Six Hundred, Seventy Three Million, Seven Hundred and Two Thousand, Forty Five

The 2023 ten most expensive artworks sold at auction cumulatively totaled $673,702,045, with the top two artworks selling for over $100 million, each. (A $139,363,500 Pablo Picasso and a $106,756,354 Gustav Klimt). Using these ten works, this series explores the fair use myth that 30% of the original artwork is allowable to use should it be for purposes such as criticism, comment, news reporting, teaching, scholarship, or research and done so in a transformative fashion. The artworks have been divided into sections and only 30% of the piece is included back onto the page, diced up pieces put together out of order like a puzzle, with the empty space inviting the viewer to imagine the remaining artwork. These ten works are titled according to the artist and their sale rank, all of who were men. Of the top 100 lots that sold in 2023 totaling $2.4 billion, just 3 of the top 50 works were works by female artists (Louise Bourgeois, Georgia O’Keefe, and Joan Mitchell).