Word: auctions
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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...Auctions are replacing theater openings as the first-nighters' delight. And to capitalize on the trend, Manhattan's Parke-Bernet Galleries last week staged a doubleheader, splitting sales of 130 modern art works with a $50-a-plate black-tie dinner. On hand were such luminaries as A. & P. Heir Huntington Hartford, Playwright Edward Albee, Architects Philip Johnson and Mies van der Rohe, Baron Heinrich von Thyssen, the Duchess of Leeds and all three Kennedy sisters. Nearly 3,000 potential buyers crammed four floors of the auction house with the spillover relegated to the limbo of nearby Finch...
...must look equally reptilian." His fangs proved golden. An Arp marble brought $26,000, more than treble its previous high in a major auction house. Equally, two Calder mobiles went for $9,000 and $10,000 (v. $2,400). Miro fetched $57,500 (v. $30,000). Even a newcomer like Robert Rauschenberg garnered a record $15,000 for his 1956 Gloria. In all, the collection brought $510,000, making the total for the evening $2,855,000. "This is a record for a sale of modern art in the Western hemisphere," proudly announced Parke-Bernet. "It was a Roman orgy...
With major Rembrandts bringing up to $4,448 per sq. in. at public auction, the odds against finding one at bargain-basement prices is-well-something like the nth power of a googolplex. But the bare possibility can turn the most level-headed curator into a creature half Hawkshaw, half Walter Mitty. Such was the spine-tingling predicament of Harvard's Fine Arts Chairman Seymour Slive. On a busman's holiday to Los Angeles, he had been casually shown an unsigned 17th century oil sketch, The Head of Christ, at the Paul Kantor Gallery. The glimpse proved unforgettable...
...living person's autograph the highest price ever paid was rung up in an auction last year for a four-page letter from Jacqueline Kennedy, written when her husband was a Senator, in reply to a begging letter from an Englishman. Auctioneers had estimated that the letter would bring no more than $250, but a Boston lawyer paid...
Rembrandt is having a bully time of it these days. Fortnight ago at London's Christie's, his son, Titus, brought the second-largest price of any painting ever auctioned (only $64,000 less than the Metropolitan's $2,300,000 Aristotle). Last week, at the rival auction house of Sotheby & Co., his plump wife, Saskia as Minerva, brought $350,000, followed by a stunning study of an old man from the collection of U.S. Tin Plate Magnate William B. Leeds, which was knocked down for $392,000. Titus had given Christie's an alltime auction...