Buy Your Own Rockefeller Rothko---Just $295, with Free Shipping!

Listen up: You don't have to pay "more than $40 million" for David Rockefeller's 1950 Rothko, "White Center (Yellow, Pink and Lavender on Rose)," which he's dispatching to Sotheby's May 15 contemporary sale (as reported by Carol Vogel in today's NY Times).

Why pay a fortune to David, when for just $295, you can get this "100% hand-painted" version of the same painting, on "finest quality linen canvas"? It even comes with "a full and unconditional money-back guarantee"!

Guaranteed fake?

But wait! You can also buy it here in any of 13 sizes. "If there is no size you want, please contact us. We can custom any size for you."

Even Rockefeller can't make you a deal like that!

Whatever happened to copyright protection?

Speaking of Rockefeller's Rothko, you do have to admit that it was sporting of MoMA's longtime trustee and benefactor to check with John Elderfield, the museum's chief curator of painting and sculpture, to see if the museum objected to his selling the painting.

Let's consider Elderfield's options:

"Fuhgeddaboudit, David. Sure, you've been very generous to us already, but we really must insist that you hand over that Rothko too. After all, it's a great masterpiece and, what's more, it has particular significance for us: You purchased it in 1960 at the recommendation of Dorothy Miller, our legendary first chief curator." [It was included in the exhibition, "Dorothy C. Miller: With an Eye to American Art," at the Smith College Museum and in the landmark 1998-99 Rothko show that appeared at the Musée d'Art Modern, Paris, the Whitney Museum and the National Gallery, Washington.]

Here's Elderfield other option (as quoted in the NY Times)---the one that he actually chose:

"We don't need it. We already have five Rothkos from the 1950s." (Two of those, presumably the best ones, are posted on MoMA's website here. You be the judge.)