Art Reboot

57 enhances the profile and appeal of their paintings. This also applies to the audience’s side of the art object. If a painting once belonged to Napoleon or Elizabeth Taylor, it is going to have enhanced meaning to an audience and, therefore, a boost in its commercial value. The same is, of course, true of anything once owned by celebrities, art or not. President Kennedy’s golf clubs are worth more than my brother’s; about US$1.16 million more, in fact. Many factors affect the profile and desirability of a work of art. If the Mona Lisa had not been stolen from the Louvre in 1911 by Vincenzo Peruggia, it would not today be probably the single most famous and iconic painting in the world. Missing for two years, it gained worldwide fame to the point where, we are told, thousands more people visited the Louvre to gaze at the empty space where it once hung than used to visit it when it was there. Peruggia’s caper added immeasurably to Leonardo’s intriguing and accomplished but otherwise relatively straightforward Re- naissance portrait, vastly enhancing its value in the marketplace. Today on the open market it would probably become the most valuable work of art ever sold, potentially worth billions of dollars as the ultimate art trophy. The Mona Lisa is a famous western example, but it may not be many years before a Chinese masterpiece from antiquity will become the world’s most valuable work of art, although it too may be in a museum, with only a potential market value. Over the past ten years, icons of Chinese painting have soared in market value, from a few tens of thousands of pounds to a few millions, and sometimes tens of millions. A handscroll by Wu Bin painted