Untitled #153

Cindy Sherman, an American visual artist, created Untitled #153 in 1985. A print was auctioned off for $2.7 million in 2010, making it one of the most expensive pictures ever sold.

The photograph was inspired by a request from the magazine Vanity Fair to create a series of photographs inspired by fairy tales. The images were never published by the magazine, yet they are among her best and most characteristic works. They are more gloomy and horrific than the sources from which they are said to have drawn inspiration, and are not directly influenced by anyone's fairy tale.

The current image is a self-portrait, as is typical of the artist, displaying a lady lying on the ground as a corpse, coated in mud in what appears to be a natural environment.

The photograph is on display in the Museum of Modern Art in New York, the Museum of Contemporary Art in Chicago, the Musée d'art Contemporain de Montréal, the Israel Museum in Jerusalem, and the Museo Rufino Tamayo in Mexico City.

Artist: Cindy Sherman

Price: $2.7 million