Alastair Sooke: Top Ten Most Valuable Paintings in the World
Post categories: Guided Tours, TV and Radio
|13:55 UK time, Wednesday, 6 July 2011
This Sunday 10th July at 9pm, art critic and journalist Alastair Sooke explores the remarkable stories behind the Top Ten Most Valuable Paintings in the World.
What are the ten most expensive paintings to have been sold at auction? Why do some pay millions for a painting? Who are the buyers? Why is art so valuable?
In seeking the answers to some of these questions, Alastair uncovers stories of scandal, war, exile, revolution, paranoia, and economic turmoil - stories which range from the Holocaust to the discreet banks of Zurich and the boom of Japan in the 1980s.
These works of art are mostly locked away in private collections. But to accompany the BBC1 programme, Alastair Sooke presents a Guided Tour to great art that you can see for free, in public galleries and collections around the country.
"Here's my selection of paintings I particularly like which can be seen, for free, in museums and galleries all around the country, even though the artists who made them are the most coveted and most expensive artists in the world"
Once you've taken the Guided Tour, let us know if any of the work by Picasso, Monet, Bacon, Titian or Van Gogh in Alistair's Guided Tour caught your eye. Have you seen these paintings in the flesh, or are you planning a trip to a gallery to see them? Plus, any recommendations for credit crunch friendly art viewings are very welcome.
Alastair Sooke's Top Ten Most Valuable Paintings in the World is on BBC One at 9pm. Let us know what you think.
Comment number 1.
At 02:30 17th Jul 2011, jimthing wrote:"Let us know what you think."
I'll tell you what *I think*...
(A) *I think* I'd like the iPlayer to actually have the programme available, rather than the message "This content doesn't seem to be working. Try again later." it's been showing ALL WEEK since original transmission!
https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b012lsx3/The_Worlds_Most_Expensive_Paintings
(B) *I think* I'd like the "Latest programme issues" page (here: https://iplayerhelp.external.bbc.co.uk/help/announcements/programme_latest_issues ) that has simply told us ALL WEEK since original transmission that "World's Most Expensive Paintings - Programme listed as coming soon 10/07/2011", to actually instead say the truth "- programme NEVER COMING EVER because we can't be bothered to fix it!", as it hasn't been fixed, and clearly is not going to be "coming soon" given less than 12 hours left until it expires at the end of the 7 days!
(C) *I think* I'd like to know whether it is available in HD on iPlayer at all? I don't know, because, guess what; iPlayer doesn't tell me that either!
Fire these bloody idiots at iPlayer's outside agency Red Bee Media who cannot sort broken programmes out for the whole week, nor who tell iPlayer users whether HD versions of programmes are coming or not.
...there you go; that's exactly what "I think".
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Comment number 2.
At 13:26 18th Jul 2011, BBC Emily wrote:Hi jimthing. I’m sorry you’ve been experiencing problems with this programme on BBC iPlayer. I’m looking into this for you now and will get back to you when I know more.
Sincere apologies,
From BBC Emily.
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Comment number 3.
At 13:20 28th Jul 2011, BBC Emily wrote:Hi there jimthing. I'm sorry for the delay in getting back to you but I've just heard back from the BBC iPlayer team and this is the message they've asked me to pass on to you:
iPlayer is a 7-day catch-up service which means that most programmes expire after one week. The World's Most Expensive Paintings would have expired accordingly on 17 July 2011.
With regards to it’s disrupted availability, the programme was available until Friday 15th July, at which point it had to be temporarily removed to address a problem. The programme should have been unavailable for a matter of hours while that took place. However, due to unforeseeable technical problems, it was regrettably not re-instated on iPlayer before the expiry date.
These technical issues should not have occurred, and we apologise for this.
On your final point about signalling availability of programmes in HD, there is a 'Watch in HD' button on the relevant programme playback page when iPlayer offers the HD version.
I hope that the above answers your question and sorry again for the inconvenience this caused you.
Best wishes,
BBC Emily
Your Paintings Team
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