Analysis Of Pablo Picasso's Femme Assise

752 Words2 Pages

Nowadays, the role of art is changing. Art is no longer just appreciated for aesthetic values or expression of ideas, but it is also viewed as an investment. Moreover, auction house, as it appears to people from outside, is not as simple as it looks, however has its own strategies of marketing important pieces and breaking records for having most expensive sales. Taking Pablo Picasso’s piece, Femme Assise, as an example, this essay will aim to explore the ways its presented and marketed by the auction house as well as evaluate the market performance for Impressionists and Modern art in general by looking at sales for last 15 years and factors that affect the market value and investment potential.

Catalogue entry, price estimate and marketing
Pablo Picasso, Femme Assise (1909), is ‘an extremely rare piece; there has not been …show more content…

This part of the essay will try to evaluate the factors that may have led to such a successful sale price.

The catalogue note may be used as an indication of the importance of a particular art piece not only in the coming auction but also in its particular market. Regarding our particular piece, Femme Assise, it was dedicated a descend amount of space filled with full-side illustrations in the “Evening Sales Catalogue”. The provenance for the particular piece is clean, it shows that it was owned by international art dealers such as Knoelder&Co in New York, Gallerie Pierre in Paris, art collectors and was last sold at an auction in 1973. Such provenance adds to the market value since it is very ‘fresh’ to the market and was in private collection for over 40 years. Catalogue note itself appears to be objective in its analysis with rare emotive adjectives being used. Quotations used, subjective in their own right, by people like William Rubin, ‘the most crucial and productive vacation of his career’, aim to highlight the rarity and quality of the piece without making the catalogue’s note too personal since the emphasis us put on the opinion

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