The World's Most Expensive Paintings

What would you buy if you had 100 million?

A palazzo in Venice maybe,

or perhaps a fleet of private jets, or a personal submarine.

Or would you plough it all into a single painting?

Some of the richest people in the world have done just that.

Your bidder at 95 million.

What makes the super-rich splash out so much money on art? Is it love?

Rivalry? Or just big business?

I want to find out more about this infamously secretive art world,

and the multi-millionaires who populate it.

-You've got your grubby hands on my beautiful wall.

-I do apologise.

I'm searching for the most expensive paintings in the world,

to uncover the stories behind their record breaking prices.

Fair warning... Going...

BANGS GAVEL

This is Christie's big showroom in London and what you can see are

the paintings, some of the paintings,

that will be sold at the big evening auction in New York,

which is coming up in just a few weeks.

And this is one of the highlights, a Picasso.

It's a series he did in the '50s known as the women of Algiers,

it's got an upper estimate of 30 million.

This is another of the star lots, a Monet,

from a series he did I think in the 1890s, 1891.

These are poplar trees, this could sell for as much as 30 million.

And this is a Rothko,

that has been practically unknown to art historians.

Belonged in a private collection. Let's have a look at the estimate...

This could sell for 22 million, apparently.

22 million? 30 million?

That sounds like an awful lot of money for a painting.

Well, it's not.

It is a bargain compared to the eye-watering amounts paid

for the top ten paintings sold at auction.

When you think about it, art is a little bit like magic,

because just with the wave of a brush,

something that has no practical purpose whatsoever -

just a worthless scrap of canvas, covered with inexpensive pigment -

can become this priceless object that's desired by many

of the wealthiest and most powerful people anywhere on the planet.

Abracadabra! But how exactly is it done?

Just what is the link between art and money?

My story starts here in New York,

where the American abstract painter Mark Rothko

dominated the art world in the '50s and '60s.

And it is perhaps a surprise to those who find abstract art

hard to take, that one of his paintings is number ten on my list.

To find out why, I've come to a billionaire's skyscraper.

This is Rothko's "White Center",

and it would cost you more than 72 million.

72,840,000, to be precise.

And that's put it at number ten

in our list of the most expensive paintings in the world.

Going up!

Start the bidding at 33, 34, 35 million dollars...

I'm bid 36 million dollars.

The painting was sold

at the auctioneers Sotheby's, in New York, in 2007.

63 million dollars...

Fair warning... 64 million. Just in time.

And when you factor in the hefty buyer's premium

on top of the hammer price stated by the auctioneer,

this made it a record breaking amount.

More than three times the previous price paid for a Rothko.

So what does this tell us?

That "White Center" is officially the tenth best painting ever made?

Not exactly.

The important thing to remember is that value isn't really

linked to quality.

Something that can send the price of a painting rocketing

is what is known in the art world as provenance -

who has owned the painting in the past.

And in the case of Rothko's "White Center",

it was owned by one of the wealthiest and most powerful dynasties in America -

the Rockefellers, who amassed their fortune from oil and banking,

and reshaped the New York skyline with The Rockefeller Centre.

On the 56th floor, David Rockefeeller built an impressive

art collection that included works by Picasso, Gaugin and Mark Rothko.

In 1960, he paid less than 10,000 for White Center.

Half a century later, it was worth more than 72 million.

Today, the painting is even known informally

as the Rockefeller Rothko.

Which says it all,

the name of its former owner is as important as that of the artist!

To find out if White Center deserves it's number ten spot,

I'm on my way to New York's famous Pace Gallery

to meet one of the world's leading art dealers,

Arnie Glincher.

Arnie was friends with Rothko,

and has been buying and selling his work for 50 years.

-Is this a really great Rothko?

-It is a wonderful painting.

But what Rothko was really interested in

was the idea of an almost formlessness

use of colour, to transmit pure human emotion.

I mean, you just have have to strip away all of the prejudices

that you have, looking at a painting by Rothko,

and let it flow over you like great music flows over you.

You know, there are very few artists in the history of art

that create something that we have never seen before.

Rothko was one of those artists.

But all kinds of things converge

for a painting to bring that sum of money.

-Such as what?

-Such as its provenance.

It was the Rockefeller name which amazed me.

Why do you say it has amazed you?

Because the whole thing of art and money is ridiculous.

The value of a painting at auction

is not necessarily the value of the painting.

It's the value of two people bidding against each other

because they really want the painting.

The people who bid the most for White Center,

are rumoured to be oil billionaires,

just like the Rockefellers,

the Qatari royal family

who'll be hosting the football World Cup in 2022.

Sadly though, White Center hasn't been seen since the auction.

I can't even show you a good reproduction.

But my next painting couldn't be any more different.

Here, the buyer specifically wanted

to show a lost masterpiece to the world.

At number nine in our list,

is Peter Paul Rubens' Massacre of the Innocents.

It sold at auction in 2002

for 76,529,058.

The Flemish painter, Peter Paul Rubens,

is considered one of the greatest artists of all time.

So perhaps it's unsurprising

that an old master makes it onto my list.

Actually, it's rare for such a good quality painting to come to auction.

Nearly all the finest old masters are now in museums

and they're highly unlikely to ever reach the market again.

It's hard not to feel a little bit upset

when you encounter this picture

because there's just no shying away from the subject matter.

It tells the story of King Herod's massacre

of the newborn boys of Bethlehem.

And it's terrifying.

You see muscly soldiers ripping babies from their mother's arms

and dashing them to the floor.

The women themselves are weeping and wailing and scratching,

clawing at the faces of their assailants.

These lifeless corpses of the infants,

here down at the bottom of the painting,

tossed aside like unwanted, forgotten dolls.

They have this distressing shade to their skin, this stone-cold blue.

It's just too painful almost to look at and full of anguish

and grief and despair and high, raw full-blooded emotion.

To be able to do that,

to transform something so horrendous and so complex

into a coherent piece of beauty, is just astounding.

I wondered before coming here,

whether it's worth paying 76.5 million

for any picture at all.

You come here and you see this painting

and it is a total, total knockout.

The Massacre of the Innocents is even more astonishing

when you consider that until recently,

it wasn't even thought to have been a Rubens at all.

When it was finally identified or attributed to Rubens,

the painting's value increased exponentially over night,

adding several noughts to its price.

Here at the National Gallery, art historian, David Jaffe,

helped reveal who really painted the Massacre of the Innocents,

by comparing it with another Rubens masterpiece, Samson and Delilah.

Do you remember when you first saw it?

Yes, I saw it at Sotheby's up in the upper so-called private room.

It was pretty extraordinary.

It was one of those ones where I said,

"We don't have to have a large discussion on this,

"it's clearly right."

Tell me about the comparisons between Samson and Delilah

and the Massacre of the Innocents.

We actually took them upstairs here where we have decent sunlight

and you can look at them very carefully.

They had a lot of the same nuances.

You cross a 'T' in a certain way and dot an 'i' in a certain way,

painters handle a brush, particularly when they're bored,

Rubens often has a little zig-zag.

You can see it on the ankle of this painting.

You're looking for his handwriting in paint

and if a hand writing works, it's by that artist.

Once the Massacre of the Innocents was attributed to Rubens,

what does that do to the value of the painting?

Well, I think everyone wants to buy the real thing.

The very few great Rubens of any period in his career, you can buy.

So when a great one comes up, it gets an exponential thrust.

Until it's on that moment of being for sale, it doesn't have any value.

It's an arbitrary thing.

You can't protect how idiotic three or four people will be

trying to chase the magic rabbit round the circuit when it comes up.

Only billionaires can chase that rabbit.

Ken Thomson was Canada's richest man.

He built a global media empire

that once encompassed the Times and the Sunday Times.

He pumped millions into the art gallery of Ontario,

in his home town of Toronto

to share the glory of art and its creation,

as he put it, with the world.

The Thomson's are intensely private and seldom do interviews

but Ken's son, David,

who bid for the Massacre of the Innocents with his father,

has agreed to speak to me.

My father began collecting in the '50s.

He'd mutter and sometimes he'd hit me in the arm and say, "Look at this!

"Can you imagine someone being able to carve this way?

"Look David, look at the spine." This is how he responded.

With each object, it would be a different facet to the object.

It would be the patination, the colour.

One of the defining moments in the history of the collection,

of course, came when you bought Rubens Massacre of the Innocents.

And paid what still is, the world record for an old master painting.

Of just north of 76.5 million.

Weekly, until the auction, he'd come down with the catalogue

and he'd ask me, "David, what do you think this will fetch?"

"What would you do if you were me?"

I'd say, "Dad, I think frankly you need to buy this picture."

"It's something that resonates like nothing else."

You must have had to fend off some supremely stiff competition.

You must have known there was going to be a fight.

-What was your strategy?

-To triumph, to outlast them.

-You knew you were going to win?

-We knew we were going to win,

at least I had a feeling we were going to a win.

£45 million. Going to sell...

The final prize was £49,500,000 or 76.5 million.

After it was over, there was silence.

He took his glasses off and he took a few deep breaths

and I think he said something in effect of, "Oh, my goodness!"

It's an enormous sum of money and on a painting,

you think to yourself, it's shopping centres,

it's tangible but it was a marker for my father

and for his collections.

Ken Thomson died before he could see the Massacre of the Innocents hang

as the centrepiece of his collection at the Art Gallery of Ontario,

on display for everyone to see forever.

How do you feel when you go to the art gallery now,

and look at this painting?

I imagine if it were me, every time I saw it,

I'd want to punch the air that I'd got this thing with my dad

and given it now to the world.

How do you feel?

I feel...

..I just feel a wild spring of emotion

because it symbolised a journey for my father,

it symbolised a journey between father and son

and it resonated for us as it resonates for so many others.

It's a very remarkable touchstone.

So what have I learnt from painting number nine?

Well, that overnight, the same painting can be viewed

in a completely different way.

One day the Massacre of the Innocents was overlooked,

the next it was suddenly the most expensive old master ever sold.

The canvas was exactly the same but the way it was perceived

was magically transformed by its attribution to a superstar artist.

To get more of an insight into the mentality of the art collector,

I've come to a luxury penthouse apartment overlooking the Thames,

owned by one of the world's best-selling novelists.

What should I call you? Geoffrey?

This is Sisley.

I love that picture.

Is that a pastel?

That's a pastel which is very rare, painted over 100 pastels

in his lifetime.

It's one of those rare paintings

where I wanted it within seconds of seeing it.

Sometimes I go back, look a second time

but that one I knew immediately.

-You've got your grubby hands on my beautiful wall.

-I do apologise.

Jeffrey Archer, is currently 583rd in Britain's rich list.

He's had a colourful career.

A politician and confidant of Margaret Thatcher,

he was made a lord by John Major

but he's also served a prison sentence for perjury.

His novels have allowed him to pursue his passion

for collecting art,

not old masters but 19th century Impressionists.

Here you'll see one of my philosophies on collecting.

Because I can't afford the major Impressionists,

I buy the next rank down.

They're often just as good, but not as well known.

This is a Camois.

-This is like Matisse.

-Or Gauguin.

If there was a Gauguin and this was a Van Gogh,

you're talking not 10 times the price,

you're talking 100 times the price.

I suppose... let's get rid of your coat.

I suppose the big thing about the main room is...

-The view.

-Exactly.

Which do you prefer, your paintings or the view?

It's amazing. When people come here,

they immediately say the view.

It's hard not to stand here like this,

which is a shame for the collection.

That's what people do, walk-in,

see the view, forget the pictures completely.

I can't help noticing,

you talked about having second rank artists in the corridor

in terms of the Impressionists, but here's Andy Warhol.

-Is he first rate? I don't think so.

-Do you not?

I think he's very expensive now but I don't think he's a great artist, no.

I do like this, it's not dissimilar,

the hairstyle between Marilyn and Margaret Thatcher.

They were both powerful women.

-How much do you think this will be worth now?

-I've no idea now.

Don't be so vulgar.

You called me the vulgarian, vulgar question,

does the money for buying art come from...

This is a golden book. This is the equivalent of going platinum.

Cain and Abel.

That's the breakthrough, if that's what you're getting at

in your continued vulgar way.

Yes, it was Cain and Abel that made it possible for me

to have the collection I have.

My favourite picture in a way, is this one, the Albert Goodwin.

Often compared as an artist to Turner.

What you see there, is he must have painted it from just over there.

It's the amazing golds and the amazing colours.

At night, when the sun is coming over it, it looks magnificent.

-When did you buy it?

-30 years ago.

You've been collecting for several decades?

I've been collecting for 50 years.

If you get into this mad world, it's like drugs.

You have to have another one, you have to have another fix.

It's just awful

and wherever you see something you can just about afford,

you just about afford it.

All collectors are all stupid and mad.

And collectors really go mad for the artist at number seven

in our top 10.

I'll explain why we jumped to seven in a moment.

No one quite captures the imagination like Claude Monet,

the prince of the Impressionists.

He spent the second half of his life depicting his gardens at Giverny,

especially the water lilies which he painted obsessively.

Most of them are in museums, so when a good one comes on the market,

it creates a frenzy.

In the room, the telephones at £28 million now. £28.5 million.

At number seven in my top 10, it's Monet's Water Lily Pond

going for 80,379,591.

I'm with Tanya Pos, who bid for the painting and won.

Well, Tanya, tell me about the night

that you bid 80 million for this painting.

Well, where to start.

I knew that this painting was going to

outshine its estimate

and there was a lot of competition in the room.

I knew that it was a very important piece for Monet

because of his water lily series

that he painted consecutively for 26 years.

That's the question I wanted to ask

because they are so many of these paintings.

What's so special about this one that means it's worth so much?

First of all, of his late water lilies, few are signed

and this is a completed late version, signed by the artist.

We should make clear that you weren't buying this for yourself.

-You were buying this for somebody else.

-Yes.

Who were you buying it for?

I will never say.

Tantalising stuff.

Confidentiality is part of my job.

What is it that motivates some of these collectors

to spend this amount on works of art?

Well, I think, the people I work with

are surrounded by quality in their lives

so why would it stop in their art collecting?

They wish to have the very best

and they want to be surrounded by the very best,

whether it's their home, their car, their planes...

it's just the way they live their lives.

Take a good look at the painting.

It's appeared only once in public in the last 80 years,

and since the auction, hasn't been seen again.

This brings me to the story of the shocking disappearance

of the next two paintings in our top ten.

The most popular postcard sold by the National Gallery is this one.

It's a reproduction of a still life, of a vase of sunflowers,

painted by Vincent Van Gogh in 1888.

You can see that in reality it's much more luminous and radiant.

This is one of the most famous paintings in the world

and if it ever came onto the market,

it would sell for an insane amount of money.

But it won't.

But when the highest achievements by some of our greatest artists

do appear at auction, the art market can be influenced

by much more than simply love of the painting.

That's exactly what happened in the heady days

just before the stock market crash of 1990,

when two paintings sold within days of each other.

Vincent van Gogh's, Portrait of Dr Gachet at Christie's

and Au Moulin de la Galette by Pierre-Auguste Renoir at Sotheby's.

Number eight and number six in my top ten,

purchased in a mad, two-day, spending spree

by the same collector.

In the late 80s, buying art

had become a muscular, masculine pursuit.

Buying the best was like big game hunting,

only to be attempted by the bravest with the deepest pockets.

It was a rampaging bull market

and prices were being forced up by the new kids on the art block...

..the Japanese.

Hold on everyone else.

71 million. Congratulations.

The man with the biggest wallet in the room

was a paper tycoon, Ryoei Saito,

intensely eccentric and secretive,

no-one knew whether he bought both paintings for love,

or solely as an investment,

because he spirited them away, out of sight even from his own family.

The man who sold Portrait of Dr Gachet

is legendary auctioneer Christopher Burge.

17 million.

He's sold more of the paintings in this film than anyone else.

I want to discover more about the role and power of Auctioneers

and how they steer prices skywards

in all the excitement of the auction room.

Sell warning and selling.

This is the Woods Room which is the second of our sale rooms here,

the smaller of the two, where we conduct most of our auctions,

I would say 90% of all our auctions take place in here.

This, of course, is the room

in which we are about to give you an auction lesson.

This is where I'm going to learn that the trade?

A large staff will be assembling fairly soon to act as bidders,

telephone bidders, sales clerks

and the rest of it, just as if it were an auction.

I thought it was just going to be you and me?

No, no, no, no, no.

Let's begin with lot 327, a sculpture by Rodin.

Do I have any bids at 24,000 in the room? Do I have 28?

Thank you, madam. 28,000.

30,000, thank you even more.

I tend, for months before these big sales,

to have anxiety dreams about the auctions.

You still get nervous?,

Oh, God. Terrified. More so, actually.

The more I do it, the more nervous I get.

Do I have 150,000 in the room?

Someone?

Anyone in the room, anyone at all?

I'm not getting much love from the room.

Art dealers, collectors, hangers-on, most of them, frankly,

would love to see something go wrong. It's quite gladiatorial.

You get the feeling the thumbs are like this

and will quickly go like that,

if the auctioneer makes a hideous mistake.

Would you like to pay 55,000?

Against you, sir, at 55,000.

I know your habits, I can sometimes get an extra bit. 55,000.

Once you get into the swing of the auction,

it's easy to lose sight of the numbers

and the reality of the sums at stake.

Sold to this Madam... this lady over here, 58,000.

But as Burge concedes, occasionally prices in the auction room

are not just about the paintings.

Doesn't it happened in auctions that sometimes prices go so high

that people afterwards applaud?

Only once was there ever sustained applause for a lot that I sold

and that was for the Van Gogh, Portrait of Dr Gachet.

When it was sold, and I hammered it down at 82.5 million,

which was then the world record price for any work of art,

there was sustained applause, people leapt to their feet,

they cheered and yelled.

APPLAUSE

This applause went on for several minutes

which is completely unheard of in an auction.

The reason everybody applauded, I believe, is because

we had a very serious financial situation developing in 1990,

all sorts of things were collapsing,

and the Japanese buyers who had been the mainstay of the market

were beginning to get nervous and were pulling out

and everybody was convinced that the market was going to tumble.

And that lot, for a moment, stayed the collapse, as it were.

I think, they were applauding out of relief

that they had saved their money.

Do you know, my feeling was one of, I have to admit it, great distaste.

It was extremely uncomfortable.

I felt like just walking off while this applause was going on,

going off stage and not returning.

They weren't applauding for Van Gogh, nor for the work of art,

they were applauding for money.

Whatever Saito's motives were for buying the Van Gogh and the Renoir,

he faced financial ruin soon afterwards.

Extraordinarily, he threatened to burn the paintings

rather than sell them.

In 1996, he died and the paintings haven't been seen since.

Some genuinely believe he carried out his threat

to reduce them to ashes.

Others think they were secretly sold to pay his debts.

Either way, they've passed into art world mythology.

Just imagine the prices they'd achieve if they ever appeared again.

Number five in our top ten

is by a painter known for his brutal, difficult work

and it brings me to London's Chelsea

where millionaires live behind metal gates and brick walls.

So many millionaires, in fact, that it's easy to get the wrong house.

They are Francis Bacon. That's right.

These are not genuine, sadly.

Going in for Mr Jagger, are they?

Mr Abramovich owns them.

Would you believe it? We've got the wrong house.

-I'm going to have to take them... can you show me?

-Yes.

That's where the garden is, there.

-This one? So I should be putting these copies along here?

-Yes.

A triptych is a series of three paintings.

That's two, I have a third.

This one is by a famous British artist called Francis Bacon

that sold at auction in 2008 for 86,281,000

which puts it at number five

in our list of the most expensive paintings in the world.

There's a reason why I'm propping them up against a wall.

Behind me is a house that belongs to the Russian billionaire

and owner of Chelsea FC, Roman Abramovich,

and the rumours are that he bought the real Triptych back in 2008.

I have a very strong hunch that the real Triptych

is actually hanging in that house behind me.

At number five, Francis Bacon's Triptych

which sold in Sotheby's in New York in 2008.

Bacon's paintings are rising fast.

Another work went for three times its estimate earlier this year.

But they're not easy to look at.

Bacon was a hard drinker and heavy gambler who painted a series

of grisly triptychs and this is one of the goriest and best.

Just look at those horrific winged creatures,

pecking at a mangled carcase.

You'd have to be made of stern stuff to enjoy

staring at this above your mantelpiece.

Maybe Roman Abramovich bought the Triptych to impress

his girlfriend, Dasha Zhukova,

who recently opened an art gallery in Moscow.

His purchases have not gone unnoticed.

He also paid a record-breaking price for another artist, Lucian Freud,

who's now officially Britain's most expensive living artist

thanks to Abramovich.

Roman Abramovich is notoriously shy and declined my request

to have a look at his mantelpiece and stare at his Bacon.

I have tracked down the daughter of another oligarch,

Maria Baibakova, herself a collector,

to find out why Abramovich and the oligarchs

are descending on the art market.

During communism, we actually couldn't go out and buy a painting,

we couldn't aggregate funds, we didn't have bank accounts.

So all of a sudden in the '90s,

we have capitalism coming in, we are able to own private property

and after the affluent Russians

buy their first homes and their first cars,

then they move on to the luxury sector and art collecting.

Obviously, the most famous oligarch within Britain is Roman Abramovich.

Is he exceptional in terms of what he buys?

We are only aware publicly of two works of art that

Roman Abramovich has purchased...

-Which are?

-Which are the Lucian Freud and Francis Bacon Triptych.

At the same time, he's a very substantial collector.

It's not necessarily true

that everything he's buying is of that price tag.

Those were exceptional prices, weren't they?

Those were exceptional prices.

I guess, the big question is, did he overpay?

Because it is such a large sum.

I think the question is, why does it matter?

I'd love to get a sense from you of why some of this new breed,

if you like, of very wealthy Russians are buying art.

Is it because they love it? Is it because they like to show off?

Is it because art is a status symbol?

If you think about it, most Russian art collectors are very private.

You don't really know who they are,

you don't really know what they own so...

Do you know who they are and what they own?

Well, a lot of them are my friends,

so yes, but they are extremely private.

So therefore, the whole idea of buying art as a status symbol

falls apart right there

because presumably, if you're buying art for status,

you would want people to know that you bought this or that.

OK, oligarchs may not do it for global recognition

but it could be for approval among their peers.

Maria Baibakova would seem to be proof of that.

So far, the collectors of my top ten paintings have bought art

for love, for prestige, for investment

and as the ultimate luxury item.

But the painting at number four has meaning for its buyer

that goes beyond its monetary or even artistic value.

Adele Bloch-Bauer II, painted by the Viennese artist Gustav Klimt in 1912

came onto the market in spectacular fashion in 2006.

The Bloch-Bauers were wealthy Austrian Jews,

who along with so many others,

had there possessions stolen by the Nazis.

Portrait of Adele Bloch-Bauer II, 25 million.

Starting at 25 million...

After years of legal wrangling,

the painting was restored to its rightful owner,

a descendant of the family living in California,

who then decided to sell it.

This is known as restitution art.

Guy, your bidder at 78 million...

With the buyer's premium, this made Adele Bloch-Bauer II

the fourth most expensive painting in the world.

Ronald S Lauder, who is himself Jewish

and inherited the Estee Lauder cosmetics empire,

is rumoured to have bought the painting

but he's being coy about its whereabouts.

However, he has allowed me into his gallery

on New York's exclusive Fifth Avenue

to see another of his paintings which is on public view.

I've heard that this one cost him even more money.

Here, at the Neue Gallerie in New York,

there's another similar work, by the same artist, Klimt.

He painted it five years earlier and it's a portrait of the same model,

a woman called Adele Bloch-Bauer,

who was the wife of a very wealthy sugar merchant in Vienna.

The painting today is one of the most famous pictures in the world

and it's somewhere up here.

I've seen this a lot in reproduction,

I've never seen it for real until today.

And you can't help but be amazed by this gilded, bejewelled surface.

This is a very lush, sensuous work. It's so civilised.

Of course, it isn't just lush and refined,

it is partly made of precious metals.

It's got silver and gold there in the canvas

as well as paint, so that the whole image screams money.

I think that's the thing that I find quite difficult

about this painting in particular.

I just can't get past this idea that,

ultimately, it's a portrait about infatuation,

not just infatuation with a beautiful woman,

infatuation with high society.

The owner of this painting, the heir to a cosmetics fortune,

paid the notorious price, reportedly,

of 135 million for this painting alone

in a private transaction

which, however you spin it, is a staggering sum.

He calls it our Mona Lisa.

I think, referring to the gallery, he could be referring more widely

to the fact that here it is, presented as a triumph of sorts

over the atrocities that were perpetrated by the Nazis.

As beautiful as it is, I think part of the reason he paid so much

is because the history of this painting

is bound up with a much bigger story,

the history of the Jewish people during the 20th century.

It's not in the top ten

only because the amount Lauder paid cannot be verified.

Much of the art sold

never makes it to public auction,

the money changing hands remain secret,

but if 135 million is correct,

does this make Klimt one of the greatest artists in the world,

on a par with Rubens, Monet and Van Gogh?

I don't think so but perhaps for Ronald Lauder,

his purchases represent a form of cultural justice

and for him, justice comes at any price.

I've come to Venice because I've managed to secure an interview

with our next billionaire

who just happens to be one of the most important men in the world

of contemporary art right now.

And unlike many collectors,

he's more than happy to put his collection on public display.

Francois Pinault is one of France's richest businessmen.

His luxury brands include Chateau Latour,

one of the world's finest wines,

the Vail Ski Resort in America

and Christie's, the auctioneer.

So if you've been wondering where all those buyers' premiums went,

perhaps here is the answer.

I'm heading towards the Punta della Dogana,

which is one of two museums that Pinault has here in Venice.

I want to find out what motivates Pinault to collect art at all.

Does he do it for love? Or is it just another business opportunity?

Pinault is amassing a blue-chip collection of contemporary art.

This is Jeff Koons's Hanging Heart.

I don't know what Pinault paid for it,

but another almost identical work sold for 23 million in 2007.

What is the secret of building a great collection?

Be passionate

and try to discover, to be very curious and be passionate.

It's heart and passion, I think.

To be a great collector, do you need to take risks?

Absolutely, yes.

I don't know if in 50 years the artist will be...

it's not the issue.

It's not the issue?

You buy, you take your own risk. After that...

It's for history to tell?

Yes, absolutely.

The piece in here, the Maurizio Cattelan horse...

It's a good piece, like a joke.

But it is not only a joke, it is a message. He goes in the wall.

There is a risk for you and for me to go in the wall, no?

To go through a brick wall?

Yes.

Very different.

What do you think about... the bad side of the market

is that prices are so expensive now.

You spend, I don't know, 70 million...

Very sad, yes. Very sad.

Why do you think it's sad?

Because very often it's bought by people who don't like art really.

They buy art, sometimes, like a statue,

like a social appearance.

To show off, you mean?

Probably, sometimes. It's a pity, but what can we do?

The risk of Francois Pinault frittering away his millions

on art that might simply be forgotten is great.

But the potential reward of being remembered as an eagle-eyed patron

of the Monets and Rothkos of tomorrow is even greater.

Of course, Pinault can afford to take such a risk.

Lot 32 is next. Woman of Algiers....

But if you want a sure fire, armour-plated investment

that will impress the hell out of your friends,

hang splendidly on your wall,

in your luxury penthouse or on your private yacht,

then you need to get yourself, or your adviser,

down to an auction and buy a Picasso.

18,700,000.

This one went for a paltry 19 million,

plus the buyer's premium

but the third most expensive painting in the world

sold for nearly five times that.

At number three, Dora Maar au Chat.

Sold at Sotheby's in 2006,

to a mystery man in the audience who no one had ever seen before,

and who apparently spoke with a Russian accent.

I wondered whether he was a friend of Maria Baibakova's as well.

I was in the room when the painting was sold.

Right after the auction ended, there was a lot of speculation about,

who is the buyer behind the scenes?

And I think it took the art world

maybe about a year to really figure that out.

So who is the buyer behind the scenes?

So...it's a Georgian collector, who prefers to remain discreet.

But everyone in the art world knows who he is?

Eh... I don't know about everyone,

but some people in the art world know who he is.

So why don't you just tell us? If everyone knows?

I am not at liberty to.

Why, what will happen? He'll kill you?

No, of course not!

I just honour and respect people's desire for privacy and discretion.

The only Georgian oligarch who seems to fit the bill is this man -

Boris Ivanishvili- named in the Russian edition of Forbes magazine

as the likely owner of the painting.

He made his money from oil and mining, and lives in Moscow,

presumably with Dora Maar and her cat.

But this is more than I know about

the owner of the next painting on my list.

It's another Picasso and it was sold in 2004.

But nobody can tell me where it is or who the buyer might even be.

Once again, when art becomes a luxury commodity

in the hands of the rich,

sometimes it disappears from sight.

Now, this is a reproduction of the real thing.

Picasso painted Boy With a Pipe when he was 24,

and he'd recently moved to Paris and had next to nothing.

When Picasso put the finishing touches to Boy With a Pipe,

he could never in a million years

have conceived that one day his painting would be worth so much.

In 2004, Boy With a Pipe was offered at auction

and sold for £104 million, placing this at number two in our list.

So Picasso's at number three, and number two in my top ten.

In fact, he occupies all three top slots.

And that is because Picasso is much more than a painter.

He's the ultimate luxury brand.

Nowhere is this more evident than in Las Vegas.

Sin City is the last place you'd come looking for fine art,

you might think.

But actually, a lot of the people who built Vegas

covet works of art by Pablo Picasso.

And if you think about it, it is a match made in heaven.

Because Vegas is the most extravagant monument to money imaginable.

And Picasso? Well, he's famous

for being the most expensive artist in the world.

In fact the billionaire property developer who built this place,

the luxury Bellagio hotel and casino,

also amassed an equally extraordinary

collection of Picassos.

His name is Steve Wynn.

Walk through the heart of the casino

and in among the slot machines and gaming tables

you'll find an art gallery, and a Picasso "fine dining experience".

Most of the Bellagio's Picassos are here in the restaurant,

which Steve Wynn designed,

along with Picasso's own son Claude, who did the carpet.

There genuinely are Picassos everywhere.

There's a huge one over there, there's one here from 1917,

this is from 1971 and every detail is linked, of course, to Picasso.

Even the plates, which are closely modelled

on his own designs for his ceramics.

-Bon appetit.

-Thank you.

It is a little bit ironic

that these two still lives of flowers and fruit,

hanging behind me, are here at all.

Because Picasso painted them during the war,

when he was living in Nazi-occupied Paris

and food was impossibly scarce.

Now, they are backdrops for lavish banquets.

But I don't think the Belaggio really cares whether or not

you study the Picassos in here.

You're just supposed to bathe in the aura of exclusivity they project.

I guess it makes a kind of sense for one of the smartest restaurants

in a city obsessed with money

to have paintings worth tens of millions of dollars on the walls.

But it's hard not to wonder what has become of art

when it is nothing more than decoration

for the fabulously wealthy, like overblown wallpaper.

I'm Steve Wynn, and this is my new hotel.

The only one I've ever signed my name to.

Steve Wynn paid for his new hotel by selling the Belaggio,

along with all those Picassos.

But he did hold onto one, his favourite, Picasso's La Reve.

Which not only inspired the new hotel,

but nearly became the most expensive painting in the world.

Wynn suffers from a degenerative eye condition,

and he's slowly losing his sight.

In 2006, he agreed to sell La Reve - which means The Dream -

for 139 million.

But before the deal was done,

he put his elbow through the canvas and suddenly, the deal was off.

We stood there, in shock. I can't believe I've done it. Oh no.

Oh no. And then I said, "Thank God it was me and not someone else."

It's easy to find his hotel, obviously.

But the man and the painting are far harder to track down.

Now, I was hoping that Mr Wynn would invite us into his house

and I could see The Dream hanging on his wall.

But his people refused the interview,

so instead, I've come here, just outside Vegas.

I've brought along this colour reproduction of The Dream,

and you can see that it is an erotic fantasy, really.

It's a picture of Picasso's mistress, Marie-Therese Walter.

Her head is nodding off to one side

as she's dropping into the unconscious and starting to dream.

You can see her full face and also a profile.

And if you see just the profile of her face, there,

you're left with this other quite suggestive shape.

Which I think is Picasso's way of saying

that she has sex on the brain.

The Dream is one of Picasso's finest paintings

but Steve Wynn may have bought it in part because of its previous owner.

We're back to provenance.

Except this time, it is not a billionaire collector,

but a middle-class New York family

who amassed an extraordinary collection of Picassos.

What is considered the most important

20th century art collection ever offered at auction

shattered a record at Christie's in New York City last night.

The collection of Victor and Sally Ganz

raked in more than 206 million,

and that sets a record for a single owner auction.

57 items sold, the collectors' children

put the masterpieces up for sale

after Sally Ganz died earlier this year.

This is a book that Christie's produced, just before the sale.

What they were trying to convey was something about my parents,

and the way they collected art.

So the way this book works is it goes through all the artists

they collected, one by one.

And so, if you look at Picasso, you'll just see, you know...

-Well there's The Dream.

-There's The Dream!

-But all of these pictures...?

They owned, yes. Here's this.

-This one is this one!

-Yes!

This is Winter Landscape, 1950.

-There they are.

-My parents when they were getting married.

They were married in 1941.

And in 1942, which was two years before I was born,

they bought The Dream.

That was a very, very bold, brave and big purchase for them.

Do you know how much it cost them?

-It cost 7,000.

-And to put that in context...

To put it in context,

the rent on the apartment they had was 300 a month.

-So it cost more than two years' rent.

-Right. That's an investment.

It sounds like the way you're talking,

that The Dream was one of the early purchases?

It was the first thing they bought.

That was the first work of art they bought, the Dream by Picasso?

He saw the painting, he felt totally in love with it,

the way you fall in love with a person.

Couldn't get it out of his mind,

and figured they had to scrape together the money

and give up other things in order to buy it.

What did your mum and dad do?

How did they afford to be able to buy the art that they bought?

My father was in the costume jewellery business,

which he had inherited,

and my mother didn't work, as women didn't work in those days.

They didn't have much money,

they didn't have savings, they had a rent-controlled apartment.

And my father fell in love with Picasso.

It sounds like they weren't buying for investment at all.

Oh, not at all.

How would you describe the motivations that drove him

to buy these works?

Love.

How did you feel when it came to the sales?

Very sad.

First of all, right after, my mother died,

we were inundated with people you can imagine, teams of people,

people from Sotheby's, Christie's, people from England, Japan,

people from all over, descending on the house,

and that was a fairly uncomfortable situation.

-Shameless, though?

-That's what they do. That's their job.

-Does this happen all the time?

-Oh, of course.

Believe me, now it's all computerised,

but they have on their computer,

the 50 most important collectors in the world,

where their works of art are,

how old they are, when they're about to die,

who's going to inherit what, they know all this.

-It's a deathwatch!

-As my mother used to say, the vultures are circling.

Oh, the sale room is such a morbid place -

it's about death and divorce.

Was it a necessity, in the sense that there are a number of things

like taxes, death duty, and so on?

There was one big fat thing, called tax.

In America at that time the taxes were about 55 per cent.

So if you'd retained a painting like The Dream,

you'd have had to pay 55 or 60 per cent to the taxman of its value,

as perceived by the auction house?

Right.

How did you feel when you subsequently learnt

that The Dream ended up in the possession of Steve Wynn,

who by all accounts is a very different man

to the man your father was?

Steve Wynn, I've met him, he's a very nice man.

I'm sorry that he put his elbow through the painting.

That was unfortunate.

But I do remember, it was in an exhibition in New York

a couple of years ago,

and the director of the gallery said the repair is so skilful,

that no-one has been able to see where it is.

I went into the gallery, and I went into the room,

it was way down at the other end,

and as I started to walk down the room - nobody else was in there,

I could see immediately where it was.

Where was it, out of interest? Because I've heard various things.

It's... Well, you can't see it.

Here's a picture of my son standing in front of it,

but it's down, behind, right around there.

-Her left forearm?

-It's right about there, actually.

I don't know how big the hole is,

but the scar that you can see is about that big.

I mean, in a sense, here's a painting that had survived,

intact and being looked after and loved in your family

for many decades,

and it's in someone else's possession,

and it's suddenly damaged.

Well...

You know...

it really, it fundamentally doesn't change the picture.

Changed the value of the picture!

I think the picture is more important than the money, so...

When you hear sums like that

attached to works of art, can you justify that?

How do you feel?

No, I think it's very sad.

When you think what else you could do with that money in this world.

I think it's ridiculous. When you say, how much money is it worth?

Then it's not about the art anymore.

Certainly the prices paid for our top 10 paintings

are not just about the art.

They reflect provenance and attribution,

buying for investment,

and buying to make a grand statement.

Only very occasionally are they all about love.

58 million, 59 million.

60 million, 61 million.

In May 2010, another Picasso came onto the market.

72 million, 73 million.

And this painting became the most expensive work of art

ever sold at auction.

I was thrilled to be involved with it.

It hadn't been seen for 50 years, most Picasso scholars today

had not seen the picture, so it was, in that respect, thrilling.

95 million.

It's an incredibly complex and beautiful work of art.

And selling at 95 million.

At number one in our top 10, it's Nude, Green Leaves & Bust,

with the buyer's premium taking it way past the 100 million mark

to 106,482,500.

So who can afford to pay such a colossal amount of money

for a painting?

I have heard a rumour

that the most expensive painting ever sold at auction -

Nude, Green Leaves & Bust by Picasso - was bought by a Russian.

Is that something that you know about?

As far as I understand, it was bought by a Georgian.

But I can't say anything else!

Whoever has bought it has also done something rather rare.

They've agreed to lend it to Tate Modern in London for two years.

The price it achieved gives it an aura.

Maybe when people look at it now, all they see are pound signs.

But actually, it really is quite a phenomenal work.

It might not be the best painting in the world,

but it's strong, self-confident, and sophisticated.

It belongs to the same sequence of paintings as The Dream,

the one that Steve Wynn poked his elbow through.

And like that canvas,

its subject is the artist's blonde voluptuousness mistress.

Picasso was 50 when he painted this. Marie-Therese was only 22.

They'd met five years earlier,

when Picasso stopped Marie-Therese, who was 17,

in the street outside a department store in Paris,

and said, "I am Picasso, I'd like to do a portrait of you

"and I feel we're going to do great things together."

And by Marie Therese's own admission,

they were sleeping together within a week.

Looking at this picture,

you can tell that Picasso fell head over heels, because if anything,

Nude, Green Leaves & Bust is the most lavish picture

about the rapturous dividends of a mid-life crisis.

This is about sexual fulfilment, it's about illicit sensual bliss.

Marie-Therese's flesh here, which is this radiant lilac,

such a contrast to the predominantly dark blue background,

is so pliant and soft, and spherical,

just like the fiery orange red fruit in the bottom right-hand corner,

as though she's something to be consumed,

like a big, puffy pink marshmallow.

But there is one detail about this painting

that I find ever-so-slightly sinister.

If you look very carefully,

in between the plaster bust and the plant,

you can just make out a very dark, shadowy profile

that's a self-portrait,

as though the artist himself is part of that blue curtain,

watching over his lover, guarding her, enveloping her.

And Picasso supposedly said,

"For me there are only two types of women, goddesses and doormats."

But I think that here, Marie-Therese is both.

She's a resplendent fertility goddess, if you like,

but at the same time, she's positioned quite submissively,

beneath both the artist and the viewer.

And she's restrained by these two dark straps of shadow

that have this slight hint of bondage.

If you follow their lines, form two enormous Ps,

one there and one inverted here,

as though the artist is branding both the image and her body

with his own initials -

PP, for Pablo Picasso.

When the owner looks at this painting, what do you think he sees?

A love letter to a woman, perhaps.

Or, a reflection of his own sexual prowess, and extraordinary wealth.

What you can say for certain is that thankfully, here in a museum,

a Picasso can be a work of art first, and a luxury object second.

And that can only be a good thing.

But if I were you, I'd take a good, long look at this painting

while you can.

Because there's no guarantee that its anonymous owner

will keep it on public view indefinitely.

It seems so unfair that our access

to some of the world's greatest works of art

depends upon the whims of the super-rich.

Sadly, we can't enjoy

some of the most precious paintings in the world,

because so many of them are hidden in private vaults

by the millionaires and billionaires that own them.

But there are still thousands of paintings owned by us, all of us,

and to find out more about paintings you can see for free near you,

visit:

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