Setting a new record for the category of world’s most expensive living female artist is a South African born artist Marlene Dumas. And this is made possible via her painting, popularly known as The Visitor, that generated sales of £3.1 million at a Sotheby’s auction. The painting was picked up by the New York private dealer Nancy Whyte during Sotheby’s Contemporary Art Evening Sale scheduled on 1 July. The sales figure overshadowed Dumas’ preceding testimony of £1.8 million marked in February 2005.

The illustration is defined by Sotheby’s as an expressively demanding and noticeably beautiful. Spread over a canvas of 180cm x 300cm, the Visitor portrays a group of six-female sex-workers eyeing towards an illuminated door. The standing position of the women implies that they are contending for their deal while expecting the looming entrance of a punter. More than anything, Dumas work has invited criticism evoking issues like birth, death, sex, life, race, identity, motherhood and feminism.
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A wristwatch belonging to an Italian mogul who takes pride in having won Grand Prix races and was president of Ferrari generated a sales of £1.1million against its pre-auction estimate of $1.9 million after selling off his gold Patek Philippe timepiece at Sothey’s Geneva auction house.

Count Carlo Felice Trossi’s priciest possession called the “Trossi Leggenda”, described as “really revolutionary” by experts, was the highlight amidst the other 200 timepieces. Trossi by profession was a racing driver, pilot and speedboat racer whose motor-racing triumphs count the 1947 Italian Grand Prix. Besides this another gold Rolex known as “Oyster Daytona Paul Newman” dating back to 1980 got sold for £76,000 almost two-fold of its pre-auction estimate of £25,000 to £40,000. The watch was christened after the Florida car race and for the American actor who helped promote this style.

Via DailyMial