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Today in Art: Cleaners in Hong Kong Threw Away a 3.7 Million Dollar Painting, Mistaking It For Trash

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Art – Police in Hong Kong are searching through a landfill site after cleaners allegedly tossed a multi-million dollar painting in the trash. The ink-wash painting ‘Snowy Mountain’ had been auctioned off the day before for US$3.7 million. The painting, by Chinese artist Cui Ruzhou, was reported missing to the police on Tuesday amid reports it had been thrown out by cleaners in Hong Kong’s Grand Hyatt Hotel. Police, trawling through CCTV camera history, later discovered footage of a security guard kicking a package containing the valuable piece of artwork towards a pile of rubbish. Hotel cleaners were then caught on camera throwing out the rubbish, which is thought to have been sent to a landfill site at Tuen Mun in the north-west of Hong Kong, reports the South China Morning Post. Police have registered the painting as ‘lost property’ for the time being and have not ruled out the possibility it could have been stolen. The hotel said it was not responsible for the loss of the painting and that exhibitors handle the installation and dismantling of their own auction items. “As the organizer has rented our event venue for this auction, Grand Hyatt Hong Kong is doing its best to offer assistance to [the company] Poly Auction, including letting the police view the CCTV footage along with our security team,” a statement from the hotel said. The Chinese ink-wash painting had been sold off the previous day for $3.7 million at a special auction that featured 28 works by Cui Ruzhou. The painting ‘Landscape in Snow’ was sold for the highest price, fetching over $23 million and setting a new record for Ruzhou.
 

Another day, another so called masterpiece being mistaken for complete garbage. I’ve said it once, and I’ll say it a million times. Fuck, I’ll say it on my deathbed. Hey Nate, any last words before you die of supercancer? “Art is stupid”. And then I’ll flatline. Sometimes I actually feel like a complete idiot that every so often I don’t take a paint brush and splatter paint around. That’s what Jackson Pollock did and his paintings are considered some of the GOAT.
 

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And of course, my favorite painting of all time. I’ll show you the painting, then you guess how much it was auctioned off for:
 

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Ready? It was auctioned off for…$43.8 million. Fuck me sideways.