Art Auction

California’s highest income tax rate is 13.3%. That is in addition to a top federal tax rate of 37%. California also has a state sales tax rate of 7.25%, and many localities impose a smaller sales tax. So if a wealthy person earns and spends labor income in the state of California, the tax rate at the margin could approach 60%. Then there is the corporate state income tax rate of 8.84%, some of which is passed along to consumers through higher prices. That increases the tax burden further.

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Governments around the world are intensifying scrutiny on the building of data centers over fears that their huge energy usage is putting excessive pressure on national climate targets and electricity grids.

Ireland, Germany, Singapore, and China as well as a US Loudoun County in Va. and Amsterdam in the Netherlands have introduced restrictions on new data centres in recent years to comply with more stringent environmental requirements.

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Art Auction

An auction of the tattooed skin of an Austrian performance artist has been canceled after all 12 pieces were bought by a collector for "a seven-figure Art Auction sum" ahead of the event. The sale of Wolfgang Flatz's skin was due to take place at Munich’s modern and contemporary art museum, the Pinakothek der Moderne, on 8 February.

The lots have been purchased by a Swiss collector, who will receive black-and-white photographs of the lots until they are transferred to them posthumously. One remaining piece of tattooed skin will be given to the artist’s son. The tattoos include the artist’s name in Cyrillic and a quote by the Roman philosopher Cicero: "Dum spiro spero" (while I breathe I hope).

The auction, titled "To Risk One’s Own Skin", was to be led by Christie’s auctioneer and chairman, Dirk Boll. A now-removed page on Christie’s website described how "the auction thus offers a unique opportunity to acquire a significant piece of art history’s future, as this is the first time an artist has sold his real body as a work of art during his lifetime."

The event was organized as a prelude to the Munich Museum’s retrospective of Flatz’s work, Something Wrong with Physical Sculpture, which runs until May 2024 and includes a work that offers visitors the chance to throw darts at his body. An undisclosed portion of the proceeds from the sale will go towards the museum’s Bavarian State Painting Collections and the Flatz Foundation, which was set up by the artist to foster "artistic expression."

An article in The Art Newspaper then discusses the legal implications of the sale, presumably because the ideas of good taste and common sense are too subjective to allow definitive debate.