The Paul G. Allen sale at Christie's November 2022 or How Can a Painting be Worth One Hundred Million Dollars?

The Paul G. Allen Sale at Christie’s November 2022

Will South

©November 9, 2022

            One of the most asked questions of any museum curator is: How much is it (insert painting, drawing, print, sculpture, etc. here) worth?

This is not a question art historians were trained to answer. Perhaps we should have been. As then-President Obama remarked in 2014, "I promise you, folks can make a lot more, potentially, with skilled manufacturing or the trades than they might with an art history degree."

            True enough. Or, instead of skilled manufacturing or the trades we might have become art dealers and auctioneers. Now, that is where the real money is as evidenced yet again by the recent Christie’s sale of the Paul G. Allen collection.

            Another frequently asked question of the curator: Why?

            Why is this painting or that sculpture or that vase worth millions? Now, of course, this question would have to be modified: Why is it worth over one hundred million dollars?

            No one ever liked the answer I gave, which goes something like this, using Van Gogh’s Starry Night as theoretical example:

            Starry Night is not worth one hundred million dollars.

            What? Yes, it surely is! Someone would pay that for it!

            Yes, true. They would.

            Then, it is worth one hundred million dollars.

            No, it isn’t. There are nearly eight billion people in the world. Not all of them, but a great many, will have the opportunity to see Van Gogh’s Starry Night. They will be stopped short by the swirling masses of strokes defining an electric blue sky shot through with shining yellow stars hovering over a sleeping town. Their imaginations will soar, admiration will swell, inspiration will follow. All of this experience comes for free.

            Yes, but these lucky viewers don’t own it. It’s not theirs.

            Really? The person who can pay one hundred million dollars for it has the right to sequester it away in his house and look at it every day. But, he will die and the painting will persist into the far future. The so-called owner was, at best, a custodian. And, the money they spent did not enhance experiences that could have been had for free.

            Again, no one was ever satisfied with such talk. If a rich collector is merely a custodian, why would they pay such exorbitant sums?

            My ongoing response continued to annoy:

            Art making goes back tens of thousands of years, but we know the most about art made in the past three thousand years or so. Art on scales large and small was generally made in recognition of what cultures most valued. Fertility figures to promote life; cathedrals for God; portraits for presidents and parents alike. Who gets the largest headdress? The chief. The most extravagant dress? The bride.

            What all of these things have in common is status. Life and the living engender belief and customs which in turn are adorned according to importance. A chief is the most honored warrior and sage. A bride is experiencing, perhaps, the most important day of her life. Art, whether a headdress or a dress, is attached at the hip to status. This is one way of beginning to understand why so much effort, skill and resources are poured into people and/or events of great priority.

            This explanation makes a good deal of accessible sense and serves as a stepping stone into discussions involving the goals of societies and the resources at hand. We still decorate our lives, collectively and personally, with music, literature, dance, and visual art. It is impossible to imagine a world not enriched by the arts.

            Does art’s intimate relationship with status still obtain? That is, might it explain the one-hundred-million dollar painting of today?

            Yes, only what is elevated is not the collective experience of a fertility, of religious faith, or of a community coming together to celebrate a right of passage. A one-hundred-million-dollar price tag is connected to the ego of its buyer who is rarely, it should be noted, formally educated in the arts (something also true of art dealers). Which is not to say that a wildly wealthy collector is incapable of appreciating what they buy. Sure, they can.

            However, just like the rest of us, they may appreciate Starry Night without owning it, let alone paying one hundred million dollars for it. The one hundred million is for the right to possess it, for it to be the “property of the Very Rich Man Collection.”

            This is status in action. For the one, not the many. That is the essential difference, and therein lies the perversity of such prices. The rich compete with each other to buy the art they are led to believe is the “best.”

            Problem: A painting (or any work of art) is not something that can be “better” than another. What makes something “good” is, again, directly related to what you, or your culture, values. If cubism is nothing but baffling to you, a Picasso may well be something you do not wish to have around at any price. If you are moved by small, silent still life paintings tenderly painted, you might wish to have a Henri Fantin-Latour. As it happens, there are tens of millions of art objects out there to be discovered and appreciated, including objects you may well be able to afford (one of the most interesting collections of modern art in the country was assembled by a postman, and his wife, a librarian).

            The world of art dealers and collectors would have you believe something entirely different: There is such a thing as great art that is, indeed, better than its peers and this greatness will persist over time no matter what anyone thinks.

            Wrong. The idea of greatness is thought by people, and it is people who ascribe this greatness to objects. When they no longer think this way, the so-called greatness of a painting disappears. In the 1880s, the cost of one painting by Laurence Alma-Tadema could buy every Monet in existence. By the 1980s, the reverse was true. Could such a thing happen again. Yes. And, will.

            Art dealers and collectors may say it simply requires a certain kind of education to appreciate greatness.

            Ah, the ad hominem argument. The problem is with us (a lack of education), not the art. Or the dealers. Or auction houses, or collectors. Never mind that this is a classical fallacy.

            Yes, yes, yes—There is such a thing as skill and professionalism in the arts. And yes, it shows. Still, the argument holds: If technical skill is what you value, great. Go ahead and claim one painting (the skilled one) to be better than another (your aunt’s). And remember this: Van Gogh’s technical skills were almost zero. He painted in a frenzy of passion. He also inept at the figure, the litmus test for all “skilled” artists. That said, he is the favorite artist of many, many, many people. So much for the skilled.

            The modern world commodified art like no previous historical period, focusing on individual objects to be bought and sold by individuals. Commodities have traditionally been used to express status. The biggest house, the most expensive car, the glitziest name clothing. Jeff Bezos has built a yacht so big that it could not exit its port. Bezos might argue that he and the future guests aboard his yacht conduct important business, such a deciding who could possibly follow William Shatner into space. Thus the need for size.

            Art collectors, dealers and auction houses do not have the philosophical wherewithal to prove why one work of art is more economically valuable than another (let alone aesthetically), as any such hypothesis is untestable. All they can do is opine, which they do.

            For those who continue to wonder why and how it is that a single work of art can be worth one hundred million dollars, you will continue to be disappointed by the answer. It is status coupled with the unattractive and highly aggressive need to possess and control. Collectors will counter that they support schools, libraries, and hospitals. Which is exactly what the Medici did to expiate the then egregious sin of usury. But, never mind.

            Happily, no one today need feel either diminished or intimidated by the inability to pay such nonsensical prices for works of art. Make your local museum or art center a familiar place where you may see art all year round for free, or for a nominal fee. Support local artists. Even make art yourself. Or, really stretch—take a class in art history and see how art over time and place varies magnificently in scale, style and substance. Your life will be exponentially richer for engaging these multiple levels of your art world.

            Meanwhile, the uber rich will sock their art away where very few may enjoy it, all the while believing, based on nothing provable, their art is the best. A reward for years of hard work, they will say. As opposed to the manipulation of systems. The edification of the masses is not our business, they will say. For those who cannot afford what we have, they might add, are there no workhouses?

            The elite art world, a misnomer if there ever were one, is building a very long and ponderous chain with its self-serving pretensions. Not to worry, though—if there’s an art world in the afterlife, maybe its members can parlay that metal into a buck.

A story of my very last museum tour.

Seeing Vincent

© Will South, January 11, 2020

Our eyes are magical. Small, round, and watery nerve-filled windows out onto space, they operate in tandem with our bodies to organize the maze of experience around us. We call what we see “reality,” and what we see constantly changes with ever-shifting light. 

Helping others to see art has been my vocation for well over thirty years. Images are right there in front of us, and yet they are not. A painting of an empty field topped with a simple blue sky is easily passed by. My job has been to get museum visitors to stop and meditate upon that empty field.

Looking is not enough. One must listen to a painting. Hear the silence of that empty sky, hear the gentle rush of wind through the wind-bent wheat. Hear the dashes of cadmium-red roses singing at the crest of the hill, next to emerald trees that very nearly dance beneath the fast moving clouds. This is an efflorescent world, a world in motion, a world to explore, a world you are woven into with myriad colored thread. Yes, our eyes are evolutionary miracles, yet an experience of anything requires our entire being—our ability to touch, smell, feel, remember and imagine.

Even without eyes, art may speak to you. The last exhibition tour of my career was shared with just one person, the poet Ann Humphries. Ann is blind. And as we walked through Van Gogh and His Inspirations for nearly two hours, focused on the dozen works by Vincent, sensation and emotion roiled inside her—I felt her trembling thoughts through her hands that held on to me among the crowds.

Ann had written me a gentle email, asking if I remembered her. Of course, poets guide my life, I reminded her. Was there, she asked, any tactile part of the show—things she might touch? No, I slowly replied with an instant sense of failure: my show was not fully accessible. I rallied quickly: Ann, might I walk you through the exhibition as my guest? She did not wish for special treatment, I gathered, but by the next day decided to accept the invitation, happily.

It occurred to me that in over thirty years of public speaking, I had never given a tour to the blind. My last tour would be a first. Another first was that I had exactly no idea what I would say.

Once in front of the first Van Gogh, our journey designed itself. Ann moved her hands over my arm, and asked how far we were from the surface that Vincent had created. I took one hand, and stretched it to the edge of the frame. Nearby security guards looked on, as did a wall of people behind us, suddenly still and staring at the sight of us. I then moved both of her hands to indicate how wide the painting is, and then again for how high.

“Now, tell me what is there,” she said ever so softly. This, I knew, was the challenge of a lifetime. One I had not seen coming. What is there, in a landscape by Van Gogh? Did I even really know?

I started with telling Ann that this particular painting is more traditional and conservative than the more famous late paintings like Starry Night and Wheatfield with Crows. This painting begins in the foreground with a field of hyacinth moving in carefully measured geometric rows of blue, yellow, white and red. None of these colors, though, are really just that—each is shot through with the rich sepia-colored earth below making the blue slouch toward a tender blue-violet; the reds vacillated between a ruddy carmine and a warm pink; the yellows wished to be gold, but settled for a muted ochre. The white rows of flowers were the brightest part of the canvas, shimmering like low cotton. In these colors, you felt the soil between your fingers.

In this expansive foreground of flowers was a tiny figure near the middle-ground of the painting. He is walking through the rows, clearly the gardener focused on his work. He is alone, but with purpose, and that purpose is his garden. This is not a person you could speak to in this moment—he is busy, and far from you. Fate has made him a stranger.

Behind him are a row of buildings, tobacco-juice brown under a sky filled with tawny clouds. Naked trees line the space between the buildings, leafless and cold. This could be late autumn, perhaps the last of the blooming season.

The air feels cold in this image, the clouds heavy, the buildings mute behind the colored field. In this overwhelming quiet place, work goes on. The sky is changing. The colors strain to be more bold, but are not. Though, they take on vibrancy by contrast with the limp, dark brown sienna trees and house-tops. The scene at first blush is picture-perfect and postcard worthy, but as we stand there, and as we converse—me describing, she asking questions—we both see this is a picture busy becoming tomorrow. The work will get done, the flowers will fade, the clouds will disperse. Take this all in, now.

Ann asks me how wide the brush strokes seem to be. Perhaps an eighth inch flat-tipped brush I guess, with a softer and somewhat larger brush evident in the sky. And the weight of his hand? Confident and fluid in the sky, I tell her. Precise and pushing the hyacinth bulbs into place, giving each an equal hand. The trees are fragile, the buildings thick and ordinary. Each character in this play has his and her own costume, Vincent knows that. The well-ordered garden, so well maintained and attractive, is at odds with the random clouds that say nature is really untamed. The garden and the sky stay in their own realms.

Visitors to the show gather around us. They see she is blind. They listen to us, and their eyes flicker back and forth between us and the Van Gogh landscape. Three small girls stare, in awe. “He is helping her see,” their mother whispers. I want to say that it is clearly the other way around, but do not. People are taking pictures of us, we’ll be on Instagram within moments. What are these visitors seeing?

That looking takes a life, a full life. It takes having been places, having loved others. It takes desire, it takes regret and failure. It takes finding words that only barely scratch the surface of what you so desperately need to say. It takes sleep and dreams, and waking up in an equally dreamlike world. They are watching a blind poet see, and it is something so dramatic, so utterly unexpected, as if a purple cow had just run through the gallery.

A woman embraces Ann, and tells her of a blind relative. This visitor says to me that my description of the painting made it come alive right in front of her. She tingled. Another man says that he can’t see like us. Why not? You are working on seeing right now, I tell him. I’m so glad, and hope you come to every show. He will, he says. His life has been transformed right then and there.

Ann is happy. I am not only happy, but honored. I came to help a poet to see a painter, and it was I who had his eyes opened wide.

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Mug Shots

The years go by like sweet little days, yes? Over a year since a post in here. Which is fine. The universe is pretty much indifferent.

I like to draw in bed, often. Or, read. Early in this year i had the idea to practice portraits sitting up in bed, sketching from an image on the smartphone. Then, the idea came--why not use mug shots? A mug shot is so not "posed," or made-up, or air-brushed, etc. It seemed like a good idea in the moment. Honesty. Emotion (maybe a lot). All of that. And, straightforward. No three-quarter views, etc.

After a couple of weeks, or less, another idea: none of these folks asked for their picture to be put online. Or, gave me permission to draw them. Was this series really a "fair use"? The whole thing seemed suddenly exploitative. 

Then, I heard some other artist somewhere actually painted vintage mug shots and put the crime on the canvas. I stopped drawing mug shots then and there. The end. 

But, in doing it, however short lived, it was remarkable how beautiful and/or compelling these faces could be, as much as any official portrait. "Mug Shot" is one more bucket of expectation that puts parameters around what we think we see. Just as "Wedding Portrait" is. Putting a designation on an image is no substitute for looking. Which is a bigger post. Which maybe I'll write next year.

Instead, this is it for now. I've done a bunch of odd-sox drawings using French curves. Right--a complete 180 from mug shots. That was the idea. I'll post those soon. 

A little on drawing.

Drawings shape us because drawings give shape to our experience. To draw the sun is to draw a circle, a line forever returning to itself in circular motion. The never-ending line of a circle gives shape to continuity and constancy, and from there we conceive of eternity (a spiritual experience). 

One horizontal line separates earth from sky, and defines the environment.

Add two lines to the horizontal line and you can make a triangle. Make the triangle three-dimensional and there is a pyramid, the tomb of pharaohs and the underlying composition of Raphael's Holy Family. It is a shape of balance and symmetry that points upward.

A cross is two lines intersecting and looks basically like a body with two arms extending outward. A cross gives shape to our fundamental reality—it is us, and it is others. A cross becomes a signature and to sign with a cross is to leave "your mark"—that is, you. 

Leave a handprint on a cave wall, and that is an autobiography. The artist was here and lived, and created. The handmade drawing of a hand both tells this story and confirms it.

These simple drawings—the single line, the circle, the cross--are among the most universal. Humble in means, they can be the most revelatory. A few common marks serve to identify us and the world we occupy: being is expressed. Life is recognized and recorded. Once made, drawings may be meditated upon. We see ourselves, rightly, as participants in the world. 

From the simple grows the complex. In nature, the tree grows from the seed. Both exist, the seed and the tree, both participate in the world. The seed of one story is that a man searches in vain to kill a whale only to die while the whale lives. That story grew to over two hundred thousand words to become Moby Dick. No one could memorize that book. Almost anyone could well remember the essential story. 

A poem of few words, a melody of few notes, a story told over a cup of coffee can convey a world. The tiny poem speaks the mystery, the spare melody clarifies the heart, the short story peels back human nature. One could well and wisely realize that additional detail most often is unnecessary, though often desired. Need and want are separate conditions. I need the story, I may want it expanded.

If the simple can tell the story, however, the simple must simultaneously be complex. When complete unto itself, the simple is at once the core and the conclusion of an experience. Detail may decorate the essential, or disguise it. But detail does not replace what is essential. Cut it away, and the jewel remains. The jewel of Moby Dick is wisdom: seek revenge and the reward is emptiness.

Look for the simple, and it may be found. The forest is dense, yet a single leaf within it reveals the color of life and rhythm of growth. And it is the leaf you may hold in your hand, breathe into your body, and fold entirely into your eyes. You may hike the forest and be exhilarated with every step in what is really a wonderland of life. It is the tiny leaf in your pocket that you take home to remember it by. The leaf stands in for the whole of the forest.

Meanwhile, in your wallet or purse or more likely now on your phone are pictures, each a little leaf that stands in for a life. There is a spouse, a child, a friend. We carry pictures as magical charms that can bring forth the spirit of that special person: To see their face is to conjure their life. Thousands of words are not needed to share your joy, only a single image. An essential one.

Likewise, when someone dies we search for just the right words to express and share sympathy. Thousands of words would only trivialize great loss. Silence says more. One hand resting upon another is an immeasurable source of comfort and condolence.

And, has this ever happened to you: a melody is suddenly heard on the radio or in a restaurant or being played by a street musician, and an entire lost summer of love comes back to you in waves of emotion and images? A simple refrain, played over and over in your mind, is the soundtrack to an entire chapter in life.

Upon making a new friend, how best to begin to reveal who you are (or, who you believe yourself to be)? Relate the place of your birth. That small bit of information carries a large cultural story. Share your favorite songs, your favorite books. These are biographical markers, and as you layer one on top of another they begin to make a drawing. Of you. 

Drawings may be mercilessly explicit. The broken lines running through the freeway separate lanes of traffic—ignore these at your own peril. Or, they may be frustratingly abstract. Leonardo's faint silver lines composing the head of an angel capture the moment and mystery when one soul encounters another through the eyes. Ignore those moments at your own peril, too.

There are drawings (called maps) that can show you exactly how to get from point A to point B. There are others that suggest harmony is possible though it appears in endless forms. There are drawings (called architectural plans) that show how to build a house to live in. Other drawings exist to inspire the passion of living.

Somewhere there is a drawing to convey the idea of beginning and another the idea of ending. Somewhere there is a drawing that illustrates a mystery, and somewhere there is a drawing that is mysterious in and of itself. 

Somewhere there is a drawing depicting the scales of justice, with a tray to the left and a tray to the right. Another drawing is out there that is completely abstract and yet far more balanced.

There are drawings that have consumed huge quantities of energy, others that emit energy Another drawing is wholly aloof.

In a world of constant interaction, there are purely restless lines and there are searching lines. There are lines elegant in their fragile economy.

And yet and ever-growing number of drawings in the world are nonetheless slaves to description, others coerced toward some vague idea of pleasure. Still others are purely rhetorical. It is the drawing that exists of its own accord, as lines of interaction flowing from ineffable mind and sensitive hand, that tells the bigger story, that stands in for the dense forest, that jogs our memory and lets us look again at life as lived. We want that essential experience, that essential drawing, and they are out here. 

And, they are in us, too.

Online, at long last.

Not that the world needs another website. Then again, what does the world need? Other than obviously more love and kindess. 

Posts to come.