Love Me? Then You’ll Buy Me This
Are you listening, you wealthy LW readers? I’m talking about “Pablo Picasso,†or as art world denizens call it, “the Zervos,†the most prominent catalogue raisonné of Picasso’s paintings and drawings. Comprising 33 volumes and more than 16,000 images, it was the result of an intense four-decade collaboration between the artist and Christian Zervos. Now, it’s being reissued. The pre-order price will be $15,000 for the set; upon the work’s release in November, it will climb to $20,000. While the price tags may startle, in its reissuing publisher’s view they are “irrelevant†to his target audience: “You can’t buy anything original by Picasso for less than $500,000, or maybe a couple hundred thousand dollars, that’s any good,†the reissuer said.
