Word: evens
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...Movies are binary," George Lucas, who directed Star Wars, once said. "They either work or they don't." He meant that even if some elements fall below standard, that may not affect our overall feeling for a picture if something about it grabs hold of our consciousness. Lucas comes to mind because so much of the Disney studio's The Black Hole-an overpowering score, squads of menacing heavies and, especially, two adorable robots-are straight Star Wars steals, and because, despite all this sincere flattery and a script and performances that are merely adequate, the fool thing...
...have not been stamped out en masse for a homogenized society. They are beginning to emulate upper-crust Europeans, who have always invested disposable income in tangibles. Says Sotheby's Wilson: "We live in such difficult times that the art of the past is somehow reassuring. It can even be an alternative to religion." For many accumulators...
...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...
...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 TV, the gala evening sale crammed with formally clad celebrities, assiduous ballyhoo and greatly increased sale schedules. More recently, Sotheby's pushed its mass-marketing strategy even further by signing an agreement with Tokyo's Seibu Department Stores Ltd., which brings the Western fine arts auction market into retail stores and enables Japanese...