A mad world where money is meaningless

What on earth induces people to spend $80m or more on a painting? It beats me, so I was fascinated to hear about Alastair Sooke's experiences in the small, secretive world of big art collectors. (Sooke's BBC programme, The World's Most Expensive Paintings, was shown this week.) Jeffrey Archer told him, "if you get into this mad world, it's like drugs: you have to have another fix. It's just awful. I'm afraid collectors are all stupid and mad."

Last month Archer offered around a tenth of his own collection at an auction at Christie's, which made £5.1m. The highlight, fetching £3m, was a view of the Seine by Monet. But Archer says he can't afford the "major" impressionists, even though he has a fortune estimated at £120m. Serious collectors of expensive art are all billionaires.

The ten most expensive paintings ever sold at auction range from Mark Rothko's White Center (1950), which went for $72.8m in 2007, to the most expensive of all, Picasso's Nude, Green Leaves and Bust (1932), which fetched a record price of almost $106.5m last year. Whoever bought it (rumoured to be a Georgian oligarch) has lent it to Tate Modern for two years.

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"There are reports that other paintings have sold privately for more than the Picasso," said Sooke in The Times. Ronald Lauder, for example, heir to the Este Lauder cosmetics fortune, is said to have paid $135m in 2006 for Gustav Klimt's Portrait of Adele Bloch-Bauer 1 (1907), which now hangs in his Neue Galerie in New York. As Sooke observed, the canvas, "embellished with silver and gold, practically screams money'". It would be hard to imagine a painting more infatuated with high society. (Boch-Bauer was the wife of a Jewish sugar merchant).

In general, the super-rich compete for blue-chip impressionist and modern pictures there is only one Old Master in the top ten, Rubens's Massacre of the Innocents (circa 1610), bought at auction by Canadian billionaire David Thomson and his father Ken in 2002. The world's finest Old Masters never appear on the open market: they were all acquired, years ago, by leading museums.

So why are the super-rich prepared to pay so much? "The people I work with are surrounded by quality in their lives, so why would it stop in their art collecting?" says Tania Pos, an art adviser. She bought, on behalf of an anonymous client, the seventh most expensive painting ever sold at auction a picture of water lilies by Monet that went for almost $80.4m at Christie's in London in 2008. "They wish to have the very best... it's just the way they live."

"The whole thing about art and money is ridiculous," says Arne Glimcher, the New York art dealer who used to represent Rothko's estate. "The value of a painting is not necessarily the value of a painting. It's the value of two people bidding against each other... Those are impetuous moments, and money becomes meaningless. It has nothing to do with art."

Tabloid money

"Your old jewellery could now be a treasure chest worth up to £2,500 as gold prices continue to rocket," says the News of the World in its final issue. With prices having reached an all-time high this year against the pound a hefty £950 an ounce latest estimates "reckon the nation's households are like Fort Knox sitting on a potential gold mine of almost £7bn". The average Briton has ten pieces of gold jewellery each worth about £250, including engagement and wedding rings, cuff links and chains.

"If I had a euro for every time I had heard a British politician promise British jobs for British workers' I could single-handedly fund the next Greek bailout," says Tony Parsons in the Daily Mirror, "or the one that will be needed in poor, bankrupt Portugal. British jobs for British workers? Ho, ho, ho. You can have freedom of labour movement within the European Union. Or you can have British jobs for British workers. You can't have both."

"One law for the bosses and another for the workers," says Paul Routledge in the Daily Mirror. "Andrea Hill, chief executive of Suffolk County Council (who spent £12,000 on a management coach and faced allegations of bullying, of which she was cleared), has been paid £218,592 compensation after quitting her job. Susan De Val has walked away with a £77,000 pay-off after resigning her £85,000-a-year post as chief legal officer with Hull City Council. Meanwhile, Shropshire County Council is sacking its entire staff of 6,500 workers, right down to the cleaners, without compensation. They will only be re-hired if they take a 5.4% pay cut. Further comment would be superfluous. And probably land me in court."