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.