Where art thou?

An art auction in New York has raised multi-billion dirham prices – along with questions about value

Alberto Giacometti's "L'homme Au Doigt" (Pointing man) sculpture has sold at auction for $141.3 million. Carlo Allegri / Reuters

The eye-watering sums paid for a Picasso painting, a Giacometti sculpture and 33 other works of art at a New York auction this week raise a perennial question: how do you value art? The well-heeled participants answered that question with their bids, which with fees totalled more than $706 million (Dh2.6bn).

In purely monetary terms, the record price of $179.4 million for Picasso’s 1955 painting, Les Femmes d’Alger (Version ‘O’), has been a reasonable investment for the Saudi investor who bought it for $31.9m in 1997. Picasso himself sold it as a package of 15 paintings for what now seems to be a paltry $212,500 but must have been a mammoth amount in 1956.

But whether a painting cost $179m or $179, shouldn’t its value be measured by what it invokes in those who see it? That raises a further point: will the mammoth value of this painting mean it will be hidden away in a vault or mansion rather than seen by the public?