Word: ganz
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...continue through this week--confirm this: one big bang, and not much else. The bang was afforded by the collection of works by Picasso (plus some by Jasper Johns, Robert Rauschenberg and other American artists) put together over 50 years, on a fairly modest budget, by Victor and Sally Ganz. It was one of the more famous American private collections, and it contained some works--especially the Picassos--of very high quality...
Christie's promoted the Ganz sale with the determination of a Panzer division hitting the French border. To woo the heirs, Christie's, as reported in the Wall Street Journal, struck a complicated guarantee deal whereby the four Ganz children would get a total of $120 million, no matter what the pictures realized on the block. Then came a thick calendar of promotional dinner parties (catered in a town house hung with the Ganz artworks), symposiums on Picasso and the collection, private and public viewings, and a general media blitz...
...some hoped, a return to the market boom of the '80s, when squillionaires competed for favored artworks like mountain rams in rut clashing horns over a crag or a mate, and when new money would pay just about anything for just about anything? Obviously not. For instance, at the Ganz sale someone paid $7.9 million for a good Jasper Johns--a far cry from the $17 million paid for a comparable picture at Sotheby's nine years...
...success of the Ganz sale lay partly in the excellence of some of its contents, but largely in the adroitness of Christie's promotion. If there were any doubts about this, they were dispelled by the results of other sales last week, which were mediocre. Two nights after the Ganz sale, the Evelyn Sharp collection of modern art went on the block at Sotheby's. It was a second-rate affair at best, chopped liver compared with the Ganz foie gras. The auction house had given the Sharp estate a guarantee, undisclosed but somewhere near the low aggregate-sales estimate...
...million: How much Victor and Sally Ganz spent on art over 50 years...