Art Scandals

This week I've been to a lot of auctions, including the American painting sales at Sotheby's and Christie's. An auction can be very entertaining at times. And then again, after a few hours of it you might begin nodding off if you're not the one bidding a million dollars on a Winslow Homer watercolor.

The Sotheby's sale was interesting, but I must say that the auctioneer needed a few auctioneering lessons. He was boring and unfriendly. He tried to make a few jokes, but they didn't work, and he went so slow! No wonder there were a lot of pieces that didn't sell, including two Maxfield Parrish paintings. Then again, one of them I'm not surprised about, because it had been terribly over-cleaned and the sky was way too white. When you buy a Parrish, you expect a blue sky--otherwise, what's the point?

At Christie's, there was much more entertainment. They offer refreshments, for one thing. And Christopher Berg is just much more fun to watch. He relates to the bidders, engages them, and makes you want to join in. Besides, he has a great accent. But I don't know how he does it. At Sotheby's they divide the sale up into two sessions to give the auctioneer and the audience a break. At Christie's they start at 10 a.m. and continue until about 2 p.m. without stopping. He didn't quite make it the whole way through though. At about 1 o'clock he stepped down and a new auctioneer took over, who was pretty good too. But he made one bidder mad by not noticing his bid, and sold the piece to someone else. When the hammer went down, the guy yelled, "Hey, that was MY bid!" He refused to outbid the lady, though, so the auctioneer held firm, and the lady won the sale.

The real scandal at Christie's was the George Bellow's painting, "Men of the Docks," which was supposed to be sold by Randolph College (Lynchburg, VA) to raise money for the school, which is in trouble financially. It was the first painting the college bought, back in 1920, with $2500 scraped together by students and supporters of a college art collection. That collection has grown into a fine body of American paintings at the Maier Museum of Art, and the Bellows is now estimated to be worth about $32 million. So, for a college now struggling to pay its bills, why not capitalize on that nest egg and sell it, along with a Hicks, a Hennings, and a Tamayo?

The problem is that in the art world it's a huge no-no for a museum to sell art for purposes other than buying new art. This is Art we're talking about, not stocks or land, or any lowly commodity. So the students of the college are up in arms, and the Maier Museum has had people resign over the whole thing, and now the paintings are in limbo while the courts decide what should be done, and the poor people of Lynchburg scramble to find a million dollars to pay the bond on the paintings.

Meanwhile, Christie's is being blasted as the unscrupulous vultures making a profit from it all, while really they are just doing business. And not even that, any more, because the paintings had to be withdrawn from the sale while their future is decided.

So the sale at Christie's might have been much more exciting had there been a $32 million Bellows sale. Still, it was enough excitement for me just sitting behind the lady that bought a painting for $1 million.