Showing posts with label inflation. Show all posts
Showing posts with label inflation. Show all posts

Tuesday, 10 May 2011

Mondrian inflation

B262 sold at Sotheby's, New York in May 2002 for $5.3M.

The installation photograph, right, from CR shows B262 at the Modern Pictures for Modern Rooms exhibition, London, April 1936. Photographer unknown.

Interestingly, the catalogue gives a price of £40 (and the same for B263). £40 to £3.6M in 66 years. I learned here that a Leica 111 f2 Summar sold for £39.10.0 in that year: the top of the range Leica non-digital rangefinder, the M7 with 50mm f2 Summicron-M now costs around £4,100. A post on that link suggests that an agricutural labourer's wages would have been around £1.12.0 (£1.50) per week at the time. The minumum adult (>21) wage is currently (2011) £5.93 per hour, £208 for a 35 hour week, 75 years later.
In round terms: Mondrians have risen by a factor of 90,000 in 66 years; Leicas by 100; and minimum wage by 140 in 75 years. So it goes - please advise me of any factual or mathematical errors encountered in these paragraphs.