After reading the article about the most expensive Gif, my eyes were opened to a few things. First, I was so surprised to find out that a piece of art was sold off for THAT MUCH MONEY… 58.4 million dollars. The first bit of information I needed to know was who was the individual who bought this object? After research I found out it was the Billionaire French retailer, François Pinault. After knowing this information I needed to know what this man was worth.
François Pinault is worth over 53.9 Billion Dollars as of December 2021. Which means he really only spent 1.1 percent of his life earnings on a piece of art. According to Georgetown, the average human in the United States makes 1.7 million dollars in their lifetime, which in the terms of Pinault’s spending habits, would be around 100 thousand dollars on art. Even though the comparison is unfair because Pinault just has money to throw around, most individuals will never make enough money to even think of putting 1 percent of their total lives earnings into a single sculpture. In no way am I saying that the art is not worth or the artist doesn't deserve the amount of money they were given, just the amount of money that people have to spend on something such as art is crazy yet incredible (and very much desirable).
Along with this, the Net Worth of Jeff Koons, the artist of the Balloon, is worth 400 million dollars, meaning around 1/4th of his total worth is from the singular statue he sold to Pinault.
I overall respect the goal of Michael Green and his mission to increase his cost and sell his artwork for more based on the profit that was made on Koon’s art. And I know that he did this to make an overall statement about art, but I am curious if he truly expected to make money off of this gif? According to the most recent article available, there is no news that the gif was ever actually sold.
Comments