Billionaires Wheel and Deal ... in Works of Art

ByABC News
November 9, 2006, 4:12 PM

Nov. 10, 2006 — -- Cosmetics magnate Ronald Lauder recently bought one for $135 million. Casino king Steve Wynn nearly sold his for $139 million. And movie and music mogul David Geffen's fetched $140 million.

For the price of a small company, these masters of the corporate universe are buying and selling paintings.

The megarich have always been collectors of art, but in recent years, a new generation of wealth has been fueling a red-hot art market.

"Some of these people have four homes," said Terri Dodd, editor in chief of American Art Collector Magazine. "And what do you need? You need art."

On Wednesday night, at Christie's, works by Gustav Klimt, Paul Gauguin, Egon Schiele, Ernst Ludwig Kirchner, and others sold for nearly half a billion dollars to anonymous buyers. It was billed as the biggest art auction in history and exceeded the hype.

"It was certainly the most amazing sale I've ever taken," said Christopher Burge, Christie's honorary chairman and the evening's auctioneer.

The blockbuster auction came on the heels of other recent headline-grabbing art sales.

Last month, Geffen sold three paintings for a whopping $283.5 million, including a Jackson Pollock piece that fetched the aforementioned $140 million, the highest price ever paid for a work of art. The buyers were billionaire hedge-fund managers.

Before that, Wynn finalized a $139 million sale of Pablo Picasso's "Le Reve" when he accidentally poked a hole in it while showing it off to friends in Las Vegas. Wynn reportedly released the unnamed buyer from the deal and now is keeping the work for himself.

If Wynn had sold the painting, the sale would have broken the record set by Lauder's deal.

Despite warnings two years ago from financial analysts predicting a downturn in the art market, the boom shows no sign of going bust.

Works by Picasso and others have almost doubled in price since 2003, according to Art Market Research, a leading provider of art indexes. The value of 20th century pieces, from artists such as Andy Warhol, Pollock and Willem de Kooning, have been skyrocketing as well.