Word: auction
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...paid $39.9 million for Sunflowers? Less than two weeks after an anonymous telephone bidder set an art-world record at Christie's London auction house by buying the faded Van Gogh masterpiece, the mysterious party has come forward: Tokyo-based Yasuda Fire & Marine Insurance. Japan's second largest insurance company bought the work, which was completed in January 1889, to help celebrate its centenary next year...
...discuss a reason for this price is to imply that on some level, the price was rational; perhaps it is better to speak of causes, since with this auction such convulsions at the higher end of the art market are flatly shown for what they are, symptoms of pathology. There is no rational price for a work of art. That price is solely an index of desire, and nothing is more manipulable than desire, a fact as well known to auctioneers as to hookers. All works of art are worth exactly what someone can be induced to pay for them...
...form of the rite divided neatly into three phases. First, the Manifestation, during which Sunflowers was exhibited, behind bars, to long queues of curiosity seekers at Christie's. Then the Ascension, or auction proper, in which Vincent's glorified body was raised to the empyrean in 4 minutes 30 seconds, a rate of climb of $147,700 per second. And third, the Eucharistic Feast. After the sale, Christie's brought out a savory cake in the form of Sunflowers, the frame made of flaky pastry, the colors rendered impasto furioso in various hues of saffron-tinted cream cheese, the green...
...days later in a lakefront tent at the Hotel Beau-Rivage in Geneva, another event began: the sale of the late Duchess of Windsor's jewelry, organized by Christie's rival auction house Sotheby's. Here was a nominal contrast at least, since though everyone admires Van Gogh, none but a snob or a fantasist (not that we are short of either) could feel much nostalgia for Wallis Simpson and her husband, who abdicated the throne of England in 1936 and was obliged to spend the war years as governor of the Bahamas on account of his thinly veiled Nazi...
Stunned by last week' s record price for Van Gogh' s Sunflowers, the art world looks for reasons. But the sale -- no less than the $50 million auction of the Duchess of Windsor' s jewels -- is only a symptom of hype and greed. The public sense of art is demeaned as a wealthy entrepreneurial class fixates on "masterpieces" and private collectors drive museums out of the market...