In a development that will surprise absolutely no one who has ever watched a toddler with a jam sandwich, a Jackson Pollock painting has just sold for a frankly obscene $181 million. That’s £140 million, or roughly the GDP of a small, bewildered nation. The painting, number 5, 1948, is a glorious, chaotic mess of drips and splatters that looks like the aftermath of a paint factory explosion. It also looks suspiciously like the carpet in my local Wetherspoons after a particularly spirited darts match. But what do I know? I’m just a gin-soaked hack who thinks a decent landscape should at least contain a tree you can identify.
London auction houses, of course, are patting themselves on the back, clutching their champagne flutes with pinkies extended, declaring that this proves they are still the epicentre of the art world. Because nothing says ‘cultural superiority’ like charging a hedge fund manager with the emotional range of a house brick the price of a small Caribbean island for something that could have been produced by a particularly ambitious octopus on LSD.
The buyer, reportedly an anonymous collector, has presumably purchased this masterpiece for one of two reasons: either they genuinely see the profound beauty in the chaos of post-war abstraction, or they are a tax-evading oligarch who needs something to hang in the bathroom of their penthouse that matches the abstract rug. I’m betting on the latter. After all, art is only as valuable as the story you can tell about it, and the story here is: “I have more money than you, and I can prove it with this splodge.”
Meanwhile, the rest of us stand in galleries, squinting at such works, nodding sagely while muttering “hmm, yes, the ferocity of the brushstroke” whilst secretly thinking, “my four-year-old could do that, and he’d probably not charge me a king’s ransom.” But that’s the beauty of the art market. It operates on a principle of collective delusion. We all agree that a Pollock is worth $181 million because to disagree would be to admit that we’ve spent our entire lives admiring glorified wallpaper swatches.
So, congratulations to the auction houses. You’ve done it again. You’ve convinced a man with more zeros in his bank balance than sense that he has purchased a piece of human history. In reality, he has purchased a piece of canvas that a man with a severe case of the jitters once flicked paint at. And yet, who am I to judge? I once paid forty quid for a bottle of gin that turned out to be paint thinner. But at least it had a nice label.
The painting, by the way, was last sold in 2006 for $140 million. So it’s only appreciated by about thirty percent in sixteen years. That’s roughly the same rate of return as a medium-risk pension fund. But you can’t impress your friends at a dinner party by pointing at your pension statement and saying, “Look at that subtle interplay of gains and losses.”
So here’s to you, Mr. Anonymous. Congratulations on your new acquisition. May it bring you joy, or at least a sense of smugness superior to your peers. And as for the rest of us, we’ll carry on staring at the paintings, pretending we understand, and wondering if a six-pack of beer and a bag of crisps might actually be a more fulfilling investment in culture. Or better yet, a round of gin and tonics for everyone.
