Those are the words you utter when you drop your drink or maybe when you spill some chocolate cake on your white shirt…
Steve Wynn uttered those words upon realizing he stuck his elbow through a $139 million painting…
He bought the picture in 1997 from another collector for $48.4 million. Priceless, in fact, is not quite accurate. For Mr Wynn recently agreed to sell it to a Connecticut hedge fund billionaire, Steven Cohen, for $139 million.
Such was his excitement over the sale – the most money ever offered for a single painting – he bubbled forth with the news to some pals who had arrived in town at about the same time.
Disaster was only around the corner when Mr Wynn invited these friends, among them the writer Nora Ephron and broadcaster Barbara Walters, to come by his office to view the Picasso before it left for Connecticut. Of course, they accepted.
They stood politely and gaped as Mr Wynn gushed about the work and its history.
As described this week in an online blog posted by Ms Ephron, it was at this moment that Mr Wynn took a couple of fateful steps back.
He is a man prone to extravagant gesticulations and somehow his elbow made contact with the canvas, specifically with the left forearm of the curvaceous mistress.
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/category/story.cfm?c_id=18&objectid=10406619
Outside of the title quote, the best line is
“Thank God it was me”.
No kidding, just think if some lowly millionaire or worse, some normal person like a maid or maintenance work around the Wynn did it… If I ripped a $139 million painting I am not sure if I could even grasp that loss emotionally.
Oi.
joe
>>>If I ripped a $139 million painting I am not sure if I could even grasp that loss emotionally.
AND probably it would mean a really large crap load of consulting to for the next 100 years… 😉