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No work of art is worth £65m

Artworld records were shattered when Giacometti’s etiolated, lifesize sculpture of a man, L'homme qui marche I (Walking Man I), sold for £65m at Sotheby’s in London in February 2010, making it the most expensive work of art ever sold at auction, beating into second place Picasso’s Garcon a la Pipe, the previous record-holder, which had sold for £58.5m in New York in 2004. The price, reached during eight minutes of feverish bidding, was paid by an anonymous telephone bidder. It was more than three times the auction house’s high estimate of the piece’s value and three times the previous record for a work by the Swiss artist: even more astonishing, the sculpture isn’t even unique.

The sale was greeted with whoops and cheers by the crowd in the auction room. But it has become ammunition for those who believe the world of art dealing is entirely disconnected from reality – a place where prices bear no relation to the artistic value of the works themselves, and where immoral, selfish plutocrats waste huge wads of cash to boost their own egos. Indeed, just three months later, the price record was broken again, when Picasso's Nude, Green Leaves and Bust sold for £70m.