Money Walks... Sort Of.

Alberto Giacometti's 1960 sculpture of a 6-foot-tall, bronze slim, slim man, "Walking Man I," sold for 65 million pounds ($104.3 million) in a Sotheby's auction, shattering the record price for a work of art at auction. Perhaps a sign of a potential resurgent of art collecting? The bidding began at 12 million than quickly escalate, with roughly 10 bidders buying for the sculpture; the purchaser remains anonymous.

The 6-foot-tall bronze depicts a wiry man in mid-stride, his right foot jutting forward, his head erect and and his arms hanging at his side. Giacometti, a modern master known for his haunting sculptures of blank-faced Everymen, cast the work 60 years ago as part of a commission to plant several of his bronze figures on Chase Manhattan Bank's Pine Street plaza in New York City. The artist famously struggled with the project, eventually quitting it but casting stand-alone versions of several of the planned figures, including "Walking Man I." The price breaks the existing $104.2 million auction record, set six years ago at Sotheby's, for Pablo Picasso's 1906 portrait "Boy With a Pipe," whose buyer remains unknown.

Just who the hell was this artist whose work essentially shattered the economic cloud that of budget cuts and recessions? Alberto Giacometti,(b. Oct. 10, 1901, Borgonovo, Switz.—d. Jan. 11, 1966, Chur), Swiss sculptor and painter, best known for his attenuated sculptures of solitary figures. Notable works include “Head of a Man on a Rod” (1947) and “Composition with Seven Figures and a Head (The Forest)” (1950). His work has been compared to that of the existentialists in literature (ooohhhh happy dance happy dance); in 1963 Giacometti designed the set for Samuel Beckett’s drama Waiting for Godot.

So how do I feel about a work of art being sold for such an absurd amount of coin? I have yet to decide. I think I will forever be doomed to be vulnerable inside the complicated justifications of art and its value; I will save myself for this argument at a later date. However, I will leave you with my semi-developed thesis: Art is often taken as a primary example of something with intrinsic (rather than just instrumental) value. But what’s so valuable about ‘intrinsic’ value?