Barnett Newman is well worth $43.8m. Great art is essentially priceless. The highest price paid by the most well-heeled collector is only a fraction of its true value.
And Newman is a great artist.
The price put on greatness at Sotheby’s in New York this week, where works by Francis Bacon and Jeff Koons failed to sell but Newman soared, is the $43.8m paid for his Onement VI.
If you are going to buy a Newman, this is the kind of Newman you should buy: a powerful example of his ineffable style at its height of confidence and magic.
A single white line divides a flat expanse of blue: it seems to rip open the universe, a crack in space and time. Versions of this vertical line appear again and again in Newman’s paintings, sometimes alone as in his 1946 work Moment in Tate Article source: http://www.guardian.co.uk/artanddesign/jonathanjonesblog/2013/may/16/barnett-newman-sublime-bargain-price