Word: bond
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1980-1989
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
Like many another entrepreneur, Bond had never given much thought to art until he got rich. "This Pie-casso, now," he asked an Australian museum man over dinner in Sydney in the early 1980s, "is he worth having?" But a major impressionist collection was what Bond hankered after. He knew this could not possibly come cheap. He didn't care. He was, in short, a dealer's dream: Billionaris ignorans, a species now almost extinct in the U.S. but preserved (along with other ancient life-forms) in the Antipodes...
...Maine. But with the news of Sunflowers' sale for $39.9 million -- and with little tax relief in sight if he gave it to a museum -- he decided to sell it through Sotheby's, which cautiously predicted a price between $20 million and $40 million and went to tell Bond the glad news. Sotheby's did not need to cast a delicate fly over Bond and strip it softly in. The fish was already halfway over the gunwale and champing eagerly at the gas tank...
...Bond arranged with the financial services division of Sotheby's for an open- ended bridging loan of half the hammer price, whatever that would be. The other half he borrowed from an Australian bank...
...night of the auction, an agent for Bond in New York City placed his bids by telephone. Irises, according to observers, quite quickly went up to $40 million. After a slight lull, the contest resumed between two telephones, whose disembodied bids were relayed to auctioneer John Marion. Moments later, Irises was hammered down to an anonymous bidder at $49 million -- $53.9 million counting the 10% buyer's commission. The name of the underbidder on the other phone has never been divulged. A year went by before it was announced that Bond was the new owner of Irises...
Irises, it seemed at the time, was the picture that saved the art market after Black Monday -- Oct. 19, 1987 -- when Wall Street plunged 508 points. Actually, the market was running quite high between the crash and the sale of Irises, but the painting was greeted as a talisman. Bond beefed up the security arrangements on the top floor of his headquarters in Perth to fortress strength and unveiled his acquisition -- the only Van Gogh in Australia -- to the press. "This isn't just a great painting!" he exulted to the cameras. "It's the greatest painting in the world...