The Telegraph decodes the art market with a little anecdote on the importance of red works in contemporary culture. “The two top prices for works by Rothko are for red canvases, with four of the top five sales figures for Richter being for predominantly red paintings.” They even got Cheyenne Westphal of Sotheby’s warmed up for the action:

“Red is the most emotive colour in art. It’s powerful, it’s lucky in many nations – for example for the Chinese. We’ve often seen a price correlation in that red paintings have performed better than other works.

“With art it’s always very difficult to quantify, but you can see it has an overall effect. So if the colour red is in a work or art it tends to get more expensive than others.

“The Chinese market has been very strong for a long time, and we find we have a lot of collectors in Asia who come and actively take part in our sales. Red is a very lucky colour in China, and we hope we have assembled the right material.”

How red boosts a painting’s value (Telegraph)