record price for the artist at auction when Lily Safra paid $20.8 million only to donate it to the Israel Museum afterwards. Months later, a record $21.8 million was paid at Christie's for the 1993 painting Abstraktes Bild 798-3. Abstraktes Bild (809–4), one of the artist's abstract canvases from 1994, was sold by Eric Clapton at Sotheby's to a telephone bidder for $34.2 million in late 2012. (It had been estimated to bring $14.1 million to $18.8 million.) This was exceeded in May 2013 when his 1968 piece Domplatz, Mailand (Cathedral square, Milan) was sold for $37.1 million (£24.4 million) in New York. This was further exceeded in February 2015 when his 1986 painting Abstraktes Bild (599) sold for $44.52 million (£30.4 million) in London at Sotheby's Contemporary Evening Sale. This was the highest price at auction of a piece of contemporary art at the time; Richter's record was broken on 12 November 2013 when Jeff Koons' Balloon Dog (Orange), sold at Christie's Post-War and Contemporary Art Evening Sale in New York City for US$58.4 million. When asked about art prices like these, Richter said "It's just as absurd as the banking crisis. It's impossible to understand and it's daft!" Film In 2007, made a short film called Gerhard Richter's Window where the media-shy artist appeared on camera for the first time in 15 years. In 2011, Belz's feature-length documentary entitled Gerhard Richter Painting was released. The film focused almost entirely on the world's highest paid living artist producing his large-scale abstract squeegee works in his studio. The 2018 drama film Never Look Away is inspired by Richter's life story. In 2016 and 2019 Richter worked again with Corinna Belz on two films based on his 2012 book Patterns. The previous piece named Richters Patterns when shown is partnered with music by the German composer Marcus Schmickler, the later by the American composer Steve Reich, both performed by a live ensemble. The later work in turn is part of a larger two-section collaboration, Reich Richter Pärt which was commissioned for the inaugural season at The Shed in the Hudson Yards development in Manhattan in New York City. See also Wand (Wall) References Sources Further reading Götz Adriani: "Gerhard Richter: Paintings From Private Collections", Hatje Cantz, 2008. Ulrich Bischoff/Elisabeth Hipp/Jeanne Anne Nugent: "From Caspar David Friedrich to Gerhard Richter": German Paintings from Dresden. Getty Trust Publications, Jean Paul Getty Museum, Cologne