''Le Rêve'' (English: ''The Dream'') is a 1932
oil on canvas painting (130 × 97 cm) by
Pablo Picasso
Pablo Diego José Francisco de Paula Juan Nepomuceno María de los Remedios Cipriano de la Santísima Trinidad Ruiz y Picasso (25 October 1881 – 8 April 1973) was a Spanish painter, sculptor, printmaker, Ceramic art, ceramicist, and Scenic ...
, then 50 years old, portraying his 22-year-old mistress
Marie-Thérèse Walter. It is said to have been painted in one afternoon, on 24 January 1932. It belongs to Picasso's period of distorted depictions, with its oversimplified outlines and contrasted colors resembling early
cubism. The erotic content of the painting has been noted repeatedly, with critics pointing out that Picasso painted an erect penis, presumably symbolizing his own, in the upturned face of his model. On 26 March 2013, the painting was sold in a private sale for $155 million, making it
one of the most expensive paintings ever sold.
Provenance
''Le Rêve'' was purchased for $7,000 in 1941 by
Victor and Sally Ganz of
New York City
New York, often called New York City (NYC), is the most populous city in the United States, located at the southern tip of New York State on one of the world's largest natural harbors. The city comprises five boroughs, each coextensive w ...
.
This purchase began their 50-year collection of works by just five artists: Picasso,
Jasper Johns,
Robert Rauschenberg,
Frank Stella, and
Eva Hesse. After the Ganzes died (Victor in 1987 and Sally in 1997), their collection, including ''Le Rêve'', was sold at
Christie's
Christie's is a British auction house founded in 1766 by James Christie (auctioneer), James Christie. Its main premises are on King Street, St James's in London, and it has additional salerooms in New York, Paris, Hong Kong, Milan, Geneva, Shan ...
auction house on November 11, 1997, as a means of settling their inheritance tax bill. ''Le Rêve'' sold for an unexpectedly high $48.4 million,
at the time the fourth
most expensive painting sold (tenth when taking inflation into account). The entire collection set a record for the sale of a private collection, bringing $206.5 million. The total amount paid by the Ganzes over their lifetime of collecting these pieces was around $2 million.
The buyer who purchased ''Le Rêve'' at Christie's in 1997 appears to have been the Austrian-born investment fund manager
Wolfgang Flöttl, who also briefly held
Van Gogh's ''
Portrait of Dr. Gachet'' in possession in the late 1990s. In 2001, under financial pressure, he sold ''Le Rêve'' to casino magnate
Steve Wynn for an undisclosed sum, estimated to be about $60 million.
[
]
Wynn incident
In 2006, the painting was the centerpiece of Wynn's collection and he had considered naming his Wynn Las Vegas resort after it. During a period of anti-French sentiment in the United States in response to France's opposition to the United States' proposed invasion of Iraq, Wynn decided it was inadvisable to give the resort a French name. In October 2006, Wynn told a group of his friends (including the screenwriter Nora Ephron and her husband Nick Pileggi, the broadcaster Barbara Walters, the art dealer Serge Sorokko and his wife, the model Tatiana Sorokko and the lawyer David Boies
David Boies ( ; born March 11, 1941) is an American lawyer and chairman of the law firm Boies, Schiller & Flexner, Boies Schiller Flexner LLP. Boies rose to national prominence for three major cases: leading the U.S. federal government's succes ...
and his wife, Mary) that he had agreed the day before to sell ''Le Rêve'' for $139 million to Steve Cohen. At the time, this price would have made ''Le Rêve'' the most expensive piece of art ever. While Wynn was showing the painting to his friends, apparently about to reveal the now still officially undisclosed previous owner (see above), he put his right elbow through the canvas, puncturing the left forearm of the figure and creating a six-inch tear.[ Nora Ephron]
"My Weekend in Vegas"
''The Huffington Post
''HuffPost'' (''The Huffington Post'' until 2017, itself often abbreviated as ''HPo'') is an American progressive news website, with localized and international editions. The site offers news, satire, blogs, and original content, and covers p ...
'', 16 October 2006.
Ephron offered as an explanation that Wynn uses wild gestures while speaking and has retinitis pigmentosa, which affects his peripheral vision. Later, Wynn said that he took the event as a sign to not sell the painting.[Nick Paumgarten]
The $40-million elbow
''The New Yorker
''The New Yorker'' is an American magazine featuring journalism, commentary, criticism, essays, fiction, satire, cartoons, and poetry. It was founded on February 21, 1925, by Harold Ross and his wife Jane Grant, a reporter for ''The New York T ...
'', 23 October 2006
After a $90,000 repair, the painting was re-valued at $85 million. Wynn filed a claim to recover the $54 million perceived loss from his Lloyd's of London
Lloyd's of London, generally known simply as Lloyd's, is a insurance and reinsurance market located in London, England. Unlike most of its competitors in the industry, it is not an insurance company; rather, Lloyd's is a corporate body gover ...
insurers, an amount which would have covered most of the initial cost of buying the painting. When the insurers balked, Wynn sued them in January 2007.[Marc Spiegler]
Vom Traum zum Alptraum
, Artnet.de, 17 January 2007
The case was eventually settled out of court in March 2007. Cohen bought the painting from Wynn in 2013 for $155 million (ca. $134 million in 2006 dollars). Ignoring inflation, the price was estimated to be the highest ever paid for an artwork by a U.S. collector until Kenneth C. Griffin's ~$300 million purchase of Willem de Kooning
Willem de Kooning ( , ; April 24, 1904 – March 19, 1997) was a Dutch-American abstract expressionist artist. Born in Rotterdam, in the Netherlands, he moved to the United States in 1926, becoming a US citizen in 1962. In 1943, he married pa ...
's '' Interchange'' in September 2015.
See also
* List of most expensive paintings
References
{{DEFAULTSORT:Reve
1932 paintings
Paintings by Pablo Picasso
Portraits of women
20th-century portraits
Cubist paintings
Oil on canvas paintings
Portraits by Spanish artists