It was a thrilling victory, but a narrow one. Once the currency conversions were worked out, it was clear that Alberto Giacometti’s L’homme qui marche I (Walking Man I), offered at Sotheby’s in London on Feb. 3, had made history, fetching £65 million, or $104.3 million, to claim the title of “most expensive artwork sold at auction” from Picasso’s Gar輟n à la pipe (Boy With a Pipe), a 1905 painting that fetched $104.1 million at Sotheby’s New York in 2004. The title doesn’t typically change hands every year, or even every few years, but turnover is not all that infrequent, either. The Giacometti’s triumph is notable in more ways than one: It marks the first time that a sculpture has captured the record, it is the first artwork produced in multiples to do so and it is the first postwar work to achieve this feat. The implications for the art world, and the sculpture world in particular, are just starting to be assessed. READ MORE