Category: Inside The Art Market

Smith’s most conspicuous trait was a furious, passionate, even violent energy. His capacity for sustained hard physical labor was astonishing.

—Garnett McCoy

Gazing out my fifth floor window at the University Club in Chicago, through the leaded panes and across the street to the sculpture park below on the grounds of the Art Institute, I can’t help noticing one work in particular, though far off. It’s Cubi VII (1963) by David Smith, mammoth and dazzling in stainless steel.

Walking along Michigan Avenue and taking in the façade of the museum, with the names of Leonardo, Canaletto, Giotto and other famous artists through the centuries etched into the stone high up near the roofline, one senses the scope and grandeur of the art that lies within this hulking, neo-classical fortress. Cubi VII is thus like a teaser for the Art Institute and its vast, diverse riches. But tucked away in the park in the shadow of the museum it also seems an apt, if unintended, metaphor for David Smith’s own life and career. Read More “David Smith, Welded”

The paintings in the living room looked impressive, almost regal. The whopping Pissarro landscape over the fireplace was mesmerizing; but then one noticed a radiant floral still life by Matisse, a portrait by Manet, other works by Cézanne, Boudin and assorted Modernists like Utrillo, Soutine and Vlaminck; and on into a gallery in this spacious Northern California house one encountered a Modigliani portrait on one wall, a Van Gogh on another, and scattered pictures by minor 19^th century French artists rounding out the rooms. Here was an old-money collection of taste and style, one which, in the booming current art market roiling with new money and eager buyers the world over, should be worth a fortune.

Read More “Centers of Influence”

This sale of the principal contents of Sutton Brailes Manor is being conducted on instructions from the Treasury Solicitor, the owner, the reclusive Mrs. Dorothea Allen, having died intestate. No next of kin has been traced, despite a nationwide search, and Mrs. Allen’s life remains shrouded in mystery.

—Introduction to Sotheby’s Catalogue, 4^th September 1990

When I first read these words in the Sotheby’s catalogue for the sale of furniture, pictures and decorations from a lovely but otherwise unremarkable manor house in Warwickshire, I couldn’t quite grasp the meaning of the phrase “shrouded in mystery.” It seemed so unusual in this context.
Read More “Invisible”

Strindberg, who had enjoyed painting since university, had already exhibited his paintings the year before in Sweden to critical incomprehension: one critic likened a canvas to dirty bed sheets hung out to dry.

—Sue Prideaux, Strindberg: A Life

Read More “Amateurs”

The entire façade of this building is clothed in ornament, like hieroglyphs on the columns and walls of temples in ancient Egypt.

—Description of the Guaranty Building (1898), Buffalo, New York

Read More “Trophies Old and New”

Then came the moment for the Queen to receive the Crown, and for all the peers and peeresses to put on their coronets. As the Queen knelt for the Crown to be placed on her head, a ray of sunlight fell upon her, and the Duchess of Kent, overcome by the scene, overwrought by mingled emotions, burst into tears.

—Edith Sitwell, Victoria of England

Read More “Victoriana”

I had been thinking of Letitia Roberts, whom I hadn’t seen in years, when all of a sudden there she was at The Met, checking her bag right next to me at the 81^st Street entrance cloakroom on a miserable weekday in March. I was about to use my new membership at the museum by having lunch with a friend in the Balcony Lounge when I turned to see her.

Read More “A Principality of Porcelain”

Whilst magnificent showrooms in New Bond Street and Madison Avenue were once essential to the cachet of the brand, increasingly the art market and its clients demand greater convenience and flexibility driven by the march of technology and ever-changing collecting trends.

—Mallett Letter to Clients, 2017

Read More “Ancestral Attics”

It is hard to believe that Jimi Hendrix died almost fifty years ago. Changes in musical taste, social values and recording industry fortunes since then have been so profound that 1970 seems many generations removed, ancient history, a black hole. It was a time of free love, of social and philosophical gurus like Abbie Hoffman and R. D. Laing, of San Francisco and hippie splendor; a time when dropping out was considered a viable, even essential career move. In this long-ago era Jimi Hendrix rose to the top of the rock world, and then departed, with breathtaking speed. Since he never grew old, he remains with us—through his music—young and wild and hypnotic.

Read More “Rock and Roll Immortality”

We were in the balcony with our father, Charles, but instead of all three of us boys arriving at our seats with him, somehow there were now only two.

Read More “Cowboy Cool”