Sell a painting, buy a newspaper

$143.5 million.

Concerning fine art, that number doesn't phase me. Although it's a good thing David Geffen held out for that extra .5 mill, since there's speculation he's raising cash to buy The Los Angeles Times - so every little million counts.

Geffen sold Jasper Johns’s “False Start,” for $80 million (thankfully it wasn't a target for that much money), and Willem de Kooning’s “Police Gazette,” an abstract 1955 landscape, for $63.5 million. The buyers are both hedge fund billionaires. I guess you'd have to be.

The works of Gustav Klimt have been a hot item on the market lately. In fact, if any of you hedge fund billionaires or music moguls reading this feel like buying me a nice early Christmas present, there's 4 Klimt paintings up for auction on November 8 at Christie's. I'll take any, I'm not picky. And I'll thank you with a nice little blog post.