Dirk Boll

A Cultural History of the Art Auction in 14 Portraits

It is possible that money has always played a role in the perception of art. Certainly this became obvious in the 1980s, when collectors from Japan bought Impressionist paintings following the investment of British pension funds in this category a few years earlier. Similarly, everybody began to buy Contemporary Art in the 1990s. These days it is an accepted fact that the market value of art has a bearing on the canonisation process. We may regret this, but it is unlikely to change any time soon. The all-encompassing transparency that the Internet now brings to the market practically guarantees a grassroots democratic approach and also leaves an indelible mark. Since more than half of all art works sold globally in 2013 achieved prices below €3,000, the market clearly also plays an important role in popularizing the arts.1

Even though art markets follow traditional rules and regulations, they have been subject to unprecedented change since the turn of the millennium. At last, auction houses have achieved a transformation from wholesaler to retail business. This was only possible once they had established themselves in the eyes of the buyer as a third channel of commerce alongside art fairs on the one hand and galleries and dealerships on the other. New auction buyers are mainly ‘end consumers’ who are willing to pay higher prices than traders and are receptive to client development activities.

Christian Jankowski, Strip the Auctioneer, 2009, C-print, 41 × 50.8 cm, edition of 10, II

In the course of this evolution, the art world has quite clearly become an art industry, at least on its commercial side. As such, it now displays numerous industrial characteristics such as procurement analysis, sales planning, client service, public relations, and brand marketing. Nowhere is this more apparent than in the auction business, where sales are of a public nature and industrial elements become increasingly evident the larger a firm becomes.

But what kind of industry is this actually? There are two large enterprises with business plans: Christie’s and Sotheby’s. Think Starbucks, or Nespresso. The implementation of the plan is facilitated by direct competitors from the art trade, who have always had a certain entrepreneurial interest in the success of the auction business model, since they can easily use the public validation of art to support their own commercial activities.

When the hammer comes down at auction, it creates a moment of truth, a price achieved in public. This is often explained and almost condoned by the argument that art is merely used as an investment vehicle and that the market is thus manipulated by its participants. However, even the counter-argument – emphasizing the exceptionally high quality of a work of art that sells at a very high price – is only a mitigation masquerading as an explanation. Economically, there is a simple fact: goods were offered and demand has met the supply at a publicly agreed price. This price will remain on record and become a reference point for future sales. The seasonal nature of the auction business enhances the effect, as it creates suspense. As in an Olympic 100-meter sprint, any attempt to break the record can only be made at the next round of games. In the meantime, the historic success becomes both a reference point and an ambition.

Parker Brothers Inc., Salem, Mass., Masterpiece: The Art Auction Game, 1970

The focal point of the process is the figure of the auctioneer. Even if he (or she!) cannot alone create value, the auctioneer’s performance has a significant effect on the price of the art work. He strives to turn audience members into bidders engaged in competition, and to this end he makes use of the visceral fascination that auction sales have held over cen­turies. The ritual dramaturgy of this competition, which is archaic in nature, often creates heart-stopping moments for the participants and grips even neutral observers. It is no surprise that an auction drama features prominently in a recent humorous advertising campaign for a heart medication.2 In this emotionally charged atmosphere the auctioneer can be compared to a football trainer, who instills his team with the belief that they can win simply because they are better players. The players will believe him if he is a good leader, possibly even disregarding their physical form, and the belief will help them to compete successfully. The only difference is that there are as many teams in the auction room as there are bidders – and all of them look to the same trainer.

This volume tells the cultural history of the art auction through fourteen individual portraits of auctioneers: one woman and thirteen men. Each describes a particular turning point in the development of auctions. While the selection is representative, it is also driven by the availability of existing sources; many highlights of auctioneering history had to be disregarded. The German reader may miss Heinrich Georg Gutekunst or descriptions of the auctions held at C. G. Börner. The French may look for the attractions of Hôtel Drouot. A New York reader may regret the absence of Hiram Parke of Parke-Bernet or the 1973 sale of the Scull collection at Sotheby’s, where works by American contemporary artists such as Andy Warhol, Willem de Kooning and Robert Rauschenberg were publicly offered for the first time and achieved a record total of $2.2 million.

Daniel Cherbuin, Moronica, 2013, Photograph, HD-Video

Little is known about some historic auctioneers, making it harder to record their history. James Christie’s innovative approach and charismatic performance have been praised for 250 years, but many of those who followed him lack a profile and sometimes even a name. Only in the second half of the twentieth century did the focus shift to the auctioneer. Brand development as well as the image and reference strategy of the international auction houses since the 1970s have turned the spotlight on individuals who would have remained hidden in the background only a few years earlier. This culminated in the late 1980s, when art and lifestyle converged in a merger of art works and the popular aesthetics of commerce. Art became a subject of the popular press, and the actors in the art market sometimes achieved a status comparable to pop stars. We therefore know relatively little about the group of auctioneers who sold the Hamilton and Beckford collections in 1882 over multiple sessions lasting many days, but the relevant media inform us in great detail about the life, for example, of contemporary auctioneer Tobias Meyer, and not solely about his ability to generate a multi-million dollar turnover in ninety minutes at a New York evening sale.

The acceleration of communication through the Internet, including art market blogs, has increased this trend, and inevitably the term ‘star auctioneer’ has been coined. Some of these figures are portrayed in this book. But ‘auctioneers who made art history’ were also the unsung heroes of past centuries. These masters of their trade may have been first and foremost sober tradesmen, but their trade relies in part on raising an emotional temperature. In this setting the audience identifies with them as heroic central characters and projects their passion on to them.

William Hogarth, The Toilette, detail of the fourth image in the series Marriage à-la-mode, 1743–45, oil on canvas, 70.5 × 90.8 cm, National Gallery, London

This brief cultural history of the art auction therefore shows a unique development. When auctions were a means of disposing of an estate, be it indebted or heirless, or a manner of selling off assets after a bankruptcy, the business had a dubious reputation. Even in the middle of the eighteenth century, William Hogarth’s series of paintings Marriage à-la-mode depicts labelled lots and an auction catalogue in the household of ‘Countess Squanderfield’, thus branding auction purchases as the leisure activity of a thoughtless and frivolous class. Even worse, the source of the purchase is meant to indicate the unsavory and disreputable character of the buyer. Even today the expression ‘to come under the hammer’ can imply an undesirable and forced form of asset disposal. Only in the era of James Christie was an exchange of goods for money in the saleroom transformed into a social event, which provided a certain entertainment value while also allowing for art appreciation as well as intellectual stimulation. Christie and his followers changed the auctioneer from a meticulous and neutral middleman into a charismatic projection figure in society, who inevitably in due course became the subject of artistic reflection himself.

On 20 May 2009 the artist Christian Jankowski arranged a public auction in which Christie’s renowned auctioneer Arno Verkade sold the clothes off his own back: Strip the Auctioneer. The final lot was the auctioneer’s hammer. The exhibition project The Auction Room, curated by young designers Mariana Pestana and Designersblock, focused on the design of the objects in this setting. The 2011 event at the London Design Festival presented an entire auction room display including lots, seating, rostrum and hammer, all of which were then sold at the concluding auction.

The auctioneer has also found his way into popular culture, ranging from small porcelain figures (The Auctioneer by Royal Doulton) and toys actually modelled on the real auctioneer Simon de Pury (Action Auctioneer by the artist The Sucklord) to appearances in such comics as the Walt Disney Company’s Donald Duck: Ducktales (season 1, episode 25: ‘Dr Jekyll & Mr McDuck’, 1987) and in the universe of DC Comics (the character of ‘Auctioneer’ and ‘Auctioneer II’). In the area of interactive games we have the Gadgetzan Auctioneer character by Matt Dixon, the iOS game Auction Wars: Storage King by GameDigits Ltd, and the countless auctioneers (including one woman) in the multi-player World of Warcraft. Real enthusiasts may be able to track down a copy of the 1970s board game Masterpiece to enjoy the excitement and glamour of the auction world in the comfort of their own homes.

These examples, no matter how far fetched they are, nonetheless relate to the contributions in this anthology, which round out the sequence of biographical texts and examine the presence of the auctioneer in everyday life, in fine art, in film and in literature.

Dirk Boll

1 London 1766

Around 1700, the London art market became highly specialised and efficient. Lifting Oliver Cromwell’s Puritan laws was an important prerequisite for this development, as all art imports from abroad had previously been prohibited.3 Once again British aristocrats could, and increasingly did, go on Grand Tours of continental Europe. Above all, the impression these travels made on them formed the basis for their own collecting activities. An art collection soon became an indispensable asset to maintain a prestigious position in society. The country’s beginning supremacy in European trade channelled large funds into its economy. While the Italian aristocracy became impoverished and had to sell, the British aristocracy became established buyers.4

From the middle of the century, London and Paris dominated other cultural centres last not least because of the supply required by the royal courts as well as increasing demand from the wealthy middle class.5 At the beginning of the eighteenth century educational tours took the art lover to the sites of classical antiquity, while the art buyer travelled to London and Paris. The art trade responded by opening up to this development. Showrooms invited the visitor to linger and enjoy the pleasure of looking at art; they became places of intellectualisation through stimulating exchange across social classes.6

The 1760s therefore marked a turning point in England. As the Royal Academy was founded, the first Annual Exhibitions encouraged the enjoyment as well as the consumption of art. The competition between the London and Paris markets influenced art prices, with consequent implications for the European auction business.7 The oldest auction house of that era still in existence today is Auktionsverket, founded in Stockholm in 1674. The Vienna Dorotheum opened in 1707, initially as a pawnbroker. Even the London firm of Sotheby’s had a very different profile at the time. Until the twentieth century the house specialised exclusively in book sales.8 London auction sales took place only during the town season from September to May. The upper classes were in the country over the summer, and business ceased. The traditional German saying, Kirschen rot, Handel tot (‘cherries are red, when business is dead’) did not just apply to the art trade. Indeed, this schedule continues to set the rhythms of the auction market today.

The London art market was buoyed considerably by the French Revolution and the Napoleonic wars, since this was where emigrating aristocrats could sell their only moveable possessions: art works and jewellery. Between 1790 and 1820 several important continental collections were sold in London, such as Calonne, Conti, Lafitte, and Orléans. Highlights were the sales of Countess du Barry’s jewels at Christie’s and the Talleyrand collection at Philips.9 At the same time, a number of dealerships sprung up, such as those of Old Masters dealers Paul Colnaghi, Arthur J. Sulley and, in 1817, Agnew’s, where art works saved from the French Revolution found British buyers.10

Representing the economic system of this market through financial analysis is rather daunting. A world record price of a kind for the period seems to have been paid by Augustus the Strong for Raphael’s Sistine Madonna, at least according to the views of contemporary commentators, who described £8,500 as extraordinary.11