When a group of wealthy investors compete with each other to buy an asset, surely they have a clear idea of its financial value? Jussi Pylkk?nen, president of Christie’s, who on Monday night auctioned Picasso’s “Les Femmes d’Alger” (Version O) to an anonymous buyer for $179.4m, thinks they do.

“People sometimes think of buying art as a frivolous occupation but these bidders are very conscious of what the object is worth, and they make decisions in an extremely considered way,” Mr Pylkk?nen assured me afterwards. He emphasised that the final bids for the Picasso, in a New York auction that raised $706m for 34 works of 20th-century art, proceeded in careful, $500,000 increments.

Amid record-breaking auctions in London and New York, art is increasingly treated as a financial asset. “Swamped”, a painting by Peter Doig, a 56-year-old Scottish artist, sold for $25.9m on Monday night. Billionaires fly to Art Basel Miami Beach to buy from big galleries, private bankers tell clients to diversify into art; masterpieces clog free port warehouses in Geneva.