Word: auction
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...some critics, the auction houses' success is excessive. While no one blames them for dizzy prices-they are not their bidders' keepers-even dealers who are making wild profits as a result of the art boom evince a certain distaste for the whole process. London's Waddington points out that the auction world's Big Two, unlike most thriving corporations, do not plow back even part of their profits into research, grants for young artists or gifts to museums. Says he: "They are simply dealing in commodities." There is a gavel-size black cloud over...
...English auction firms are particularly renowned for their well-connected staffers' ability to sniff out what they delicately call "aristocratic sales of necessity" (translation: the duke needs cash). Even the sophisticated rich often have unexpected treasures on their premises. Before sitting down to lunch at their country estate with the Earl and Countess of Verulam, Christie's Oriental ceramics director, Sir John Figgess, asked his host "if there was a cloakroom [bathroom] handy." There were two cloakrooms, allowed Verulam: "You take this one and I'll take that one." In the John that Sir John took...
...auction as a news and social spectacular came to full flower with Sotheby's acquisition of Manhattan's Parke-Bernet in 1964. Christie's, its more decorous rival, came to New York 13 years later and has been more cautious about expanding worldwide. (Sotheby's has 42 international bases, Christie's 29.) Not totally tongue in cheek, Christie's maintains that "Sotheby's is a businessman pretending to be a gentleman, while Christie's is a gentleman pretending to be a businessman...
...past decade or so that the big sales have been covered by the press as Events; the sums paid for art used to be buried in newspapers along with ship arrivals. Now, with the tremendous increases in fine arts prices and the expansion of public interest, big auctions have become flash bulb and video-tape fiestas. To a large extent the transformation has been wrought by Sotheby's, the world's largest, canniest and most aggressive house. In the late '50s Sotheby's introduced such techniques as international telephone hookups, bidding by closed-circuit...
...assist the bank's millionaire clients in acquiring artworks for investment. Though Sotheby's insists that the arrangement contains sufficient built-in checks and balances to dispel any suspicion of conflict of interest, many people in the art world are skeptical of any deal whereby an auction house may in effect end up supporting its own market. Says David Bathurst, Christie's New York president: "Using art as an investment scares the hell out of me. There's going to be a flood of money in and out, leaving a sound market devastated because of people...