Kevin Abosch Potato Picture Sells To Businessman For Just Over $1 Million
A Kevin Abosch potato picture sold for over $1 million last year. Abosch admitted over the weekend that a European businessman decided to purchase the potato picture after two glasses of wine. More well known for photographing celebrities, Kevin Abosch said he took the potato picture because to him it represents human life.
Irish photographer Kevin Abosch usually makes his millions taking celebrity portraits, including Johnny Depp, Meryl Streep, Dennis Hopper, and Dustin Hoffman. But the nearly 50-year-old Abosch decided to photograph something different in 2010 when he found the photogenic potato in a group of organic vegetables at his home in Dublin, Ireland.
According to Abosch, he was uncertain of that one particular potato’s variety. After taking pictures of several potatoes, Kevin Abosch says this one potato picture, which sold for millions, stood out to him for some reason. The potato, which resembles a standard russet potato, was photographed with very little light against a black background.
Le Spud by @kevinabosch https://t.co/F5jPbm4Vr4
— Connor Murphy ?? Bridge ? (@ConnorPM) January 24, 2016
Abosch reportedly set the selling price of the 64-inch potato picture at a firm $1 million. According to the Irish Times, a European businessman took an interest in buying one out of three prints of the potato picture right off the wall when he visited Kevin Abosch at his home in Paris last year. Any other Kevin Abosch picture would easily sell for over $1 million, prompting Abosch to not budge on the potato picture price tag.
Admitting that the price of the potato picture might seem a bit absurd to some, Abosch says potatoes have meaning to him.
“I see commonalities between humans and potatoes that speak to our relationship as individuals within a collective species.”
Kevin Abosch sees a relationship between potatoes and humans. The life of a harvested potato represents the life of a human to Abosch. According to Abosch, a potato life is often violent and taken for granted, much like the life of a human.
“I use the potato as a proxy for the ontological study of the human experience,” said Abosch.
The European businessman who bought the Kevin Abosch potato picture must agree with Abosch and his way of thinking about the starchy tuber. BBC News reports that the businessman really liked the potato picture that hung inside an aluminum sandwich panel. After two glasses of wine and two weeks of going back and forth on a price, Abosch and the businessman, who claims anonymity, settled on a selling price of 750,000 British pounds.
In U.S. dollars, this amount comes to just over $1 million, more specifically $1,086,810. The Kevin Abosch potato picture selling price is shocking only because it’s a picture of a potato. A Kevin Abosch portrait usually sells for no less than a starting price of just under $300,000. Abosch’s work has been featured in more than 500 international magazines. According to Vogue, Abosch knows the true face of a star.
In fact, Kevin Abosch is so well-known for his portraits that the Dublin Airport launched an Abosch exhibition in 2011 featuring 250 Faces of Ireland.
More Faces of Ireland by Kevin Abosch @ Dublin Airport – Terminal 1 pic.twitter.com/Avi2XcemP7
— Janet Fry (@JanetEFry) June 9, 2014
A second copy of the Kevin Abosch potato picture was donated to a Serbian museum, the Museum of Contemporary Art Novi Sad, while a third, smaller version of the potato picture still belongs to Abosch.
Abosch declined any formal interviews regarding the sale of the potato picture but says Potato #345 sold for more than any other of his photographs to date. Known for taking photographs against a black background, Kevin Abosch went on to say that the potato picture is not the first of his works that have sold right off of his wall.
Some critics say the businessman was a sucker for buying the potato picture for well over $1 million, mainly because it’s simply a photograph and nothing as complex as a painting. Others say that photographers are artists and taking a photo is not as easy as just pushing a button. What do you think? Would you spend over $1 million on a Kevin Abosch potato picture?
[Image via YouTube/TheLipTV2]
