You know, getting an art-focused blog off the ground is a lot more difficult than creating a celebrity gossip site. There are a lot more people who kill time at work by looking for pictures of movie stars than, I don’t know, fine art photography of Iranian bodybuilders (see below!). So I have a little NO SHAME in sharing with you, my loyal readers, that Brad Pitt dropped around $960,000 yesterday on the above Neo Rauch painting while perusing the offerings at Art Basel. It’s relevant, I swear.
The Associated Press tells us “Rauch is among Europe’s top painters, drawing on traditions of Eastern Bloc realism and Western abstraction.” He’s represented in New York by the prestigious David Zwirmer Gallery.
(If this turns me into the next Perez Hilton, there’s no guarantee I won’t do this daily regularly…just letting you know)
Justin, I too saw that Brad was perusing through Art Basel (in dark glasses, of course). I first thought that maybe he purchased the piece because he liked the style/colors/”this will look great in my bathroom” attraction. But I think 1) Brad is (somewhat) deeper than that, and 2) that he could perhaps be flexing his celebrity status to make a political statement. He knows the paparazzi is watching. It’s like a double-hitter — buy great art that you get to stare at every day, plus, to the big, broad world you can support the Social-Realism movement/sentiment, which is (according to Wikipedia): “social and racial injustice, economic hardship, through unvarnished pictures of life’s struggles; often depicting working class activities as heroic.”