Picasso Meets the Financial Crisis

Even though Lars Ulrich recently declared the art market is "perhaps the last frontier where the best of the best will not go the way of the rest of the economy," it seems the Metallica drummer doesn't have a very good read on the climate after all. The NY Times reports that "a Picasso Cubist painting that was to have been a star of Sotheby’s Impressionist and Modern art sale on Nov. 3 has been abruptly withdrawn." The artist's Arlequin (ca. 1909) was expected to take in over $30 million, but "fears that art prices were heading the way of the world financial markets" may have changed the seller's mind. Sotheby's confirms that, as of now, the painting is off the market. At the very least, the painting's history is worth reading about: The Times details how its previous owner, Surrealist painter Enrico Donati, came to purchase it (knowing Marcel Duchamp may have come in handy!).