At Sotheby’s yesterday, collapsed investment bank Lehman Brothers sold off some of the million-dollar paintings they used to have water-cooler conversations around, raising $12 million to go toward the noble cause of paying Lehman’s creditors. The top sellers included works by Ethiopian artist Julie Mehretu, who sold for over $1 million, a record for the artist, and an oil painting by Liu Ye of China, which went for $962,500. What didn’t sell at all, but was expected to go for a cool million? British artist Damien Hirst’s We’ve Got Style. Well, Hirst is the man who put a unicorn in a tank of formaldehyde before Lehaman collapsed. Times have changed! If you missed your chance to take home a piece of financial-crisis history, the rest of it goes on the block at Christie’s in London on Wednesday. [BBC, LindsayPollock]
