Word: evering
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...sale in years has come closer to craziness than Sotheby Parke Bernet's Auction 4290 in Manhattan on Oct. 25. It took only three minutes and 45 seconds to gavel down Frederic Edwin Church's The Icebergs for $2.5 million. That was the third highest bid ever made for a painting at auction* and more than twice as much as any other American work of art has ever fetched (see ESSAY). In all, the 264 works by 146 American painters of the 19th and 20th centuries posted a record for a sale...
American folk art, however humble its origin, is soaring in value as well-crafted objects like pewter pots, duck decoys, quilts and scrimshaw (erotic examples in particular) become ever scarcer. Photographs are commanding fine arts prices; an original print of Ansel Adams' Moonrise, Hernandez, New Mexico sold last week for a record $22,000. "We can see the day when a single photograph will fetch $100,000," says Philippe Garner, a Sotheby's photographic expert. Almost any object from the once scorned 19th century now seems as precious as Suez Canal Co. stock was in its heyday. Twenty...
Many other factors have combined to pump up the proceeds. First-rate works of art are in short supply, and becoming ever more scarce, as the auction catalogues-if not the sales figures-sadly reflect. The prizes go mostly these days to citizens of nations that do not extract excessive taxes from the wealthy: Switzerland, France, West Germany, Japan and the Arab countries. Americans remain very much in the market, however, thanks in part to U.S. tax laws that permit a collector to deduct contributions from his taxable estate if he has willed his treasures to a museum. The museums...
...price spiral is also sustained by a vastly increased public interest in art. More than 175 million Americans visited museums last year. Americans are better educated and more intrigued than ever with objects of lasting value. They share a hunger for possessions that 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...
...might not have got $1,000 for the Pre-Raphaelite painting that now fetches $100,000. The $30,000 Tiffany lamp was not worth $3,000, and so on. One is left with the impression-indeed it is cultivated assiduously by the largest gaggle of public relations people ever to batten on the flank of culture-that art prices can only go up; the market has transcended its old uncertainty, whether the objects are million-dollar Titians or ten-buck trash "collectibles...