ART

John Walsh, director of Malibu’s J. Paul Getty Museum, won’t say if Vincent van Gogh’s “Irises” will be on the museum’s $100-million annual shopping list when the painting goes up for auction at Sotheby’s in New York on Nov. 11. “It’s a wonderful picture and we’ve talked about it endlessly,” said Walsh to arts reporters during a luncheon in London. The firm suggests that “Irises,” painted in 1889, may become the second most expensive painting ever auctioned, following the record $39.85 million paid by a Japanese insurance company for Van Gogh’s “Sunflowers” at Christie’s in London last March.