"If you can buy a 90-by-70 Warhol shoe painting for $1 million, it's better than owning Google, Microsoft and Facebook together," said Alberto Mugrabi, New York-based collector and dealer in Warhol. "I am not involved in selling this work, but I will be involved in the buying."
So let the Russian oligarchs and Arab sheiks compete for Steven Cohen's aquamarine "Liz" that has a $20 million to $30 million estimate range at Phillips de Pury on May 12.
'Trophy Element'
"The top is not driven by pure rational investment decisions," said Petterson. "There's a trophy element of wanting that piece that you paid the largest amount in the world for."
Masterpieces tend to underperform the rest of the market, and postwar and contemporary art is no exception, according to research by economists Michael Moses and Jianping Mei.
"The returns on works that were purchased for seven figures and up are half of the returns on works purchased for five figures," said Moses, co-founder of www.artasanasset.com, which calculates financial returns of art transactions.
"That's not to say that people should stop buying masterpieces; it just means that they don't make the best financial investment."
(Katya Kazakina is a reporter for Muse, the arts and leisure section of Bloomberg News. The opinions expressed are her own.)