Garçon à la pipe ($128.2 Million)

Artist: Pablo Picasso 

Date Painted: 1905 

Type: Oil on Canvas 

Sold To: Barilla Group
Price (Date of Sale): $104.2 Million (May 4, 2004) 

Adjusted Price Today: ~ $128.2 Million 

Garçon à la pipe depicts a Parisian boy holding a pipe in his left hand and wearing a garland or wreath of flowers. 

Many art critics have stated that the painting's high sale price has much more to do with the artist's name than with the merit or historical importance of the painting. The Washington Post's article on the sale contained the following characterisation of the reaction: “Picasso expert Pepe Karmel, reached in New York the morning after the sale, was waxing wroth about the whole affair. "I'm stunned," he said, "that a pleasant, minor painting could command a price appropriate to a real masterwork by Picasso. This just shows how much the marketplace is divorced from the true values of art.""