Art Basel Shopping Spree: If I Had $10 Million

Jacques Lipchitz, "Detachable Figure: Dancer" (1915), at Knoedler & Company, New York
$5 million

Arguably one of the rarest works at this year’s fair, this is one of Lipchitz’s first attempts at constructed sculpture and one of only eight surviving works by him in unadorned wood.

Heavily influenced by the Cubist breakthroughs of Pablo Picasso, whom Lipschitz visited in Paris the previous year, the 33-inch plain-Jane woodblock sculpture, created to be easily taken apart and transported, has a jaunty yet monumental air.

One might suspect the price is sky-high—due to its rarity, there are virtually no market comparables—but time is slipping by too fast to haggle.

Courtesy Knoedler & Company