The documentary What Makes Art Valuable? highlights the top ten most expensive works of art. Alastair Sooke delves into what makes these paintings so valuable and the motives of the buyers to spend tens of millions of dollars on a single painting. Throughout the film, Sooke emphasis that the selling price of a painting in auction is not an accurate representation of how good a painting is. Arne Glimcher, an art dealer shown in the documentary, says, “The whole thing of art and money is ridiculous. The value of a painting at auction is not necessarily the value of a painting. It is the value of two people bidding against each other, because they really want the painting.” In What Makes Art Valuable?, Sooke looks to bring to light the stories behind some of the top selling paintings in the world.
There are a range of different reasons that make a work of art worth millions of dollars. Sometimes, it’s as simple as who has
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When a subject matter is something that people can relate to or has significant historical content, the buyers will be more passionate towards the painting, therefore, spending large sums of money on the artwork. The subject matter along with pure technique of the painter and their ability to portray the subject matter at hand is a large part of making a painting valuable.
Along with there being several different factor that make a piece of art valuable, there is a large array of motives behind buyers willing to spend millions of dollars on art. For some, it is the love of art and the connection they make with painting. Others purchase extremely expensive works of art as a sort of status symbol. To show off that they have so much money that they can afford to buy a single painting for upwards of 100 million dollars. For several buyers, however, they are buying the painting as an investment in hopes that years down the road they can resell it and make an incredible