Seven Days in the Art World

by Sarah Thornton

  At 6:50 P.M. I climb the stairs to the salesroom and join the members of the press, who are herded into a cramped standing-room area cordoned off by a red rope. The spatial arrangement suggests that the press should know its place. At a Sotheby’s Old Masters sale, we were given humiliatingly huge white stickers that said PRESS. In the hierarchy of this world of money and power, the reporters are visibly at the bottom. As one collector said of a particular journalist, “He obviously doesn’t get paid very much. He doesn’t really have access to important people, so he’s reliant on scraps to put his articles together. It’s not much fun hanging around at the big table when you’re not wanted there.”

  One journalist, who writes for the New York Times, is an exception to the rule. Carol Vogel has an assigned seat in front of the red cordon that allows her to get up and strut up and down in front of the press pack in her high-heeled boots and gray bob. She is the haughty embodiment of the power of her newspaper. I see Ms. Vogel talking to some of the top dealers and collectors. She obtains access because they want to influence her reports, even if their tips and insights amount to little more than generous helpings of spin.

  In the center of this jostling press pen is Josh Baer. He is not actually a journalist, but for over ten years he’s been sending out an electronic newsletter called The Baer Faxt that reports on, among other things, who is buying and underbidding at the auctions. Baer looks a bit like Richard Gere; he’s a cool New Yorker with thick silver hair and black-rimmed glasses. His mother is a minimalist painter of some repute and he ran a gallery for ten years, so he knows the milieu well. “The newsletter contributes to the illusion of transparency,” he admits. “People are overinformed and undereducated. They have this veneer of knowledge. They look at a painting and they see its price. They think the only value is an auction value.” Although the art world in general and the art market in particular are opaque, when you are part of the confidential inner circle, there are fewer secrets. As Baer explains, “People like to talk about themselves and to show that they know what they know. I’m fighting that urge right now—I have to fight the impulse to try to impress you that I am mportant.”

  Most of the reporters here are interested in a narrow band of information. They take note of the prices and try to see who is bidding and buying. None of them are critics. They don’t write about art, but trade in the currency of knowing who does what. One journalist is “paddle spotting,” or writing down the numbers of people’s paddles as they walk in so that later, when people are bidding, he can tell who bought the work when the auctioneer confirms the number aloud. Others are trying to clock who is sitting where. The reporters grumble about their cramped quarters and their difficult sight lines. They laugh at the pompous collector who has been given a “bad seat” and banter about the best way to describe someone who is making his way to his chair. “Distinctive,” says the understated British correspondent. “Vulgar,” says Baer. “A clown,” says an emphatic voice from the back of the pack.

  The salesroom seats a thousand people, but it looks more intimate. One’s seat is a mark of status and a point of pride. Smack dab in the middle of the room, I see Jack and Juliette Gold (not their real names), a pair of avid collectors, married with no kids, in their late forties. They fly into New York every May and November, stay in their favorite room at the Four Seasons, and arrange to have dinner with friends at Sette Mezzo and Bal thazar. “The truth is,” confides Juliette later, “you’ve got standing room, the terrible seats, the good seats, the very good seats, and the aisle seats—they are the best. You’ve got the big collectors who buy—they’re at the front, slightly to the right. You have serious collectors who don’t buy—they’re toward the back. Then, of course, you have the vendors, who are hiding up in the private skyboxes. It’s a whole ceremony. With few exceptions, everyone sits in exactly the same spot they did last season.” Another collector told me that the evening sale was like “going to synagogue on the High Holidays. Everyone knows everybody else, but they only see each other three times a year, so they are chatting and catching up.” Anecdotes abound about unnamed collectors who became so immersed in gossip that they forgot to bid.

  Part of the pleasure of the auctions is the opportunity to be seen. Juliette is wearing a Missoni dress with no jewelry except for a whopping vintage Cartier diamond ring. (“It’s dangerous to wear Prada,” she warns. “You might get caught in the same outfit as three members of Christie’s staff.”) Jack sports a discreetly pinstriped Zegna suit with a cobalt-blue Hermès tie. Sometimes Jack and Juliette buy, sometimes they sell, but mostly they come because they love the sales. Juliette is a romantic whose European parents collected art, and Jack is a pragmatist whose stock and property business influences his perspective. Juliette told me that “an auction is like an opera with a language that you need to decipher.” Jack seems to agree but ultimately describes a very different event: “Yes, even if you don’t have a direct interest in the sale, you’re emotionally involved because you’ll own similar works by ten of the artists. An auction is an instant evaluation.”

  Tonight’s auction is more than a series of sixty-four straightforward business deals; it is a kaleidoscope of conflicting interpretations and financial agendas. When I asked the couple why they thought collecting had become so popular in recent years, Juliette spoke about how so many more people were coming to understand that art could enrich their lives. Jack, by contrast, thinks it’s because art has become an accepted way of “diversifying your investment portfolio.” Although it offends the sensibilities of older “pure collectors,” he says, the “new collectors, who have been making their money in hedge funds, are very aware of alternatives for their money. Cash pays so little return now that to invest in art doesn’t seem like such a dumb idea. That’s why the art market’s been so strong—because there are few better options. If the stock market had two or three consecutive quarters of large growth, then, perversely, the art market might have a problem.”

  The art world is so small and resolutely insular that it is not much affected by political problems. “At the sales after September eleventh,” explains Juliette, “you had absolutely no sense of the reality of the world outside. None whatsoever. I remember sitting in the sale that November and saying to Jack, ‘We’re going to come out of this room and the Twin Towers will be standing and everything will be good with the world.’”

  Major disasters may not have an impact, but casual gossip has the power to break a work. Jack told me a story about friends who sold off their grandmother’s collection. “There was this beautiful Agnes Martin painting, but somehow the word got around that if you looked at it upside down, in a certain light, with your eyes closed, it was damaged. So the whole art world suddenly took that as gospel. That probably knocked half a million dollars off the price—just because some idiot started a rumor. Conversely, when word gets out that an artist is going to move to Larry, everyone wants to buy a work before the prices go nuts.” He was referring to Larry Gagosian, one of the most powerful art dealers in the world, with galleries in New York, Los Angeles, London, and Rome, who invariably raises an artist’s prices by 50 percent when he starts representing him or her.

  Most people confess to enjoying the intrigue. However, the competitive underside to the conversations is unbearable for some. A London dealer who wishes he could avoid the auctions explained: “Between you and me, everyone is so full of shit. The people are all running after each other. The chat is full of subterfuge and sleazy art world stories. It’s like a tableau vivant of pretentious greed. You walk in, and everyone’s so happy and ‘How are you?’ when all they want to do is screw you.”

  At 7:01 P.M., as a few stragglers struggle to their seats, Christopher Burge whacks his gavel. “Good evening, ladies and gentlemen. Welcome to Christie’s and to this evening’s sale of postwar and contemporary art.” He reads out the rules about conditions of sale, commission fees, and taxes. Burge calls out “Lot one” and starts the bidding off: “Forty-four thousand
, forty-eight thousand, fifty thousand, fifty-five thousand.” He seems more relaxed than he was when the room was empty. To his left, a large black-and-white scoreboard or currency converter records the sums in U.S. dollars, euros, pounds sterling, Japanese yen, Swiss francs, and Hong Kong dollars. To his right, a screen depicts a color slide so the audience can be certain which work is on the block. To both sides of Burge are rows of Christie’s staff standing in two wooden enclosures that look like jury boxes. Many of them are on the phone, talking to people who are, or soon will be, bidding. Some buyers are not in town, and others want to protect their anonymity. Someone like Charles Saatchi, the advertising mogul turned secondary-market art dealer, never comes to the sales. Very conscious of publicity, he either bids on the phone or sends someone to bid in the room. If he wins a work, particularly for a record price, he can make it well-known after the fact. If he loses one, no one is the wiser and he doesn’t lose face.

  Lot 1 is bought for “$240,000 hammer” the buyer’s premium (a 19.5 percent commission fee up to $100,000 and a 12 percent fee over $100,000) means that the final price for the work is actually $276,300. From the first to the final bid, the deal took just over a minute and a half. Deals are quicker when works sell near their low estimate, but when the final price is three times the high estimate, as was the case with this lot, it takes a little longer. Either way, an auction is a staggeringly swift way to sell art.

  “Lot two is next,” says Burge. “The Richard Prince showing there on my right. In this case ninety thousand starting. Ninety thousand for it. Ninety-five thousand, one hundred thousand, thank you. One hundred ten, one hundred twenty, sir? Yes, one hundred twenty, one hundred thirty…”

  It’s no coincidence that none of the evening auctioneers of art in New York are American. Tobias Meyer, Sotheby’s chief auctioneer, is German, while Simon de Pury, the auctioneer and co-owner of the smaller specialist contemporary art auction house Phillips de Pury, is French-Swiss. Burge, of course, is British. They bring a measure of European urbanity to a series of crude transactions. In another gesture toward Old World gentility, auction house sales personnel are officially called “specialists” and informally referred to as “experts.” They apply art-historical knowledge to market trends in order to evaluate works, bring them into a sale, and then drum up interest in the lots. In the words of one expert, however, “we’re really analysts and brokers.”

  Amy Cappellazzo, a specialist who is also the codirector of the Post-War and Contemporary Art Department at Christie’s, is an animated brunette with twinkling eyes and a no-nonsense way of talking. She is one of the few Americans in the upper echelons of the company and currently the only female head of a “major grossing” department. During our presale interview, she was high-energy, but now she looks almost serene. “I never get jitters during the sale itself,” she says. “At that point, all our hard work is done. We spend about eighty percent of our time getting great things for sale and twenty percent of our time lining up buyers. Obtaining great work is the key. We increasingly have to remind clients that if they turned a work on their wall into a liquid asset, it could be worth more than their entire home.”

  The bidding on Prince’s Untitled (Cowboy), an artist’s proof being “sold to benefit Tibet House,” has stopped, and Burge is attempting to squeeze another bid out of the audience. Eye contact is essential. He looks at each individual bidder as if that person were the only one in the room. “Two hundred and sixty thousand. Two hundred seventy, madam? Still against you standing. One more from you at the back? No. At two-sixty on the telephone and against you all here. I’m selling, fair warning, at two hundred and sixty thousand dollars.”

  Burge raps his hammer, and half the crowd lean over their catalogues to write down the price. “One thing you do learn from experience,” says Burge, “is when a bidder has more life in them than they’re saying. Sometimes they shake their head to say no. An inexperienced auctioneer will take them at their word and not look back, but an old hand knows that this collector has really got another bid in them. When some dealers or private collectors shake their heads, it’s clear you don’t have to deal with them anymore. They’re very controlled. That was it, not a penny more. Others, you can feel that they are still wavering. They are talking to a spouse or a friend. He’s very eager and she’s doing the bidding. Or he said no and she wants to go on. You see all of that from the rostrum.”

  We’re on Lot 3, but Josh Baer and the correspondent from the New York Times are still conferring on who was bidding on the Prince. “I hate this salesroom,” says Vogel. “You can’t see the bidders.” The reporters don’t have the benefit of Burge’s elevated face-on view, nor do they have access to his confidential book. Four names go back and forth, but they are still not sure. Sometimes an auction feels like a whodunit where thrills are provided by the large sums and mystery created by the shy or shady bidders who avoid the eye of the press.

  Burge’s astute psychological reading of the room is essential to the way he does his job. His perspective on the behavioral minutiae of the bidders is second to none. “About two lots before someone bids,” he reveals, “they will start doing small things that signal to me that they are interested in a lot. People sit up straighter in their seats, they adjust their jacket, begin to look a little nervous. Even if they have been doing this all their lives, hardened professionals give something away. It means that in a lot or two, they’re going to bid on something. I pick that up, because their body language is so different from the regular slump.”

  “But,” I press, “some of the most powerful collectors and dealers, like the Nahmads, are so casual. They apathetically raise a finger as if it just occurred to them to bid.” The Nahmad family reputedly once owned 20 percent of the world’s privately held Picassos, but they now buy huge quantities of contemporary art. Rumor has it that they never spend cash, because when they are buying in the contemporary sale, they are selling something in the impressionist sale—constantly rotating old for new stock.

  “They have been around for a long time,” says Burge, “but there is usually some sort of family conference going on as we head into the lot, so I know something is afoot. Moreover, we know what they bid on. David Nahmad loves to buy things back that he has owned before, and in some cases I will know exactly what he is planning because I will have talked to him at length before the sale.”

  We’re already on Lot 4, a painting by Marlene Dumas. Josh Baer leans over: “You notice they started the bidding above the high estimate.” One bidder has just left his paddle in the air. He’s “steamrolling,” an aggressive tactic to put others off. The bids are coming in at an incredible pace. Burge barely has time to breathe: $550,000, $600,000, $650,000, $700,000—“several of you”—$750,000, $800,000, $850,000. “What’s that? Eight hundred eighty thousand.” Someone has offered a split bid. He or she is trying to slow down the sale by cutting the bidding into smaller increments. “Nine hundred thousand dollars in the room. Against you all on this side.” Auctioneers don’t like to accept cut bids, because the sale can lose momentum. However, at the moment, the bidding is three times over the high estimate and well over the artist’s record price, so Burge decides to be gracious.

  When the bidding hits $980,000, there is a long pause. Large amounts of money command hushed respect, and unexpected amounts create a stunned stillness. Everyone wonders, will the painting get over the psychological hurdle of the million mark?

  That would make Marlene Dumas one of three living women artists to trade for over $1 million—the other two are Louise Bourgeois and Agnes Martin.* Is Dumas going to join them? One of Christie’s spotters signals to Burge that there is a new bidder, standing at the very back of the room. “One million dollars,” Burge says with subtle triumph.

  “Where’d that bid come from?” whispers Baer insistently. The press pack wants to know, and even collectors turn around in their seats to catch a glimpse of the mysterious bidder who has entered the fray at the eleventh hour. Some pe
ople like to come into the bidding late because it suggests that there is no limit to how high they can go. Auctions are full of ego and posturing. It’s important to bid with style.

  “One million dollars,” repeats Burge with a faint trace of amusement. “One million fifty…one million one.” It’s back to the late entrant hidden from view at the back. “One million, one hundred thousand dollars. Fair warning now. Not yours. Last chance. One million one. Selling to you at the back.” Bang. The volume of chat surges with the hammer. “Paddle four-oh-four. Thank you,” says Burge. I hear laughing. A couple of people shake their heads in disbelief. A voice deep from within the press pit exclaims, “One point one! Will anyone know who she is in twenty years?” Other people exchange affirmative nods as if to say, “Yes, we’re backing the right horse.” The reporters are having a mini-conference about who could have bought the Dumas. There are clear differences in how high people are willing to bid, depending on whether they are “crazy committed collectors” or dealers buying for long-term inventory. Everyone assumes that only a crazy collector would have paid that price. But who?

  From her position among the rows of Christie’s people, Amy Cappellazzo gives a knowing wink to someone in the audience. The Dumas painting is medium-sized and predominantly red. It appears to depict a woman looking expectantly out from under her bangs at the viewer. Her finger is phallic and coquettishly touches the lower of her gently open lips.