Word: grosse
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...think so. That tremendous social explosion came about because of the dammed-up frustration of the past eight years, the decline in living standards. Now, this year, in Venezuela we're going to have a dramatic drop, almost 10%, in our gross national product as a result of our adjustment measures. If we don't straighten out this situation, if we don't have the resources to confront this violent decline, the social situation will reach intolerable extremes. And it's not just us; all the countries of Latin America are suffering...
Taubman then recentered Sotheby's in New York and, over the next few years, changed its business to such an extent that its lending and other investment services generated $240 million in 1988 -- nearly a tenth of Sotheby's gross income of $2.3 billion. What Taubman saw (and staider Christie's was not slow to pick up) was that an auction house could go directly to the public, not only at low price levels but also at very high ones. In the past, auction houses sold mainly to dealers, who put on their markup and then sold to their clients...
Aponte's version is different. Consumer affairs found "gross irregularities" in art auction houses, he says. Chandelier bidding amounted to "an industry practice, both above and below the reserve." (A chandelier bid above the reserve violates present rules.) Aponte was also concerned about the practices of not announcing buy-ins and of keeping reserves secret. The auction houses held that if bidders knew what the reserve on a lot was, it would chill the market. Art dealers, lobbying the agency, maintained that the reserve should be disclosed and that bidding should start...
Such events remind one that the art market in general, including the auction business, is not a profession. It is a trade, a worldwide industry whose gross turnover may be as high as $50 billion a year. Like other trades, it contains a large moral spectrum between dedicated, wholly honest people and flat-out crooks. It has never earned the right to be considered either self-policing or self-correcting. It needs regulation, but consumer affairs -- overburdened with the million complaints about small and large business violations that arise in New York, which it was created to deal with...
...Nancy Newman, Susan M. Reed, Elizabeth Rudulph, Zona Sparks, William Tynan, Sidney Urquhart, Susanne Washburn (Senior Staff); Elizabeth L. Bland, Kathleen Brady, Barbara Burke, Wendy Cole, Tom Curry, Nelida Gonzalez Cutler, Sally B. Donnelly, Andrea Dorfman, David Ellis, Kathryn Jackson Fallon, Mary McC. Fernandez, Cassie T. Furgurson, David M. Gross, Janice M. Horowitz, Jeanette Isaac, Sinting Lai, Daniel S. Levy, Emily Mitchell, Lawrence Mondi, Michael Quinn, Jeffery C. Rubin, Megan Rutherford, Andrea Sachs, Sophfronia Scott, David Seideman, David E. Thigpen, Leslie Whitaker, Linda Williams, Linda Young