How Much Is Your Heart Worth?

So, how much is your heart worth? It may be priceless to you but how much would someone else be willing to pay for it? One man knows the answer…
Kitsch American artist Jeff Koons broke an auction record after his ‘Hanging Heart’ sculpture fetched a cool £11.3m pounds at a Sotheby’s sale in New York - making him the world’s most expensive living artist.The record was previously held by the controversial artist Damien Hurst, who sold a pill cabinet entitled ‘Lullaby Spring’ for close to £10m in June.The vibrant Magenta and Gold sculpture took 10 years to complete, weighs in at an astonishing 3,500lbs (1600kg) and is one of five versions made.Who would want to shell out £11m on what is essentially a slightly larger and somewhat more extravagant version of a Christmas tree decoration?Surprisingly - or maybe not so considering the price tag - it wasn’t an uber cool celeb looking for another reason to grab the limelight; it was a United States-based Gagosian Gallery.The record breaking sale comes at a time when the cost of contemporary art in auctions on both sides of the Atlantic has risen by 55 per cent in one year alone.But is it really worth it? One artist with a slightly more laid back approach to the monetary value of his work is Bristol-based Banksy.Organisers of the annual ‘Turnip Prize’ art competition were astounded when they discovered what looked like an authentic Banksy piece resting outside the New Inn pub in Somerset. The pub has been running the ‘Turnip Prize’ for eight years as a spoof of the Turner Prize. The aim of the competition is for people to submit works of ‘art’ after spending as little time on them as possible. For some reason the ‘Banksy’ piece, which depicts a stencilled Mona Lisa firing a turnip from a bazooka, didn’t seem like a legitimate entry.Strange that…