Credit: Dangerous Minds / MOMA / Vea y Lea

Let’s get one thing straight: people don’t buy masterpieces by Pablo Picasso, Van Gogh, Monet, whoever you can think of, because they’re fans of the art. Or at the very least, that’s rather low on the list of reasons why.

No, it’s vanishingly rare that someone with the kind of money that makes buying a literal Picasso an option is someone with deep thoughts about art. Or, as is the case, deep thoughts about much of anything other than what their buddy Jeffrey can provide for them. No, maybe there’s some thought in the back of their coke-addled craniums that “yeah, that is a nice painting”, but the most important thing for them is that very few things retain value like a piece of art.

Cars decay fairly quickly. Property costs a fortune to maintain and is a speculative market that regularly blows up in people’s faces. The less said about the stock market, the better and crypto is a straight-up con. Everything is a risk unless you can get hold of a valuable piece of art. It’s expensive to acquire, but once you’ve got a foothold in the market, you get a feeling for what’s going to sell and, more importantly, what’s going to retain or expand its value.

And expand they do. Seriously, the highest prices paid for pieces of art make Hollywood blockbusters look like Freddos. Take the Picasso masterwork Le Rêve, for example. Putting aside the fact that Picasso was painting his 20-year-old mistress Marie-Therese Walter (Pablo himself was 50), the work is pretty incredible. Walter depicted in almost holy white, almost being embraced by a scarlet armchair as she rests her head back in serene peace. In 2006, the piece was agreed to be sold for $139million. For context, the second-highest-grossing movie at the world’s box office that year, The Da Vinci Code, was made for $125m.

Then, the night before the sale went through, its owner literally broke it.

…but how do you break a Picasso masterpiece?

It sounds like a particularly cruel nightmare, but it’s true.

Five years earlier, Le Rêve had been sold to the casino magnate Steve Wynn for an undisclosed sum speculated to be about $60m. It was the crown jewel of his extensive art collection, but after five years, Wynn decided it was time to move the piece on, agreeing to sell it to hedge fund manager Steve Cohen for over double the amount he bought it for. Y’know what I was saying about the value of art expanding quickly?

However, Wynn decided to invite some friends over for one last look at the piece. This proved to be a disastrous move, because in showing the piece off, Wynn put his elbow through the canvas, putting a six-inch tear through the figure’s left forearm. Needless to say, the deal was off, but in a truly spectacular act of shamelessness, Wynn said that he took the act as a sign not to sell the painting. Yeah, I bet you did, Steve. He spent $90,000 having the painting repaired, then had the painting revalued. This time, the painting was worth a paltry $85m. Chump change, I’m sure you’d agree.

Wynn was trying to save face but clearly going spare. He tried to force the deal through with Cohen for the re-evaluated price, claiming the loss back from his insurers, Lloyd’s of London. They refused to provide the difference, and Wynn took them to court for this, with a settlement agreed on out of court. It didn’t matter anyway because Cohen walked away from the deal as a whole. At least until 2013, when he went back in for the painting and bought it for $155m.

Such is the way for the mega-rich. You can fuck up as much as you want and still basically get away with it, even when you destroy a Picasso masterpiece.