Image: Jean-Honoré Fragonard (1732-1806), The Fountain of Love, oil on canvas
The art market seems increasingly aligned with philanthropy, and one is often startled by the sort of art and collectibles being sold for charitable purposes in the salerooms of Sotheby’s and Christie’s in any given auction season. Diamonds may be sold to benefit animal rights causes or wine to enrich a college’s endowment.
Image: Francis Bacon in his studio.
This is how the art market journal Artforum described Francis Bacon’s London studio as it appeared when he died in 1992. No doubt referring more to the artist’s personal life than his paintings, the magazine declared: “As with so much else in his life, Bacon took tastelessness to an extreme.”
Image: Exhibition catalogue for Lee Krasner: Recent Paintings, April – May, 1973, Marlborough Gallery, New York.
There is so much pumped-up intrigue and drama in the art market that when something truly startling and newsworthy happens one’s attention is seized.
Image: Fonthill Castle, Doylestown, Pennsylvania, built 1908-1912
The history of the art market is perhaps most vividly told in the stories of collectors through the ages, their exploits and adventures, their oddities and eccentricities. Often these collectors are wealthy and charismatic, able to pursue their fantasies unhindered by expense or public opinion.
Image: An exceptional and rare blue and white ‘floral’ bowl, Ming dynasty, Yongle period
Stories of great finds at flea markets and yard sales are the stuff of art market legend. But some finds come about by skill, quick instincts and a great eye. Others are a matter of blind chance.
Illustrating the latter, for example, a painting in a gilded frame was bought for $4 at a flea market in Pennsylvania in 1989. On the back of the frame was an envelope, and inside it was a folded-up copy of the Declaration of Independence. The buyer discarded both the painting and the frame as ugly and worthless. As for the folded-up document, he kept it as a curiosity. Surely it wasn’t an original, he thought.
Image: Album cover, “Hotel California,” Eagles
A recent news story caught my eye, a criminal case in New York involving three art market figures accused of theft. I could scarcely believe a photograph from the court room that showed them squeezed into chairs, wearing suits and ties yet with their hands cuffed behind them like they were petty hoodlums.
The case concerned roughly 100 pages of hand-scrawled lyrics by guitarist Don Henley of the Eagles for some of the band’s most famous songs, including “Hotel California.” In the late 1970s Henley had made the pages available to a writer as research material for a biography being written about the band, a project ultimately scrapped. But the pages of lyrics mysteriously remained in the writer’s possession.
Image: John Chamberlain, Nutcracker, 1958
In writing of automobiles and the art market, one is awed by the dizzying prices achieved these days at auction for the rarest models: a 1956 Aston Martin DBR1/1 sells for $22,500,000, a 1962 Ferrari 330 LM/GTO brings $51.7 million. This market seems to have exploded into a carnival of flashy, frenzied, record-breaking sales, many of these at palmy resorts in Miami, Pebble Beach and Amelia Island. And while such venues lend a members-only, country club aura to car collecting, there is also a blue-collar side.
It involves cars that—one might say—died and came back to life.
Image: Four stoneware jugs displayed before a period photograph of one of the factories of Old Edgefield, South Carolina
It is often revealing to see a museum exhibition for the second time, in a different venue, and to compare the two experiences. Entirely new and even jolting aspects of the exhibition may come to light. This was the case for me with “Hear Me Now,” which presented the story, and many wondrous examples of pottery made by enslaved workers in the 19th century factories of Old Edgefield, South Carolina.
Image: Richard Serra, Tilted Arc, installed 1981
Few may remember Tilted Arc, the hulking steel slab by American sculptor Richard Serra that once stood on Foley Federal Plaza in downtown New York City. Unveiled in 1981 and measuring 120 feet long and 12 feet high, Tilted Arc as a monumental work of site-specific urban art seemed bereft of any whimsey, charm or light-heartedness—unlike, say, a bright red stabile by Alexander Calder or a giant prancing rabbit by Barry Flanagan. Indeed, Tilted Arc loomed so menacingly over the plaza that rush hour workers streaming to the nearby courthouses each day felt threatened by it, and, worse, complained that weaving around it made their daily commute longer. Petitions began appearing for its removal.
Image: Elisabeth Jerichau-Baumann, An Egyptian Pot Seller at Gizeh, 1876-78
On a recent visit to Copenhagen I found myself immersed in museum visits. There was the astonishing David Collection of Islamic art and European paintings, furniture and decorations; the palatial Glyptotek, with its vast collection of Greek and Roman antiquities; Rosenborg Castle, featuring the Danish Crown Jewels; the Danish Jewish Museum, designed by Daniel Libeskind and with tilting, disorienting floors; and the glorious National Gallery of Denmark. I visited all five, and as any visit to a museum often entails the thrill of discovery, the National Gallery offered one that I found stunning.