The painting on a yacht
In 2017, Salvator Mundi sold at Christie’s for $450.3 million. The buyer: Mohammed bin Salman. Attribution to Leonardo is disputed. Condition was poor. Christie’s marketed it with cinematic video and the tagline The Last Da Vinci.
The painting has not been publicly displayed since. It may be on a yacht.
That transaction tells you more about the art world than any aesthetic theory produced in fifty years.
Follow the money
Galleries control supply by deciding which collectors may purchase. Auction houses provide guarantees ensuring sellers a minimum price while collecting premiums up to 26 percent. Major collectors sit on museum boards that exhibit artists whose work they own. The circuit is closed. The same fifty people run it.
Freeport storage in Geneva, Luxembourg, and Singapore holds an estimated $100 billion in art never hung on a wall — tax-efficient stores of value moved between jurisdictions to defer capital gains. Art Basel’s own report: 59 percent of high-net-worth collectors cited investment
as primary motivation. Not beauty. Return on capital.
The debate between the avant-garde and the traditionalists — concept versus craft — is genuine. It operates inside a system that does not care which side wins. The market sells both. A Gerhard Richter and a Jeff Koons balloon dog occupy the same freeport vaults.
Where we concede ground: Not all buying is speculation. A person standing in front of a painting they love is not a mark.
What would change our mind: If major auction houses disclosed all guarantee arrangements and the market’s price distribution held unchanged.
Read the full synthesis: Is modern art a genuine evolution or did someone lose the plot?