Bonito Living

 Georgia O’Keeffe, Jimson Weed/White Flower No. 1, 1932 

In November there was excitement over the “record breaking” sale of a Georgia O’Keeffe flower painting for $44.4 million,. Sounds like good news …but the record was for a woman and (as was pointed out in more than one article) it was completely outstripped by the highest price for a 20^th Century artist – a Francis Bacon at $142.4m–– more than 3 times as much.

Turning to living artists: there has been some attention given to women breaking the $1million barrier. But again comparison with the men rather removes the shine. Artnet operates a comprehensive price database and crunches the numbers to help investors and collectors to best buys. Their findings are dismaying.

• The 2 women on the British list Bridget Riley ($5,1m) and Jenny Saville, ($3,4m) were easily out gunned by Damien…