Art Meets Money

How art gets its price

• Galleries sell new work from artists (the primary market).
• Auction houses like Christie’s and Sotheby’s resell it, often for far more (the secondary market).
• Art fairs like Art Basel are where collectors shop, network and show off.

The record breakers

• Salvator Mundi, attributed to Leonardo da Vinci, sold for about $450 million in 2017, the most expensive painting ever. Experts still argue about how much of it Leonardo painted.
• Warhol’s Shot Sage Blue Marilyn: about $195 million (2022).
• Basquiat’s 1982 skull painting: about $110.5 million (2017).

The banana

Artist Maurizio Cattelan’s "Comedian" is a real banana duct-taped to a wall. It debuted at Art Basel Miami Beach in 2019 for $120,000, and someone ate it. In 2024, a version sold at Sotheby’s for about $6.2 million to a crypto founder, who also ate the banana. You’re buying the idea and a certificate, not the fruit.

The NFT moment

In 2021, digital artist Beeple sold an NFT (a digital token proving ownership of a digital artwork) at Christie’s for about $69 million. The NFT market boomed, then crashed hard in 2022.

The heists

• 1911: the Mona Lisa was stolen from the Louvre. The theft made it the most famous painting in the world.
• October 19, 2025: thieves used a furniture lift to reach a window and stole French crown jewels worth about €88 million from the Louvre’s Apollo Gallery, in about seven minutes. The jewels are still missing, and the gallery reopened in 2026 without them.