Picasso Sells for $95.2 Million ...and in Paris....

Source :Arts and Business Day NY Times May 4

FM-FM Comment:
While Picasso's portrait "Dora Maar With Cat" sold last night at Sotheby's for $95.2 Million, the some homeless people of Paris settled down in new gray, blue and maroon pup tents supplied by an organization called Doctors of the World. The tents are scattered around in public areas. A van Gogh sold for $40.3 Million the night before. There has been an upsurge of immigrants in Paris lately and the doctors are trying to embarrass the French government to do something for estimated 15,000 homeless living in Paris. " An all-star cast led by van Gogh and two important Picasso paintings played to standing-room only crowd at Christie's on Tuesday night. Not everyone is pleased with tents. " They're ugly," said a short woman with a large red purse marching past two tents in the affluent Seventh Arrondissement, where four young Poles are living beneath the sycamores with a view of the Hotel des Invalides. "Few people were surprised when an earlier Picasso, the Blue Period "Portrait of Germaine" which Christie's estimated at $12 Million to $18 Million" sold to a Manhatten dealer, who was in a skybox above the salesroom bidding by telephone for a client paid $18.6 Million. There are an estimated 86,000 homeless people in France.