High life | 23 November 2017

The faux Leonardo that sold for 400 million greenbacks — plus a 50 million fee for Christie’s — was a subject dissected again and again by the glitterati at two rather splendid dinners given in the Bagel by George Livanos and Mick Flick. My fellow guests were not the types to be outraged or shocked at the obscenity of the amount of moolah involved, but it beat talking about the weather or why the media hate Trump as much as they do.

For any of you who might have missed it, the Leonardo — originally thought to have been painted by Leo’s pupil Giovanni Boltraffio — was partly painted over, then scrubbed. It is now thought to have been by the master, after all. But not everyone (me, for one) is convinced. Anyway, it looks like it was bought by — who else? — those people who have ruined football, the hooker market, yacht sales and everything else they touch — the camel drivers from Abu Dhabi and their so-called Louvre museum.

Enough said about an unpleasant subject controlled by extremely unpleasant people. When the bubble bursts, some of us who actually appreciate art and are not in it for the money will be cheering, but not yet. The next New York outrage is a column by a female journalist in that unspeakable old bag of a newspaper and I quote: ‘The solution is putting people in positions of power who are not male, not straight, not cisgender, not white. This is not taking something away unfairly — it is restoring opportunities that have been historically withheld.’ Gee whiz, I thought that had already been tried with affirmative action, and it was a real disaster. Now the girls over this side of the ocean want to try it again, with cutie-pies getting the nod.