Next week’s New Yorker has a fun article by Nick Paumgarten, who describes how Steve Wynn’s elbow was responsible for $40 million worth of damage to a Picasso.
Wynn owns Picasso’s “Le Reve” (pictured above), which is his favorite painting and which the show at Wynn Las Vegas is named after. He was planning to sell it to billionaire collector Steven Cohen for $139 million, what would be a sales record for a piece of artwork.
The deal was as good as signed, sealed, and delivered, until Wynn showed the painting to friends in town (including writer/director Nora Ephron, who writes personally about her experience being offended by the painting’s penis-shaped face). As he showed it, he accidentally gestured his hand a little too close to the painting, and his right elbow went right through Marie-Therese Walter’s left forearm.
According to Ephron, he told his guests, “Oh shit. Look what I’ve done.”
“Thank God it was me,” Wynn said. Ephron said everyone else was left speechless.
Wynn’s wife Elaine considered it an omen to not part with the painting.
Though an art restorer said he could repair it as good as new, Wynn decided to keep the painting.