Would you pay £5million to hang this on your wall?

Works of art that are considered overrated and overvalued are often the ones that have an absurdly pretentious title attached.

Try this one for size: Abstrakres Bild (768-4).

No? Well it just so happens that this monochrome abstract work by the German living legend Gerhard Richter has sold at Sotheby’s to the tune of $7.6 million (around 5 million pounds) .

The work has been described by those that know about such things as having a ‘heavy emphasis on its own materiality. It simultaneously resembles a view of a forest and a non-representational art object, a collection of spontaneous incidents of creation.’

So it’s not just the titles that are pretentious it appears.

In fact, Abstrakres Bild (768-4) was one of six Richter’s to have sold during the evening at Sotheby’s for a total of $30 million.

Richter was recently the subject of a retrospective at the Tate Modern where he was asked how the role of the artist had changed over the years. The 80-year-old was minimal and unapologetic in his response. “It’s more entertainment now,” he said.

Entertainment for whom one wonders?