So WHO paid $104 million for the Picasso?

[emad]

snip from BBC News:

An early Picasso has become the most expensive painting sold at auction - but who are the art lovers who can afford to bid such astronomical sums? And what do they do with their multi-million purchases?




There was a bidding frenzy when Picasso's 1905 work Garcon a la Pipe went under the hammer at Sotheby's in New York on Wednesday. But with private bidders calling in from outside the auction room, it's only possible to hazard a guess at the identity of the buyer who has paid $104m (£58m) for the work.

A discreet Sotheby's will not even reveal the destination continent for the painting.

But Godfrey Barker, of Art and Auction magazine and Art Review, who was at the auction, thinks he knows who bought the work - Guido Barilla, the spaghetti billionaire boss of Barilla. The pasta baron is also rumoured to have paid the previous record of $82.5m (£46m) for Vincent Van Gogh's Portrait of Doctor Gachet in 1990.
More:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/magazine/3689967.stm

[Amerpie]

1. It wans't me

I'm saving up to buy Guernica

[LynneSin]

2. You can have the copy they have at the UN

Powell made them cover it up when he spoke there

[BiggJawn]

3. Not this weekend's "Powerball" winner....

Yeah, they tied the 2 stories topgether on CNN..."Well, whoever wins this weekend's 'Powerball' could have spent only half of it to get THIS painting..."

No they wouldn't.

Picasso never painted on velvet, it's not a picture of Earnhardt or Elvis, and the eyes don't follow you as you walk across the room....

Disclaimer: Yes, in a fit of insanity, *I* bought TWO tickets for last night's "Poor Tax"...

[emad]

4. I've seen the Doctor Gachet hanging in a UK drawing room.....

of a fortified mansion deep in the Southern Wolds......not a Japanese banker in sight...