33 Artists in 3 Acts, page 43
Oliver Barker, the young Sotheby’s specialist who came up with the Pharmacy auction concept, enjoyed his first experience working with an artist: “Damien is very inspirational, quick-minded, hardworking. He was completely on board helping with the design of the catalogue, approving marketing schedules, and the like. He has a keen business sense, but he’s also a risk-taker. It’s an awesome combination.”
Many of the artists who sell well at auction are artist-entrepreneurs. It may be because collectors who’ve made their money in business like to see reflections of themselves in the artists they buy. Or as Francis Outred, another Sotheby’s expert, put it, it may be because “a lot of artists today are succeeding on sound business principles.” Here Warhol and his Factory are the model. Like Warhol, Hirst has developed production strategies to ensure that there is always enough material to keep up with collector demand; for instance, he’s made at least six hundred “unique” spot paintings.* He has also maintained a media profile that has expanded the audience and the market for his work beyond the narrow confines of the art world.
The last couple of lots sell without a hitch. When the sale is over, it is just over. There is no grand finale, no clapping, just another rap of the hammer and a quick “Thank you” from Burge. Knots of people walk and talk their way out of the room. I hear a few young dealers who work in secondary-market galleries laughing about how “insane” the market is before they get into a fractious argument about whether Richard Prince will ever trade for over a million dollars.*
In the line for our coats, I bump into Dominique Lévy, an art consultant who once worked at Christie’s and knows how to see through the smoke and mirrors of an auction. So what is your verdict? I ask. “For works that sell below five million, the market is astonishingly deep—deeper than ever,” she says. “But I was surprised that the market for expensive works was thinner tonight,” she adds in a quieter voice. “Very often I was about to write pass in my catalogue when Christopher—it was one of his most masterful sales—was able to dig out one more bid.”
As I walk through the revolving doors into the cold New York air, the celebratory expression “making a killing” and Burge’s gladiatorial metaphor of the “coliseum waiting for thumbs” come to mind. Even if the people here tonight were initially lured into the auction room by a love of art, they find themselves participating in a spectacle where the dollar value of the work has virtually slaughtered its other meanings.
* In 2007, Pinault was ranked thirty-fourth in Forbes’s list of world billionaires. He has many luxury goods holdings, including the brands Gucci, Yves St. Laurent, Sergio Rossi, Balenciaga, and Château Latour.
* Agnes Martin died shortly after this sale. Since then, Cecily Brown, Yayoi Kusama, Bridget Riley, Jenny Saville, Cindy Sherman, and Lisa Yuskavage have joined the ranks of living women artists whose work has broken the million-dollar mark at auction. One might think that the art world was at the vanguard of gender equality, but the disparities in price in an auction room are quite extreme. Although one finds many powerful women dealers and curators, the bulk of the big-spending collectors are male—a fact that no doubt contributes to the complex dynamic of undervaluation that befalls women’s artwork.
* Jasper Johns’s False Start, which sold for $17.7 million at Sotheby’s in 1988, held the record for the highest price ever paid for a work by a living artist at auction on and off for nineteen years, until Damien Hirst’s Lullaby Spring sold for $22.7 million in june 2007. The Hirst work was knocked off the top spot when Jeff Koons’s Hanging Heart (Magenta/Gold) sold for $23.6 million in november 2007, and the Koons was cast aside when Lucian Freud’s Benefits Supervisor Sleeping sold for $33.6 million in May 2008. The buyers of these recent record-priced works were later revealed to be, respectively, the Sheikha Al Mayassa, Victor Pinchuk, and Roman Abramovich—three billionaires for whom these sums would seem to be small change.
* Hirst told me in a 2005 interview that he intended to “quit spots,” but guesstimates have since increased to twelve hundred.
* In May 2005, Richard Prince’s A Nurse Involved sold for $1,024,000. Prince’s prices have climbed steadily. In June 2008, a different “nurse painting” (Overseas Nurse) sold for $8.5 million.
Copyright © 2014 by Sarah Thornton
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Thornton, Sarah (Sarah L.)
33 artists in 3 acts / Sarah Thornton. — First American Edition.
pages cm
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-0-393-24097-9 (hardcover)
1. Artists—Social conditions—21st century. 2. Artists—Economic conditions—21st century. I. Title. II. Title: Thirty-three artists in three acts.
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Sarah Thornton, 33 Artists in 3 Acts
