Jackson Pollock may be loosing his record for creating the world’s most expensive painting ever to a minor Los Angeles mural painter who happened upon the Facebook offices in 2005.
David Choe could be the most unlikely of millionaires who will be minted by the social networks flotation this spring. If the company reaches its top valuations like talked about Mr. Choe will have been paid $200m for the “graphic sexual murals” that he painted on the Facebook walls in its early years.
Mr. Choe took shares on Facebook instead of taking cash payment. Although at the time Mr. Choe described Facebook as “pointless and ridiculous” thinking it would never take off, he made the gamble, and now his shares look to be one of the hottest property on the US stock market.
With Facebook being in the $75bn-$100bn range, those murals could turn out to be more expensive than the $200.7bn paid for the collection of Damient Hirst pieces in 2008.
Although Mr. Choe refused to talk about his new found wealth when The New York Times tracked him down, his Facebook fan page tells all. In 2005 internet entrepreneur and long time fan of Mr. Choe, Sean Parker who ask him to paint graphic sexual murals on the walls of the Facebook’s Silicon Valley offices. Again in 2007 he was asked to paint more murals for other offices by Facebook’s chief executive Mark Zuckerberg.
So the minor LA graffiti artist took a good decision now that his stake is potentially worth $200m.
