Besides being historically renowned for help provoking the popular unrest leading to the French Revolution and to the overthrow of the monarchy in August 1792, in part of her famous quote addressing starving French populace, ‘Let them eat cake’, the last queen of France, Marie Antoinette was also known as ‘Madame Deficit’ which describes her habit of spending enormous amounts of money on luxury clothing, jewels, chateaux, and any kind of whim. Now to pay a beautiful, luxurious homage to this infamous French queen born as archduchess of Austria, the Portuguese artist Joana Vasconcelos has created a lavishly-decorated, bright pink helicopter. Dubbed as ‘Lilicoptère’, this gilded Bell 47 helicopter covered with fluffy ostrich feathers, sparkling Swarovski Crystals, and crafted with gold leaf, industrial coating, dyed leather upholstery embossed with fine gold, Arraiolos rugs, walnut wood, wood grain painting, and passementerie, is actually the artist’s vision of what the fashionable queen with a penchant of ultra-luxury would be flying in, if she were alive today.

Gilded Helicopter ‘Lilicoptere’ is Joana Vasconcelos’ vision of what Last French Queen Marie Antoinette would fly in

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For centuries, the world of art and money has always been closely associated. Contrary to all the earlier sayings that in the gloomy days of recessions the high-end art works will not fetch significant prices, the world’s top art collectors like Steven. A. Cohen, Carlos Slim Helu, Francois Pinault, and Bernard Arnault, went onto splash out multi-million dollars to grab the ultra-expensive, precious art work to grace their eclectic art collections. This becomes very much apparent from the notable art auctions around the world in 2012, where the famous works of the renowned artists like Pablo Picasso, Edward Munch, to name a very few, fetched record prices and renowned auction houses like Christie’s and Sotheby’s managed to sell art worth multi-billions. And again in year 2013, the wealthy patrons and avid art collectors who have been the life-blood of the art world for centuries, has set the high-end art market abuzz with the sale of Picasso’s iconic portrait of his ‘Golden Muse’ Marie-Thérèse Walter for $45 million, Modigliani portrait for $42 million, Madonna by Bartolommeo for almost $13 million, and the Berthe Morisot’s Apres le dejeuner for $11 million to raise the world auction record for a female artist.

Expensive Art sales sets the high-end art market abuzz in 2013

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One of the greatest and most influential artist of the 20th century, the Spanish expatriate, painter, sculptor, and ceramist Pablo Ruiz y Picasso isn’t just universally renowned for co-founding the Cubist movement, the co-invention of collage, and his much coveted artwork, but also for his affairs with a number of women in addition to his two wives or primary partner, and his muses. The brilliant and charismatic Pablo Picasso’s different painting styles and relationships are intimately interlinked, as he actually attempted to capture not just the way his mistresses looked, but the totality of his feelings towards them. But the most celebrated was the French mistress Marie-Thérèse Walter, who was Picasso’s greatest love and principal muse. Notably, her voluptuous form was the inspiration for Picasso’s greatest sculptures, including the “La Lecture” which was sold for $40.7 million, Femmes lisant (deux personnages) which went for $21.4 million, to name a few among his world’s most expensive paintings. Now, the world’s top art collectors stand a rare chance to own Pablo Picasso’s majestic Femme assise près d’une fenêtre. This breathtaking portrait of his golden muse Marie-Thérèse Walter painted in 1932, will be auctioned as part of the Sotheby’s upcoming Impressionist and Modern Art Evening Sale on 5th Feb, which also offers a selection of works of exceptional quality and importance.

Sotheby’s offers Picasso’s most iconic portraits “The Golden Muse” for sale at $56m

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The year 1887 was not only the Queen’s Golden Jubilee year, but also the final year of ‘The Young Head’ design on the Great Britain sovereign which was originally struck after Britain’s most celebrated and talented coin and medal engraver William Wyon’s renowned portrait modeled at the beginning of Queen Victoria’s reign. Now after 125 years, a magnificent example of the Great Britain 1887 Victoria Gold crown which impressively exhibits ‘enchanting royal portraiture in gold’, featuring a large portrait of Queen Victoria as a young monarch, is expected to fetch the highest prices in auctioneer Heritage Auction’s Ancient & World Coin Signature Auction, scheduled to be held on January 6-7 in New York. Billed as one of the finest example of its type and a prize for the ultimate crown collector, this well-preserved coin with a fabulous provenance is expected to sell with a $200,000 to $250,000 estimate, to become one of the world’s most expensive coins.

Rare 1887 Coin featuring Victoria gold crown is estimated to sell for $250k

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Named the ‘Last Wizard’ by Andy Warhol who was a leading figure in the visual art movement known as pop art, Jack Armstrong is fast becoming one of the most famous, an important and increasingly well respected name in the world of true art. This artist who has been painting since the age of 5, is renowned for the fact that after perfecting a new style of art he named ‘Cosmic Extensionalism’ in 1990s, he actually ended-up purchasing all of his early work and ultimately destroying it, vowing to create only 100 paintings in his lifetime. Jack, who’s also the very first artist to sell a painting for more than a million dollars off the mainstream gallery scene, earlier impressed the art world with the unveiling of ‘$1 million Cosmic Starship Harley Davidson’, which was one of the most expensive and visually fascinating Harley choppers. Now, the artist is again all-set to debut the most expensive ARTBike in history. At $1 million and named, the “CosmicStar Cruiser ARTBike,” it doubles the previous $0.5 million price of a bike done by Damien Hirst for charity, which tops the list of the world’s most expensive bicycles.

Cosmic artist Jack Armstrong to debut the most expensive $1 million ARTBike: CosmicStar Cruiser

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Classic symbol of abounding love; the exquisite and timeless white marble mausoleum Taj Mahal ‘Crown of Palaces’ renowned for its architectural beauty, has always been the source of inspiration for the design and architectural world ever since it was got built by grieving Mughal emperor Shah Jahan in memory of his third wife, Mumtaz Mahal. After the Belgian design firm Studio Job impressed the design world with its upside down Taj Mahal table, and a company Link Global Ltd plans to realize a wondrous and luxurious concept of building the ostentatious $1 billion Taj Mahal replica ‘Taj Arabia’ in Dubai, one of the Taj Mahal obsessed jeweler Syed Hanif is now all set to create $18.3 million, 3.5 ft high mini-replica of Taj Mahal, featuring 420kgs of precious metals and 8 diamonds.

The replica of the Taj Mahal

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An Irish novelist and short story writer, best known today for his best-selling 1897 Gothic novel Dracula which is often referred to as the definitive vampire novel, Abraham ‘Bram’ Stoker is recognized as one of the most prominent Gothic authors of the Victorian fin-de-siècle, who impressively introduced the vampire Count Dracula to today’s pop culture. Now, the desk where Bram Stoker whose life was also shrouded with mystery as much like his immortal creation Dracula, wrote his famed novel is up for grabs. Having been restored and transformed into work of art, the desk which has had a long history, and over the past century was left battered, with missing drawers and legs chopped short, will be auctioned by auctioneer Profiles in History, as part of its Hollywood Auction on 15 -16 December, where rare James Bond posters are also up for grabs.

Bram Stoker’s “Dracula” Writing desk is estimated to fetch up to $80k

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Endlessly inventive; renowned sculptor of surrealistic animals, François-Xavier Lalanne who created his own brand of surrealism with the unveiling of a life-size Annam rhinoceros ‘Rhinocrétaire’ whose side folded out into a writing desk in 1964, actually went on to generate a zoo’s worth of animals in his lifetime of work. And, out of all the French artist’s works, the most famous is the 24 sheep covered in genuine sheepskin; some with faces, others were shaggy bolsters that stood on sheep legs. Now, a flock of 24 sheep sculptures by Lalanne (1927-2008) which comes from the collection of Adelaide de Menil and her late husband, Edmund Carpenter will be is heading at Christie’s auction block, as part of the postwar and contemporary art evening sale in New York on Nov. 14, where it’s expected to fetch as much as $6 million. However, back in 2005, a flock of sheep comprising of three sheep, two white and one brown, and six Ottoman, were sold for $385,458, a price much more than its pre-sale estimate of $71,030.

French artist Francois-Xavier Lalanne’s Flock of sheep sculptures are estimated to fetch $6 million

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Dutch artist and designer Diddo Velema is known for his works of art designed to cater to the psychotic needs of human behavior. We have earlier told you about Diddo’s fashionable gas masks and the latest is ‘The Cure For Greed’ injection kit, which depicts human’s insatiable greed. ‘The Cure For Greed’ injection kit features a 24-karat gold plated syringe and a single 5 ml dose of dollar ink recovered from approximately $10,000. The process of extracting and recovering pigment from US currency was done over a period of 4 months. The ink is then re-stabilized, divided into individual doses and packaged into 5ml vials. The complete kit features one 24 karat gold plated syringe, one dose of stabilized pure dollar ink and two 24-karat gold plated needles, packaged in a personally monogrammed custom-made mahogany or walnut box.

‘The Cure For Greed’ Injection Kit

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Chiseled from an iron-meteorite, the remnant of the meteorite ‘Chinga’ which originally crashed some 15,000 years ago into the border areas between Siberia and Mongolia, here’s an ancient Buddhist statue with extraterrestrial origin. Known as the Iron Man, this 9.5-inch high statue which bears a ‘swastika’ on its chest was originally discovered back in 1938, by an expedition aided by Reichsführer-SS chief Heinrich Himmler, one of the most powerful men in Nazi Germany, and led by Zoologist Ernst Schäfer, which roamed in Tibet to search for ‘Aryanism’ roots. This mysterious Buddhist statue with history that sounds more like an Indiana Jones plot, was actually brought back to Germany by the expedition team, where it became the part of a private collection in Munich, and was only made available for scientists to analyze after it was auctioned back in 2007. Though, it’s still a mystery about how the sculpture was unearthed.

Ancient Buddha sculpture carved from meteorite that crashed about 15000 years ago

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