The 15 Most Expensive Artworks Ever Sold at Auction

"Auction records make for great headlines, like Tuesday's banner sale of Gustav Klimt's Portrait of Elisabeth Lederer (1914-16), which topped $236.4 million at Sotheby's. There's a thrill in watching numbers climb into the stratosphere, each sale another reminder that, in the art market, money has a way of bending reality. But the price of a painting has never been the most interesting thing about it."

"Look at the list of the most expensive artworks ever sold at auction, and you'll see more than just a parade of billionaires with good taste (or at least expensive taste). You'll see a history of ideas-what mattered to the artists who made them, what obsessed the collectors who chased them, and how we decide, decades or centuries later, which works still hold power."

"Yes, Salvator Mundi sold for $450 million, but is it really a da Vinci? Picasso's Women of Algiers and Warhol's Shot Sage Blue Marilyn both shattered records, but their real value has nothing to do with what someone was willing to pay on a given evening at Christie's. The best art-the kind that shifts culture, lingers in your mind, and changes how you see the world-exists in a space money can't touch."

Auction records generate headlines as prices climb into the stratosphere, creating spectacle and suggesting that money can bend reality in the art market. Price tags, however, do not capture the most interesting aspects of artworks. The roster of top auction sales reveals histories of ideas, artistic priorities, collectors' obsessions, and shifting judgments about significance over decades or centuries. Questions of attribution and context can undercut astronomical sums. Record-breaking sales raise the bar and intensify frenzy, turning auction houses into stages for spectacle. Rising numbers risk drifting away from the intrinsic, cultural, and experiential value that defines great art.

Read at ARTnews.com