yamagata-produced premium Sato Nishiki cherries. 500 grams (1.1 pounds) of the fruit sold for its highest price ever–1.3 million yen (US$9,842), which is 100,000 yen higher than the winning bid last year.
That's $250 per cherry.
SoraNews24 also notes that, when they sampled some Sato Nishiki cherries, "our team of writers had trouble telling them apart from regular supermarket ones."
Gucci is selling an
"Eco washed organic denim overall" that comes with a "stained-like, distressed effect." AKA fake grass stains. Yours for only $1400.
Or you could get this
Orange Tartan Cotton Long Smock Shirt. Only $2600!
Artist Maurizio Cattelan’s latest piece, consisting of a banana duct-taped to a wall, sold recently for $120,000.
Gallery owner Emmanuel Perrotin defended the work by saying, “It looks like a joke, but step back and look at it again, and it becomes so much more.”
The new owner will receive a certificate of authenticity. However, they’ll also be expected to periodically replace the banana (and presumably the duct tape also). Which begs the question: what did they actually buy? The
idea of a banana duct-taped to a wall, apparently.
I'm curious to know how long the owner will actually bother to replace the banana. Twenty years from now, will they still be replacing it every few days?
More info:
artsy.net
It actually sold for more than $4 million — $4,338,500, to be exact. It was taken by Andreas Gursky who titled it “Rhine II” because it shows a scene along the Rhine River. Its sale in 2011 made it (at the time) the most expensive photo in the world.
The pricetag astounded many people, since it kinda looks like a photo any amateur could and would take. Florence Waters, art critic for the Daily Telegraph,
offered this defense of it:
For all its apparent simplicity, the photograph is a statement of dedication to its craft. The late 1980s, when Gursky shot to attention, was a time when photography was first entering gallery spaces, and photographs were taking their place alongside paintings. Photography “as art”, at the time, was still brave and new, and the simplicity of this image shows a great deal of confidence in its effectiveness and potential for creating atmospheric, hyper-real scenarios that in turn teach us to see - and read - the world around us anew. The scale, attention to colour and form of his photography can be read as a deliberate challenge to painting's status as a higher art form. On top of that, Gursky’s images are extraordinary technical accomplishments, which take months to set up in advance, and require a lot of digital doctoring to get just right.
In its latest annual gift catalog, Neiman Marcus is offering a
champagne vending machine. It goes for a mere $35,000 — champagne not included.
Or, better idea,
buy this vending machine on eBay for $1700, and put some champagne (or another beverage of your choice) in it.