Word: sales
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...main salesroom in London, hung with chandeliers and often lined with valuable paintings, resembles a grand ballroom. Christie's, a few blocks away, has the slightly more venerable atmosphere of a London men's club. However, the principal attraction of an auction house before a sale is that it enables the viewer to make closer and longer observation of art works than he can possibly do elsewhere...
...Harbison: "A good auctioneer is very much like a good lecturer. Everyone should understand what's going on and be sitting forward in his seat." He added: "Sometimes the atmosphere in the salesroom is absolutely crackling. The eyes of the whole world are on you at an impressionist sale. As much as $5 million may change hands in one evening. You just feel the weight of money in the room...
...audiences have changed, so have the mechanics of auctioneering. Twenty years ago, salesrooms were decorous, dusty-and dull. They were frequented mostly by dealers or agents for anonymous collectors. Save for the hobbyist or scholar who might attend a sale of arms and armor or rare folios, amateurs seldom bid for anything; mostly they were scared away. One intimidating aspect of auctions has been the seriocomic notion that by a cough or casual gesture the unwitting onlooker may become a high-rolling bidder. Only half in jest, Louis Marion, who headed the old Parke-Bernet firm and was the father...
...been only in the past decade or so that the big sales have been covered by the press as Events; the sums paid for art used to be buried in newspapers along with ship arrivals. Now, with the tremendous increases in fine arts prices and the expansion of public interest, big auctions have become flash bulb and 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...
...perspectives of the Bible. "Scholarly content is terribly important," Read says, "but it shouldn't intrude." Read's material is solid enough to make him one of the few preachers whose collected sermons can be read as literature-and at the same time enjoy a respectable sale in book form...