In May 2013, German artist Gerhard Richter broke his own record when his 1968 painting “Domplatz, Mailand,” which looks like a fuzzy black-and-white photograph, sold at auction for $37 million, the highest amount for any living artist.

It was a record he held for six months, until Jeff Koons’ “Balloon Dog” smashed it, selling for $58.4 million at Christie’s.

The number staggered even the auctioneer, Jussi Pylkkanen. “We are in a new era of the art market,” he said.

The total sales that night at Christie’s: $495 million, setting yet another record for the highest single auction haul ever.

A new era is one way to put it; another would be a world gone mad. As the .00001 percent run out of mansions to buy, they’ve poured their wealth into art. And not art many would find, well, good. (courtesy of Maureen Callahan – NY Post).

View our Jeff Koons collection here.