Kim Kardashian Bought a Monet Because of 'Clueless', New Biography Reveals

Kim Kardashian owns a Claude Monet, and she bought it because of a joke in the 1995 film Clueless. That revelation comes from Citizen Kim, Jonathan Van Meter's new biography of the billionaire reality TV star and Skims founder, excerpted by The Hollywood Reporter.

Van Meter is precise about what did not drive the purchase. "Kim bought a Monet not because she had visited the famous Water Lilies at l'Orangerie in Paris or under the art world tutelage of Kanye West," he writes.

The actual reason is a line of dialogue. Clueless came out when Kardashian was 14, and she has called it one of her favorite films. She also identified with its heroine: Cher Horowitz, played by Alicia Silverstone, is the daughter of a hard-nosed litigator, much like Kardashian's late father, the attorney Robert Kardashian.

Cher's best-known line concerns Monet. "She's a full-on Monet. It's like a painting, see? From far away it's OK, but up close it's a big ol' mess." The joke stuck. Kardashian told Van Meter it is "the reason I bought my Monet. The first real piece of art that I bought—myself—was a Monet. Because in the movie they called the girls 'a Monet' if they look good from afar, but up close they're just a mess."

How did the auction go?

Not smoothly, by her account. Kardashian says she bought the painting at auction while in Rome with Kim Jones, Fendi's former artistic director of womenswear, who worked with her on a Fendi x Skims collection. The collaboration was announced in 2021, which suggests the Monet was bought around that time.

Her taste ran to the muted end of the Impressionist catalogue. "I really wanted this Monet painting because it's a gray Monet—a pretty landscape, but gray. … I really wanted it for my Tadao Ando house in Palm Springs, which is all concrete," Kardashian told Van Meter. The Ando reference is to the Japanese architect, whose concrete minimalism has made him a favorite of collector-adjacent celebrities.

The bidding itself was a first. "And I'm bidding and I'm bidding, and it was the first auction that I ever did, so I didn't really know how they worked," she said. "But you get really into it. So Kim Jones is there with me and he's like, 'GET IT!' So I bid on it. I win. And I went over what my budget was because you're in the moment."

An auction rookie exceeding her budget is not news. A billionaire citing Alicia Silverstone as her collecting thesis is.

What else does she own?

The Monet was not her entry point into art ownership. In a 2020 interview with E!, Kardashian said the best gift she has ever received is a Lucio Fontana painting. A white Fontana canvas — the Italian artist's slashed canvases are his signature — appears above a fireplace in a 2022 Vogue tour of her home.

So the record stands: a Fontana by gift, a Monet by film reference. Kardashian has not disclosed what she paid at the Rome auction, and Van Meter's excerpt leaves the price unrecorded. If she ever lends the gray Monet publicly, the Clueless provenance will follow it onto the wall label.