Word: americans
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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Auction has transformed the very nature of the art sale. In 1983 the old English firm of Sotheby's was taken over by A. Alfred Taubman, American conglomerator, real estate giant and collector. The deal had to be approved by Britain's Monopolies and Mergers Commission. At the commission hearings, Taubman declared that he would be "very concerned" if the public ever got the idea that Sotheby's was centered anywhere but Britain, and that the "traditional nature of the business and of the services offered would be changed as little as possible." Request approved...
...immense. Contemporary art has become, quite simply, currency. The market burns off all nuances of meaning, and has begun to function like computer-driven investment on Wall Street. Sotheby's and Christie's between them sold $204 million worth of contemporary art the week before last. Of this, American buying represented only a quarter; Europeans bought 34.9% and the Japanese a whopping...
This indicates a radically transformed market structure. In art as in other markets at the end of Reagan's economic follies, America sinks and Japan rises. In this context it is fatuous to utter bromides about art's being the Common Property of Mankind. Americans now begin to view the outflow of their own art with bemused alarm -- just as Italians and Englishmen, at the turn of the century, watched the Titians, Sassettas and Turners, pried loose from palazzo and stately home by the teamwork of Bernard Berenson and Joseph Duveen, disappearing into American museums. "The Japanese are awash...
...course, this would have been exactly the feeling of a cultivated Japanese in 1885, watching his cultural patrimony being politely stripped by American collectors, led by Ernest Fenollosa and the "Boston bonzes." The emerging lesson of the late '80s, which is unlikely to change in the '90s, is that America no longer controls the art market to any significant degree. Mostly, it sells. Its buying power is fading fast...
...Bond asked Chemical if he could pay up the lease early, settle the difference between the lease payments and the original $3.96 million and take ownership of the Manet. All seemed well until an American adviser in 1987 pointed out to Chemical that by law the Manet belonged to the bank and not to Bond. Its price had gone up. So why shouldn't Chemical auction the Manet on behalf of its shareholders? On learning of this suggestion, Bond reportedly flew into an epic rage. Chemical backed down and let Bond pay off the lease and keep the picture...