Contemporary-art auctions are fun these days. Buyers spend dollars as if there were no tomorrow, which keeps everybody happy - $254.87 million worth of goods sold at Sotheby's on Tuesday, $384.65 million at Christie's the day after. This is "serious money," as dealers like to say. Even if you haven't a bean to spend, the entertainment value of the sales is endless. The art has never been so diverse, as if its masters had decided that the thing to do is to try everything from dipping dead animals into a formaldehyde solution to throwing clothes in a corner.
In Sotheby's Tuesday sale, the factual title "Contemporary Art/Evening" did not do justice to the tremendous effort of imagination. Three out of the first four lots set world records for the artists, but there was no common denominator.
Cecily Brown's painting was a bit alarming. Dismembered bodies were piled up without discernible order. On closer inspection you realized that a rather sizable pornographic bit in the composition placed it out of bounds for most families raising children. Still, the Cecily Brown made $1.1 million.
Glenn Brown followed with "The Marquess of Breadalbane." A man is seen melting like a wax figure subjected to intense heat. The sitter's reaction to his likeness is not known. The artist himself was evidently pleased, for he had this portrait exhibited from France to Australia. Exhibition displays are important for potential buyers who are thus assured that they will be bidding on art. In this field you cannot be sure that such is the case if experts do not tell you so.
Take "No-one Ever Leaves" by Jim Hodges, which set the third world auction record for an artist in the sale. Only seasoned specialists would readily identify a leather jacket tossed in a corner as a piece of contemporary art. Most would just see it as a jacket. Not even the spider web made of silver chains attached to the hem of the jacket and to the walls would be enough to alert them to the art that it really is. Beginners might mistake it for some clever advertising stunt touting quality leather jackets that remain as good as new despite the passage of time, allowing spiders to settle in.
Luckily, many market players are now savvy enough to know art when they see it. On Tuesday, the jacket-behind-the-cobweb made $689,600 - more than any Hodges ever did at auction.
The next world record in the sale went to a work so different that considerable expertise would again be needed to work out the rationale behind the shared success. Jack Pierson painted plastic and metal letters. Nailed on the wall, they read, "Almost," challenging viewers. "Almost" what? Aligned? Art? As you peered at the letters, you saw that each differed from the others in size, color and design. There is a rounded relief to the "A," fine white filets running along the edges of the "L," and so on. "Almost" squarely sold for $180,000.
All this served as a prelude to the more established artists. The word of Jeff Koons now carries weight. When he looks at a vacuum cleaner and pronounces it to be art, art it becomes. All it takes is fluorescent tubes on either side of a plexiglass case shaped like a niche.
Michelangelo would have used marble and shoved in Hercules. Koons put in the vacuum cleaner. The contemporary master called it "New Hoover. Deluxe Shampoo Polisher." The auction-house hoovered up the bucks - $2.16 million. This demonstrates the superiority of the artistic vision over raw commercialism. Try and ask the finest salesman in the Hoover company to sell the vacuum cleaner at one-hundredth of that price and see what happens. Art did the trick. Just how is an enigma inherent, precisely, in art.
The mystery can be impenetrable when it comes to figural representation. There is the In-Your-Face school of contemporary art (not the official denomination). Jean-Michel Basquiat must have spent hours analyzing the cartoons that schoolboys dash off in the teacher's absence to achieve his level of perfection. He painted, they sketch in chalks. That is the only difference.
On Tuesday, a picture "Untitled," perhaps because it looks like nothing on earth, showed a one-eyed dwarf raising both hands in fury. Sotheby's estimate, $6 million to $8 million, seemed aggressive only to those who are not into contemporary art. The estimate was actually timid. "Untitled" shot up to a world auction record $14.6 million. The ultimate triumph of the In-Your-Face school came with Francis Bacon's "Study from Innocent X." Here, too, the mystery of artistic creation is unfathomable. The face looks apish at first but as you scrutinize it, you see the imprint of death on the bony head while the body wobbles like marshmallow. They say it was inspired by the portrait of Pope Innocent X painted in 1650 by Velázquez. Encouraged, an anonymous buyer set the auction record for Bacon at $52.68 million, nearly doubling the previous $27.6 million record.
New enigmas popped up at Christie's on Wednesday.
One concerns the delayed reaction of those who yearn for art. Cecily Brown's "The Pyjama," with much the same undertones of pornography and sadomasochism as the day before, aroused far greater enthusiasm, raising the auction record for Brown to $1.6 million.
It was as if the entire sale had been propelled to new financial levels, as a result of the excitement of the previous day.
Traditional explanations such as higher quality appeared to be irrelevant. In contemporary art, the criterion rarely applies. Consider Donald Judd's "Untitled, 1977 (77.4) Bernstein," which set a new record for the artist at $9.84 million. The title describes a set of 10 rectangular boxlike blocks or stacks with galvanized iron sides and blue plexiglass tops and bottoms that were manufactured to Judd's specifications. You can praise the idea, but the quality is the manufacturer's, not Judd's.
Two lots down, the wonder of the day as seen by those who know came up. Far removed from Judd's "Stacks," it shared with it one characteristic - Andy Warhol's "Green Car Crash (Burning Car I)" was also executed by mechanical means. The photo of a car accident taken by John Whitehead and published in Newsweek magazine on June 3, 1963, was silkscreened at Warhol's request in rows repeating the same image variously cropped on a green background. It has a rhythm, and a purpose. Bidders raved and sent the silkscreen flying to a world auction record $71.72 million, four times the previous record set six months earlier at Christie's New York.
Shortly after, Damien Hirst's "Lullaby Winter," a parody of a medicine cabinet, raised to $7.43 million the record for items assembled, or dipped in acid, by the artist. It had stood at $3.37 million since May 2006 when "Away from the flock, divided" brought that price.
Later, an abstract composition by Gerhard Richter sold for $6.2 million, beating the February 2007 record set at Sotheby's London with another abstract composition. Of the four artists, Richter is the one who has a strong traditional technique. His brushwork is masterly, his sense of rhythm remarkable, and so are his color harmonies. Curiously, his financial progress was the most modest. An accident? I do not believe so.
Much comes into play at the auctions of contemporary art in its officially received version. There are the Pavlovian reflexes triggered by known names; the desire to play games while enjoying an adult's alibi; the eagerness to be seen as moving with the times; the wish to make a quick buck; and the hope of demonstrating artistic interests without disclosing your ignorance. You do not need to know much about Velázquez when you look at "Study from Innocent X." It is actually best not to.
Come to think of it, art is hardly the point. Pretty much any style will do equally well. "Contemporary" is all that matters to those possessed with a panic fear of the past and its elaborate culture. This week was not just a market landmark. It may be seen in the future as a turning point in the history of world societies.
By Souren Melikian, The International Herald Tribune
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