“Yes, I can draw it like that,” I want to say, looking at Malevich’s Black Square or another picture that looks straightforward, but brought a lot of money to the author.
Well, it’s never too late to take a little paint, throw it on the canvas and try to profitably sell your creation. And to motivate you to this achievement, we present the top 10 most expensive single-color paintings in the world.
Some of these masterpieces of painting were not put up for auction, and their cost can only be called approximately.
10. Shiraze Hushiari, “Veil”
The price is 60 thousand dollars.
In 1999, Iranian artist Shiraze Hushiari painted a canvas that appears to be simply an unevenly colored black square. According to Shiraze herself, this is a self portrait.
The artist wrote Sufi phrases in Arabic on black painted canvas. However, they can only be seen at very close range. Critics consider her work a cross between painting and graphics.
9. Li Yuan Chia, “Monochrome White Painting”
The possible cost of the work is 100 thousand dollars.
It is a white canvas with four small cardboard circles placed on the canvas, just below and to the left of the center. Two large circles are on the left, while two smaller circles are located closer to the center.
The circles are covered with the same white paint as the rest of the surface of the painting. Chia described these circles as “cosmic points,” a motive he developed in the early 1960s and remained central to his subsequent practice.
The asymmetric placement of "cosmic points" in the picture gives it an element of randomness, which is refuted by the rigor and simplicity of the canvas as a whole.
8. Allan McCollum, “Surrogate Paintings”
Sold for 125 thousand euros
Although the work of a modern American artist looks like framed paintings, in fact, they are painted models. However, there are no two identical “Surrogate paintings”. Although they are mass-produced, each dummy is hand-painted.
As conceived by the author, such pseudo pictures should help bridge the gap between art and automation.
7. Gerhard Richter, Blood Red Mirror
The cost of the painting is 1.1 million dollars.
The paintings by German artist Gerhard Richter range from detailed, almost photorealistic portraits to plain paintings. He even designed a stained glass window for Cologne Cathedral, which is formed from squares of colored glass arranged in random order.
One of the most famous works of the artist - “Blood-red mirror” - really is a mirror painted over with red paint. It was sold in 2009 for $ 1.1 million. I wonder what the buyer wants to see in such a mirror?
6. Ed Reinhardt, "Abstract Painting"
Approximate price - from $ 2 million.
An artist from New York in his youth was a supporter of abstract expressionism, the subliminal use of colors and shapes. His early works included geometric shapes and other traditional methods.
However, after the 1940s, Reinhardt began to create paintings consisting entirely of one color. Over the past 10 years of his life, he created only a series of square canvases, fully painted in black.
At first glance, they may seem completely faceless. But there are subtle differences between each picture, the detection of which can take hours, or even days.
When these works of Reinhardt were first shown at the Museum of Modern Art in New York, one visitor canceled his membership in protest.
5. Yves Klein, “Nameless Blue Monochrome”
The probable price is 3-4 million dollars.
If you want to see how the “mood blue color” looks, take a look at the works of the French artist Yves Klein, one of which opens the top 5 most expensive monochrome paintings in the world. The main color in his work symbolizes the infinity of the universe.
In 1958, the artist presented his exhibition in Paris, entitled “The Void”, after having sent out an enormous number of people invitations on blue paper and, of course, in blue envelopes. And its name did not deceive the audience: indoors, empty walls of white and blue were waiting for them.
Klein even created a trademark by patenting his own version of an ultramarine pigment recipe called International Klein Blue. Until the artist’s death, “international Klein Blue” was his calling card.
4. Pierrot Manzoni, Achrome
One of the works of the series went under the hammer at Christie’s auction for $ 5.2 million.
We already wrote about this scandalous artist in a selection of the simplest things that made their owners fabulously rich. He did not hesitate to sell his feces to connoisseurs of art (and they took it), signed on the bodies of volunteers and issued them a certificate of authenticity, handed out visitors boiled eggs with a fingerprint of his own and did many more things that were eccentric at best.
One of Manzoni's projects was Achrome, a series of monochrome paintings that were made by placing the canvas in liquid kaolin. The complete lack of color was supposed to focus the viewer's attention on the material qualities of the object. Wrinkles and wrinkles arose during the manufacturing and drying of the canvas, and the artist’s hand did not touch them.
Toward the end of the series, Manzoni stopped using canvas and began using cotton, acrylic resins, fiberglass, and other materials. He also began tinting his work with pigments that change color over time.
3. Bryce Marden, “The Picture of Dylan”
It may cost about 10 million dollars.
This painting was named after Bob Dylan, a friend of Marden. The artist created it to help the singer's career. However, by the time the work was completed, Dylan, the future Nobel Prize winner in literature, was already better known than Marden.
The canvas was coated with a mixture of turpentine and beeswax, to which gray was added. Then the artist used a spatula to level the surface. At the bottom of the picture is a strip of unpainted canvas.
2. Kazimir Malevich, Black Square
Auction Sotheby’s estimates the picture at $ 20 million.
Perhaps the most famous one-color painting in the world, which the pranksters aptly nicknamed "Blacks steal coal in a black room." She belongs to the number of Suprematist works of the Russian avant-garde artist Kazimir Malevich, in which he studied the basic possibilities of color and composition.
While Reinhardt filled his entire canvas with black paint, Malevich simply drew a black square in the center of his canvas. This work became part of the triptych, which also included the Black Circle and the Black Cross.
Although the picture was once spotlessly black, age left its mark on it in the form of numerous cracks on the surface.
1. Robert Rauschenberg, “The White Series of Paintings”
Rauschenberg's paintings cost up to 89 million dollars.
Five paintings from this series are a set of 1, 2, 3, 4 or 7 identical white canvases posted together. When they were first introduced to the public, they looked like a cheap trick, and now Rauschenberg’s white paintings can be found in galleries around the world.
Rauschenberg was a friend of the composer John Cage, who wrote a piece of music called “4’33.” During its performance, a pianist or other instrumental performer must sit silently for 4 minutes and 33 seconds. As a result, the audience hears only environmental sounds. Maybe this is the perfect accompaniment for these paintings.
