Word: gachet
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...picked up at a flea market in France just after World War II, but its purchaser did not recognize the signature. Curators at Amsterdam's Van Gogh Museum declined to put a value on Still Life (Vase with Flowers); in 1990 Van Gogh's Portrait of Dr. Gachet sold for $82.5 million...
...that it's any surprise. When Irises sold for $53.9 million in 1987, any fool could see the Gogh-Gogh years were drawing to a close. No, it was not the peak; three years later, Van Gogh's Portrait of Dr. Gachet brought $82.5 million. But this is often the way it works, whether in the art market or any other -- a long run-up and then a final speculative blow...
...Tuesday night at Christie's, Van Gogh's melancholy portrait of his physician, Dr. Gachet, sold to the Japanese dealer Hideto Kobayashi for $82.5 million, the highest price ever paid at auction for a work of art. Kobayashi bought the painting on behalf of noted Japanese collector Ryoei Saito, a paper-manufacturing executive. Two nights later, at Sotheby's, Kobayashi again acted for Saito in bidding $78.1 million for one of the best Renoirs in America, Au Moulin de la Galette...
...Herald Tribune, "Market manipulation has now reached such proportions . . . that even the greenest newcomers are becoming aware that they are being taken for a ride." Since the main form of this manipulation has been the systematic inflation of estimates, it leaves the auctioneers with a problem not even Dr. Gachet could cure...
...placed vastly inflated reserves, or minimum acceptable bids, on their paintings. Says Richard Feigen, an international art dealer: "Their estimates and reserves are now insane, sometimes double what the market will bear." Prices for older masterpieces are expected to hold up well. Van Gogh's Portrait of Dr. Gachet should bring more than $40 million at auction this week. Other safe bets: 20th century classics (Picasso, Matisse) and postwar Americans (Jackson Pollock, Mark Rothko). But experts think prices will soften dramatically for paintings by some young superstars (David Salle, Eric Fischl, Anselm Kiefer). Says Feigen: "No more seven-figure prices...