What One Million Dollars Buy

Fastest Bugatti Veyron yet. Starts at $2.3M

2012-04-27T16:16:30Z

The 2012 Veyron’s power has been increased from 1001 bhp to 1200 horse power and 922 to 1106 lb-ft of torque. Unbelievable!

One of a Kind Charlie Chaplin Film Expected to Fetch A Significant Six-figure Sum

2011-06-05T01:06:24Z

Bonhams is going to sell a unique and extremely rare Charlie Chaplin movie titled ‘Zepped’ on June 29. The 35mm film roll which is believed to be last surviving copy of this film is expected to fetch six-figures at the auction.

From the press release:

In 2009 the vendor Morace Park bought a battered cinema reel tin from an online auction site. Once he eventually opened the tin it revealed a roll of film entitled ‘Charlie Chaplin in Zepped’. Having been unable to find any record or mention of the film during his subsequent research, Mr Park began a worldwide investigation to find out if he had discovered the last copy of a forgotten Charlie Chaplin film. On extremely fragile 35mm nitrate film and almost 7 minutes long, the movie features some of the earliest known animation in film history. The reel shows scenes of a Zeppelin raid over London whilst Chaplin acts in his trademark comic style. During the First World War Zeppelins were used in bombing raids over England and France. They were referred to at this time as ‘baby killers’ and ‘terrors of the sky’ and it is believed ‘Zepped’, was designed as propaganda to defuse the terror inspired by these attacks, using Chaplin’s world famous comedy. Professor Paul Wells, Director of The Animation Academy Research Group at Loughborough University believes that “the zeppelin is possibly real, but could also be a premature form of puppetry.” If the image of the Zeppelin in the film is genuine then it would be the only known live footage showing a zeppelin over London at that time. Alternatively, if the Zeppelin footage is animation then it is an extremely rare and early example of this type of animation…

More info on Bonhams website

1935 4CS 1100/1500 Roadster – $819,825

2011-06-04T20:09:14Z

Bonhams lot#172, Monte Carlo, MCO, 5/20/06

First supplied to Turin-based Scuderia Subalpina, who ran it in the 1935 Mille Miglia. Likely to have gained the current 1500-cc motor for the 1938 race. Uniquely rebodied without cycle fenders and with a wider body before 1969, when Briggs Cunningham acquired it. Restored at some time, then static in the Rosso Bianco Collection for years; full re-commissioning is required. Various paint marks, drab interior, and disappointing engine bay presentation.

Despite its completely changed appearance, the car’s long-ago race history is sufficiently gilt-edged to justify the bid, a figure at least one other person was also nearly prepared to match on sale day. Will the new owner leave this car as it is today… or want to be a time traveller and re-enact its 1935 Mille Miglia appearance as recorded in period race photos? Either way, more money is due to make it go properly.

XVII Century Ancient Guard Palace For Sale on JamesList for 1M Euros

2011-06-02T14:12:33Z

We found a cool real estate for sale on JamesList today: a XVII century, fully restored ancient guard palace is for sale for € 1,000,000 ($1,446,000). It is located in Umbria, Italy and is advertised as best used for an accomodation business, but who knows, maybe you just want to dress up in medival costumes every now and then and use it as your private escape from your present time.

More photos and details on JamesList

Temple Festival in Bali by Adrien-Jean Le Mayeur De Merpres sold for HK$7,700,000

2011-06-02T13:45:00Z

Adrien-Jean Le Mayeur De Merpres’s painting titled “Temple Festival in Bali” was sold for HK$7,700,000 ($993,666) by Christie’s at the Southeast Asian Modern and Contemporary Art auction in Hong Kong on May 30, 2011

From the lot’s note:

More than any other Indo-European artist of the modern period, Belgian-born Adrien-Jean Le Mayeur de Merprès has been pivotal in creating the myth of the Balinese female as artistic muse. Although he was extensively schooled in art since boyhood and already an accomplished travel painter during his early career, he is irrevocably best known for the works which focus on his wife, the temple dancer Ni Pollok, and her coterie of beautiful Balinese maidens within lush tropical landscapes. Like most young European middle-class males who yearned to see the world, Le Mayeur first left his native Belgium as a sailor bound for the United States. After a lengthy period of travelling through geographically far-flung places such as Africa, Tahiti and India, Le Mayeur finally discovered Bali at the ripe age of 52. Deeply enthralled, he settled down to paint out his remaining days in this island paradise, declaring “Cette fois j’allait vivre exclusivement pour mon art et que rien ne pourrait m’en distraire.” (“This time I shall live exclusively for my art and nothing shall distract me.”)
Le Mayeur’s rich, luminously tinted canvases illustrate the idyllic island setting of Bali, recreating it as the Polynesia of the East. Preferring a warm colour palette and semi-impressionistic style which infused his works with tropical sensuality, Le Mayeur excelled at depicting the grace and languor of Balinese dancers moving in a climate of warmth and charm. His artistic highlights undoubtedly are the vibrant group scenes, showing young dancers congregating on a wooden verandah during the heat of the afternoon or rehearsing in a sun-dappled garden overhung with hibiscus flowers and palm trees. This present work was most likely painted in his early Balinese period, bearing close compositional and colour palette similarities in particular to two works exhibited in his third Singapore exhibition in 1937.
“The first period [until 1937] is characterized by an approach to paint which is less thick, and has a more transparent, draughtsmanlike execution than that which follows… In this period he also creates some multi-figure pieces, for instance market and temple scenes. It is a very free, expressionist period, as is demonstrated by the unrestrained interpretation of anatomy (big feet, elongated arms and bent figures). As the decade passes, this expressive turn becomes more marked. Detail, in the form of flowers and leaves starts to become more important. An intense and subtle use of colour combination with sparkling light remains his main force. Although his work depicts daily life in Bali, he is still an exponent of late European impressionism, which favours a gentle, earthy palette of yellow, brown, beige and soft blue which is contrasted to red, pink, orange and purple accents.” (Drs. Job Ubbens and Cathinka Huizing, Adrien-Jean Le Mayeur de Merprès: Painter-Traveller, The Netherlands, 1995, p. 127)
Temple Festival in Bali deservedly ranks among Le Mayeur’s finest works; offering a rare and comprehensive portrayal of the festive marketplace in front of the village temple on special feast days. The visual structure emphasises the crowded foreground, using a perspective of concentric circles across the horizontal plane which culminates in the central performance, illuminated by the patch of sun-ensconced ground; in imitation of the artist’s precise breadth of view according to his positioning within the scenario. The immediate activity is vividly and dynamically described, with a rich variety of detail and gestural quality. This is strongly contrasted with the artist’s secondary technique of thinly layering pastel shades to create pictorial depth within the background, only providing the barest delineations of shapes and shadow. The combination of these two distinctive forms of addressing pictorial texture creates a mirage-like quality, rendering a momentary tableau, a dramatic interlude within Le Mayeur’s idyllic Balinese days. The dancing girls in their high elaborate headdresses are still the focus of Le Mayeur’s visual attention, but also unusually prominent and carefully illustrated are the male musicians and attendant villagers who throng around the performers, enjoying a meal of native fruit and social conversation. The entire composition is beautifully framed by the elegant ritual parasols, hanging vines of the banyan trees overhead and fronds of banana leaves in the distance, while the imposing arched pagoda of the Hindu temple shimmers behind the joyous crowd.
Jop Ubbens

Lancia Stratos HF Zero sold for €761,600

2011-06-01T06:02:37Z

One of the many million dollar classic sport cars sold by RM Auctions during the Villa d’Este auction on May 21 is the following Lancia Stratos HF Zero . It was sold for €761,600 ($1,095,333)

Liz #5, a portrait of Elizabeth Taylor by Andy Warhol sells for close to $27 million

2011-05-13T14:42:35Z

Four Andy Warhol paintings – including “Liz #5″, a portrait of Elizabeth Taylor – was sold for multi million dollars at the Contemporary Art auction by Phillips de Pury & Company in New York on May 12.

Below are the title of the paintings with their respective auction results:

“Liz #5″ - $26,962,500

“Flowers” - $8,146,500

“Third Eye” - $7,026,500

“Witch”- $2,658,500

The paiting title “Third Eye” – pictured below – was a collaboration between Andy Warhol and Jean-Michel Basquiat

Source: CNN and ArtInfo

René Magritte’s painting sold for £657,250

2011-02-11T06:47:30Z

A René Magritte painting title “La recherche de l’absolu” was sold for £657,250 ($1,055,544) by Christie’s at the “The Art of the Surreal Evening Sale” auction on February, 9 2011. Among the great surrealist works that were auctioned, René Magritte’s other painting “L’aimant” sold for the most, an amazing £4,745,250 including buyer’s premium.

From the lot notes:

Executed in 1960, La recherche de l’absolu shows one of René Magritte’s ‘Leaf-Trees’, a motif that recurred in many of his pictures, having first made its appearance in La géante of 1935. Here, though, the lush green of La géante has given way to a more autumnal appearance. Tackling the quandary of what a leaf-tree, which has veins instead of branches, would look like in Autumn, Magritte has shown it with the ‘branches’ barren. With the green gone, it resembles a leaf attached by insects, with the veins left intact, and adds a skeletal atmosphere of poetic decay, of the cycle of the seasons and by extension of life, to this picture. That ambience is emphasised by the setting red sun, which casts an evening pall over the barren, mountainous landscape and has allowed the red to filter into the sky.
There is an eloquent simplicity to the composition of La recherche de l’absolu, and it is perhaps for this reason that the artist revisited the theme, which he had originally conceived in a group of three paintings created in 1940. Perhaps the atmosphere of the Second World War had informed the originals; here, in the gouache, Magritte has revisited the composition of the first of those pictures (S. 481), yet has carried out various small changes too, as was usually his practice with his works on paper. Rather than re-create, he revisited, resulting in a new artwork. In this way, he has managed to create something that retains the quality of the ‘three very pure pictures’ he had discussed with clear pride in a letter to Claude Spaak two decades earlier (Magritte, quoted in D. Sylvester (ed.), S. Whitfield & M. Raeburn, René Magritte Catalogue Raisonné, Vol.II, London, 1993, p. 282).

2010 Pagani Zonda R sold for £806,400

2011-01-20T17:13:18Z

Among many other stunning cars (including the 1965 Aston Martin DB5 James Bond movie car), RM Auctions also sold a 2010 Pagani Zonda R for £806,400 ($1,287,820) at the auction of London on Oct 27, 2010.

To see what classic cars one million dollars will buy you, check out RM Auctions Arizona sale, happening today (Jan 20, 2011). A good example is this 1973 Ferrari 365 GTB/4 Daytona Spider with an pre-auction estimate of $800,000-$1,000,000 . We’ll post about the million-dollars sales at this auction, once the results are in.

Top 5 most expensive cars for 2011

2011-01-15T18:11:02Z

According to duPont Registry, the following are the most expensive cars for 2011. Below is the list with some pictures and videos:

What One Million Dollars Buy

Fastest Bugatti Veyron yet. Starts at $2.3M

One of a Kind Charlie Chaplin Film Expected to Fetch A Significant Six-figure Sum

1935 4CS 1100/1500 Roadster – $819,825

XVII Century Ancient Guard Palace For Sale on JamesList for 1M Euros

Temple Festival in Bali by Adrien-Jean Le Mayeur De Merpres sold for HK$7,700,000

Lancia Stratos HF Zero sold for €761,600

Liz #5, a portrait of Elizabeth Taylor by Andy Warhol sells for close to $27 million

René Magritte’s painting sold for £657,250

2010 Pagani Zonda R sold for £806,400

Top 5 most expensive cars for 2011

Bugatti Veyron Super Sport – MSRP: $2,600,000

Aston Martin One-77 – MSRP: $1,870,000

Koenigsegg Agera – MSRP: ~$1,500,000

Maybach Landaulet – MSRP: $1,405,000

Paganini C9 – MSRP: $1,300,000