Mmmmm. Bacon.

What becomes a legend most? What do we prize and value more than anything else? I suppose it's those things that are most rare: integrity, love, a parking space in the Best Buy lot the morning after Thanksgiving. It depends on your values. What you hold dear is different than what is most important to the person sitting next to you. That is why auctions can be tricky things. When you bring together a room full of people who are all interested in the same items, they can push the value of particular things through the roof.
This may explain how a painting by Francis Bacon, "Three Studies of Lucian Freud," recently sold for a record one hundred forty-two million dollars. And change. This beat the old record, set by Edvard Munch's "The Scream" less than a year ago, of nearly one hundred twenty million dollars. The Bacon painting sold after "six minutes of fierce bidding in the room and on the phone" to Acquavella Galleries in Manhattan, according to a statement from Christie's. The auction house, not the New Jersey governor.
In that same auction, Jeff Koons' "Balloon Dog (Orange)," a ten-foot-tall stainless steel sculpture resembling a twisted child's party balloon sold for almost sixty million dollars, a record for a living artist. This immediately makes me concerned for Mister Koons' health, since obviously his earning potential is limited by half simply because he is alive. Or at least that's what the math tells me. Then again, it may not be math that drives this particular machine. Supply and demand seems to be the underlying motif. There is a greater demand for Bacon, since he will no longer be painting. And besides, who doesn't love Bacon?