{"id":17940,"date":"2015-11-24T07:00:02","date_gmt":"2015-11-24T07:00:02","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.zatista.com\/blog\/?p=17940"},"modified":"2016-07-19T20:44:13","modified_gmt":"2016-07-19T20:44:13","slug":"modigliani-sells-170m","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.zatista.ie\/blog\/2015\/11\/modigliani-sells-170m\/","title":{"rendered":"Modigliani Sells for $170M"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Amedeo Modigliani’s “Nu Couch\u00e9,” painted from 1917 to 1918<\/p><\/div>\n

Written by Matt Levine at Business Insider<\/a>:<\/p>\n

Last week, a\u00a0Modigliani nude<\/a>\u00a0was purchased for $170 million, the second-highest price ever received at auction for a painting.\u00a0“Nu Couch\u00e9” now trails only Picasso\u2019s “Les femmes d’Alger (Version ‘O’),” which took the record in May when it sold for $179.4 million.\u00a0But as tends to be the case, the story behind who bought the painting and why is more interesting.<\/p>\n

As\u00a0Fusion’s Lauren LaCapra noted<\/a>, this painting was bought with an American Express card.<\/p>\n

Why?<\/p>\n

To get the points.<\/p>\n

Why?<\/p>\n

So that the family of Chinese billionaire\u00a0Liu Yiqian\u00a0could continue flying for free<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Smart.<\/p>\n

And as Liu told\u00a0The New York Times<\/a>:<\/p>\n

“Every museum dreams of having a Modigliani nude. Now, a Chinese museum has a globally recognized masterpiece, and my fellow countrymen no longer have to leave the country to see a Western masterpiece … The message to the West is clear: We have bought their buildings, we have bought their companies, and now we are going to buy their art.”<\/p>\n

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