Something is terribly wrong with this world.

A Francis Bacon painting smashed the auction record for postwar art last night in New York, fetching $52.7 million. Its reign lasted just 10 minutes, before being trumped by a Mark Rothko work that went for $72.8 million.

Not to debate the merits of Mark Rothko (although I should admit he’s a painter I don’t particularly care for), but the idea that a piece of postwar art could approach the Old Master auction record* disturbs me. That any postwar painting could sell for more than any Rembrandt, Vermeer or Caravaggio causes me psychic pain**.

Here’s the record breaker:

*Rubens’ Massacre of the Innocents sold for £49.5million ($76.2 million) in 2002.

The painting:

**Obviously, there are more valuable Old Master paintings. Paintings like Girl With a Pearl Earring or The Syndics of the Clothmakers Guild or The Taking of Christ (just to choose three that I like at random) would sell for extraordinary sums. It’s just that paintings of that caliber don’t change hands very often so the auction record is much lower than it could be.