Seven Days in the Art World

by Sarah Thornton

  The hammer punctuates and passes judgment. It acts as a full stop to the end of every lot, but it is also a little punishment for those who didn’t bid high enough. In the subtlest of ways, Burge dangles the carrot: This unique work of art could be yours, isn’t it beautiful, see how many people want it, join the club, enliven yourself, don’t worry about the money… Then, in a blink, he hits everyone but the highest bidder with a stick, as if all the seduction and violence of the art market were represented in the rhythm of a single lot.

  An empty room is the mise-en-scène of an anxiety dream that auctioneers share with actors. They both also dream of being caught naked before an audience. However, in the nightmare Burge has most frequently, he can’t take the sale because his auction notes are an indecipherable jumble. “There are hundreds of people out there, getting restless,” explains Burge. “For actors, their cue is being called but they just can’t get out onstage. For me, I can’t start because I can’t make heads or tails of my book.”

  Many would die to get their hands on Burge’s highly confidential “book.” It’s a sort of script for the sale. Tonight’s contains sixty-four pages, one for each lot of art. A single page contains an annotated chart of where everyone is sitting, marked with who is expected to bid and whether that person is an aggressive buyer or a “bottom-feeder” looking for a bargain. On each page Burge has also recorded the amounts left by absentee bidders, the seller’s reserve (the price under which the work will not sell), and, for almost 40 percent of the lots, the guarantees, or sums assured to each vendor whether the work sells or not.

  Twice a year in New York (in May and November) and three times a year in London (February, June, and October), Christie’s and Sotheby’s respectively hold their major sales of contemporary art. Together they control 98 percent of the global auction market for art. The word sale suggests discounts and bargains, but auction houses aim to make the highest price possible. What’s more, it is precisely these extraordinary sums that have turned the auctions into a high-society spectator sport. Tonight’s estimates range from $90,000 to prices so high that they are available only “upon request.”

  “By the time of the sale,” explains Burge, “I just go full steam ahead. I will have rehearsed this fifty times, driving myself mad, going through all the possibilities of what might happen.” Burge adjusts his tie and straightens his dark gray suit jacket. His haircut is so normal it defies description. He has perfect diction and restrained gestures. “At these evening sales,” he continues, “the audience is potentially hostile. It is a real coliseum waiting for the thumbs. They want them to go either up or down. They want a total disaster, lots of blood, and to yell, ‘Drag him off!’ Or they want record prices, great excitement, lots of laughs—a happy night at the theater.”

  Burge is considered to be the best auctioneer in the business. He has a reputation for being genuinely charming and having tight control over the room. I envisage him as the confident conductor of an orchestra or an authoritative master of ceremonies, not the victim of some gladiatorial spectacle. “If you only knew how terrified I am,” he explains. “An auction is one of the most boring things known to humankind. People sit there for two hours with this idiot droning on. It’s hot. It’s uncomfortable. People are falling asleep. It is very stressful for our staff and an experience of rank terror for me.”

  But you look like you are having such a good time, I counter.

  “That is the scotch,” he says, sighing.

  Burge has an imagination that goes well beyond the prices he calls out. Even in the straightest part of the art world, the players have character. Burge looks meticulously conventional, but as it turns out, his surface ordinariness is at least in part studied: “I’m always worried that one gets mannered and begins caricaturing oneself. We have this little army of trainers and voice coaches who watch us. We are videoed and given a ‘crit’ afterwards, so that we can stop verbal tics, overused hand movements, and other mannerisms from slipping in.”

  The pressure of the public eye is relatively new for those dealing in contemporary art. Art by living artists was not sold publicly with any fanfare until the late 1950s. The career of an artist like Picasso was made in the private sphere. People might have known him as a famous artist and said things like “My child can paint that,” but they were never shocked by the prices fetched by his work; they didn’t know them. Now artists can make the front page of national newspapers simply because their work has achieved a high price at auction. Moreover, the lag between the time works leave the studio and the time they hit the resale market is getting shorter and shorter. Collector demand for new, fresh, young art is at an all-time high. But as Burge explains, it is also a question of supply: “We are running out of earlier material, so our market is being pushed closer to the present day. We are turning from being a wholesale secondhand shop into something that is effectively retail. The shortage of older goods is thrusting newer work into the limelight.”

  Burge takes his leave to go to the crucial presale summit, where he will confirm every amount and add last-minute details to his play-by-play book of market secrets. “Right before the auction, we usually have an accurate sense of how the sale will play out,” says a Christie’s rep. “We’ve taken note of every request for a condition report about repairs and restoration to the work. We know most of our buyers personally. We might not know how hard they will push the pedal, but we know pretty well who is bidding on what.”

  The auction houses used to have an unwritten rule to “try” not to sell art that was less than two years old. They didn’t want to step on the toes of dealers, because they didn’t have the time or the expertise to market artists from scratch. Moreover, with a few important exceptions, like Damien Hirst, living artists are perceived as unpredictable and inconvenient. As a Sotheby’s staffer told me in a cavalier moment, “We don’t deal with artists, just the work, and it’s a good thing too. I’ve spent a lot of time with artists, and they’re a bloody pain in the arse.” Accordingly, an artist’s death can be opportune insofar as it cuts off the supply, creates a finite oeuvre, and clears the way for a well-defined market.

  Most artists have never attended an art auction and have little desire to do so. They’re disappointed by the way auction houses treat art like any other exchangeable commodity. In the auction world, people talk about “properties,” “assets,” and “lots” as much as paintings, sculptures, and photographs. They do “evaluations” rather than “critiques.” A “good Basquiat,” for example, was made in 1982 or 1983 and contains a head, a crown, and the color red. Primary concern is not for the meaning of the artwork but its unique selling points, which tend to fetishize the earliest traces of the artist’s brand or signature style. Paradoxically, auction house staff members are also the most likely art world players to evoke romantic notions such as “genius” and “masterpiece” as part of their sales rhetoric.

  Primary dealers, who represent artists, mount exhibitions of work fresh out of the studio, and attempt to build artists’ careers, have tended to view the auctions as amoral and almost evil. As one put it, “Only two professions come to mind where the building in which transactions take place is referred to as a house.” Secondary-market dealers, by contrast, have little to do with artists, work closely with the auction houses, and carefully play the sales.

  Primary dealers usually try to avoid selling to people who will “flip” artworks at auction, so they don’t lose control of their artists’ prices. Although high values at auction may allow a primary dealer to raise the prices of an artist’s current work, these monetary ranks can play havoc with the artist’s career. Many perceive the auctions as the barometer of the art market. Artists may be in high demand when they have a solo show at a major museum, but three years later their work may fail to reach its reserve price and suffer the indignity of being “bought in” (the expression used when a work fails to sell). By publicizing the fact that people were willing to pay half a million dollars one year but not e
ven a quarter of a million for a similar piece by the same artist the next, auctions exacerbate these harsh swings in taste. A record price breathes life into the perception of an artist’s oeuvre, whereas a buy-in is like a visit from the grim reaper.

  It’s now 5:30 P.M. I’m supposed to be half a block away, interviewing an art consultant called Philippe Ségalot. I fly past Gil, Christie’s much-loved doorman, through the revolving doors onto West Forty-ninth Street and manage to enter the café thirty seconds ahead of my interviewee. Ségalot used to work at Christie’s and now co-owns a powerful art consultancy called Giraud, Pissaro, Ségalot. He is the kind of player who, aided by the financial clout of his clients, can “make markets” for artists.

  We both decide on fish carpaccio and sparkling water. Although Ségalot is wearing a conventional navy suit, his hair stands on end, thick with gel, neither in nor strictly out of fashion but in its own universe of style. Ségalot never studied art. He acquired an MBA, then worked in the marketing department of L’Oréal in Paris. As he explains, “It is not by chance that I went from cosmetics to art. We are dealing with beauty here. We are dealing in things that are unnecessary, dealing with abstractions.”

  Ségalot talks very quickly and passionately in intense Franglais. He is a long-standing adviser to the self-made billionaire François Pinault, who, as both the owner of Christie’s and a leading collector, wields a double-edged sword in the art market.* When Pinault guarantees a work for Christie’s, he either makes money on the sale or, if it’s bought in, adds another piece to his collection. “François Pinault is my favorite collector,” confesses Ségalot. “He has a true passion for contemporary art and a unique instinct for masterworks. He understands quality. He has an incredible eye.” Building up the mystique of the collections on which you work is an essential part of a consultant’s job. Any piece of art acquired by Pinault receives the value-added stamp of his provenance. The artist is the most important origin of a work, but the hands through which it passes are essential to the way in which it accrues value. As a matter of course, everyone involved in the art market talks up the provenances with which he or she is affiliated.

  Pinault is one of twenty collectors that Ségalot and his partners work with on a regular basis. “The best situation in the art world—by far—is to be a collector,” explains Ségalot. “The second-best situation is ours. We have people acquire the works that we would buy ourselves if we could afford them. We live with the works for a couple of days or weeks, but eventually they go, and that is an enormous satisfaction. In some cases we are very jealous, but it is our job to marry the right work to the right collector.”

  How does Ségalot know when he has encountered the right work? “You feel something,” he says with fervor. “I never read about art. I’m not interested in the literature about art. I get all the art magazines, but I don’t read them. I don’t want to be influenced by the reviews. I look. I fill myself with images. It is not necessary to speak so much about art. I am convinced that a great work speaks for itself.” A faith in gut instinct is common to most collectors, consultants, and dealers, and they love to talk about it. However, it is rare to find an art professional willing to admit that he doesn’t read about art. It takes bravado. The vast majority of subscribers to art magazines do simply look at the pictures, and many collectors complain that art criticism, particularly that found in the dominant trade magazine, Artforum, is unreadable. Most consultants, however, pride themselves on their thorough research.

  People who buy at auction say that there is nothing like it: “Your heart beats faster. The adrenaline surges through you. Even the coolest buyers break out in a sweat.” If you bid in the room, you are part of the show, and if you buy, it’s a public victory. In auction-house parlance, you actually “win” works. Ségalot says he never gets nervous, but he does acknowledge a sense of sexual conquest: “Buying is very easy. It is much more difficult to resist the temptation to buy. You have to be selective and demanding, because buying is an extremely satisfying, macho act.”

  The psychology of buying is complex, if not perverse. Ségalot tells his clients, “The most expensive purchases—the purchases where you suffer the most—will turn out to be the best ones.” Whether it is because of the intense competition or the financial stretch, there is something irresistible about art that is hard to get. Like love, it fuels desire. “Give me a bid, but be prepared for me to exceed it,” Ségalot warns his clients. “I have created situations where I was anxious to speak to the collector after a sale because I had spent twice as much as agreed on major purchases.”

  I try to formulate a question about the correlation between making money as a consultant and overpaying for art. When consultants are on commission, they don’t earn anything unless they buy. When they’re on a retainer, no such conflict of interest gets in the way of the job. But as I struggle for the right words to broach this delicate subject, Ségalot looks at his watch. A flash of alarm crosses his face. He apologizes, stands up, pays the bill, and says, “It has been my pleasure.”

  I sit, finishing my water and collecting my thoughts. Ségalot is infectiously zealous. We had been sitting for almost an hour and he had spoken with absolute conviction the entire time. This is a talent essential to his job. On one level, the art market is understood as the supply and demand of art, but on another, it is an economy of belief. “Art is only worth what someone is willing to pay for it” is the operating cliché. Although this may suggest the relationship between a con artist and his mark, the people who do well believe every word they say—at least at the moment they say it. The auction process is about managing confidence on all levels—confidence that the artist is and will continue to be culturally significant, confidence that the work is a good one, confidence that others will not withdraw their financial support.

  6:35 P.M. The doors in the two-story glass wall of Christie’s lobby revolve continuously with a steady flow of ticket holders. Many dealers and consultants are already here, as the evening sale is an opportunity to meet and greet “the money.” In the queue for the coat check, and again in the line to pick up paddles for bidding, people speculate about which objects are going to do well and who is likely to buy what. Everybody knows something. People drop their voices when they utter a name or a lot number, so you tend to hear only the verdict: “That’s going to fly” or “That estimate is way off.” As people part ways to go to their seats, collectors say to each other “Good luck” and “See you in Miami.” It’s all gleaming smiles.

  The crowd is international. You hear a lot of French in an array of Belgian, Swiss, and Parisian accents. Belgium and Switzerland probably have the highest per capita ratios of contemporary art collectors. Until World War II, France was the center for buying and selling art. From after the war to the early 1980s, London was the auction capital, but now the British city is a secondary site, where the buyers tend to bid over the phone. Looking at this busy scene, it is hard to believe that New York was a provincial outpost of the art business until the late 1970s. Christie’s started holding auctions here only in 1977, but now, in the words of one Christie’s expert, “The market is alive—all the major players are in the room.”

  I see David Teiger, a New York–based collector in his late seventies. He is talking to a well-preserved woman close to his own age.

  “What period do you collect?” she asks.

  “This morning,” he responds.

  “You like art by young artists?” she asks earnestly.

  “I don’t necessarily like it, but I buy it,” he jokes.

  “So…are you bidding tonight?”

  “No. I don’t come here to buy. I come to smell the perfume—the aroma of what is in the oven—to gauge where the public is going. That is nothing to do with where I might go. I’ll go somewhere overlooked or undervalued.”

  Teiger prides himself on his independence; auctions have too much of a pack mentality for him. He bought Andy Warhol out of the Stable Gallery’s show in 1963. “Y
ou know how much I paid for it?” he says. “Seven hundred and twenty dollars! Do you know when MoMA bought their first Warhol? 1982!” Having done that, why would he want to spend $10 million on a lesser Warhol now? It wouldn’t sit right with his adventurous self-image. He’s not that kind of collector.

  So who buys at auction? Many “serious” collectors of contemporary art buy from primary dealers. It’s a lot cheaper, if a lot riskier, to be ahead of the curve. On the secondary or resale market, the risk is lower, because the work has been market-tested. All art is “priceless,” but assurance is expensive. A small percentage of collectors buy only at auction. “They like the discipline of the deadline,” explains a Sotheby’s director. “They’re very busy, so the sale makes them get their act together. They like the open nature of the auction, especially if there is a visible underbidder willing to pay a similar price. They also like the certainty that they’ve paid a market price on a given day in a given location.”

  One reason to buy at auction is to avoid the time-consuming politicking expected by primary dealers, who, in the interest of building their artists’ careers, try to sell only to collectors who have the right reputation. The lines to buy work, particularly by painters with limited annual output, can be very long—so long, in fact, that many may never be deemed elite or erudite enough to be “offered a work.” Some auction house people complain of the “complete lack of material on the market” and the “undemocratic” way in which primary dealers go about their business. “Quite frankly,” declares a Sotheby’s expert, “I think the waiting lists are obscene. An auction gets rid of these hierarchical lists, because you can jump straight to the head of the queue just by putting your hand up last.”