Sotheby's: Bidding for Class

Contemporary Review, Dec, 1998 by Joan Bridgman

Robert Lacey. Little, Brown and Company. [pounds]20.00. ISBN 0-316-64447-1.

Speaking as one who has been tempted into folly by the rival auction house, Christie's, I wryly acknowledge the accuracy and wit of this expose of the techniques that so skilfully part the customer from his money. As Robert Lacey makes clear in his title, the main ingredient in this process is snobbery - the desire to acquire class through the ownership of an item once the property of a lady or gentleman. Robert Lacey traces how the badge of social status has been extended to include the effects of celebrities in order to continue the expansion of business. The supply of needy gents is intermittent and death of collectors unpredictable. Recent pickings have been thin. 'It's been such a warm winter', explained the Chairman of Impressionist Art, 'It's all the fault of El Nino.'

Old Masters tend to disappoint into captivity, as Peter Wilson put it, into museums and the sale of 'that rather nice furniture from the saloon', as Macmillan sardonically said of Thatcher's sale of national assets, never comes in a steady stream.

Other must-haves must be created - minor artists' paintings, photographs, fountain pens, Nick Jagger's sunglasses and most bizarrely, the title deeds to Lunar Hod 2, a vehicle abandoned on the moon. This last Mr. Lacey describes as a small pinnacle in the history of auctioneering, the sale of an object which can never be physically possessed or even seen by telescope, only existing as a concept in the mind, but which was sold by Sotheby's for [pounds]41,200 ($68,000) along with used Russian space-suits.

There are further ingredients, of course. There is an auction fever carefully fostered by the theatricality of the presentation. Expectations are titillated by advance publicity, especially the production of a glossy, expertly researched catalogue, a programme for the performance to come. I say this with feeling because I fell victim to Christie's Nureyev hardback sale catalogue, stunningly illustrated in colour which recreated the dancer's sumptuous Dakota fiat as in a series of stage sets. It was a collectable in itself.

Really big evening sales have the atmosphere of a first night or a premiere. The staff can be found, in their smart evening outfits ready to meet similarly elegant clients. These buyers have been wooed in advance by the Client Advisory service and have had their bank balances checked. Clients have also been made aware of their unarticulated need.

The element of battle in the bidding fever may develop into a clash of egos in which there must be a winner and reason is cast aside. Mr. Lacey instances a small, stained wooden footstool which fetched [pounds]17,500 ($29,000) at the sale of Jacqueline Onassis's possessions after heated bidding and the piece of the Windsor's wedding cake was famously sold for [pounds]18,120 ($29,900) to a Mr. and Mrs. Yim. They were collectors of surrealist art and intended to exhibit it with the title 'An Object Never Meant To Be Eaten'. (You can't invent this stuff.)

Robert Lacey tells the story of Sotheby's to match the polish and style of his subject matter. As skilfully handled as any popular best-seller, his main narrative is sandwiched between a riveting prologue and an epilogue both detailing the buzz of two major auctions - a compound of cash, greed and folly - 'The hiss through the air of other people's money being spent'. His story even has a hero, a dashing buccaneer, Peter Wilson, a James Bond figure, connected with espionage during the war. He became chairman of the company in 1958 and was perfectly fitted to be the main architect of the methods which transformed Sotheby's into an internationally successful business.

Robert Lacey takes us backstage into an extraordinary world of double dealing, smuggling (paintings should fit a suitcase), tax evasion and intelligence gathering on the world's rich, especially in relation to their tastes and medical conditions. It is a business driven by ambiguity, since the vendor must be convinced that now is the time to sell and the buyer, that bargain time is now.

It is carried off with such engaging panache as to transcend criticism. It has the entertainment appeal of those Ealing comedies, Kind Hearts and Coronets, for example, or the character of Raffles where suave gentlemen crooks are involved so amusingly with crime, or even the black comedy of Orton's Loot. For instance, the real difficulty with antique violins lay in smuggling them back into Italy when they failed to sell.

In this hall of mirrors where few things were what they seemed, it is no surprise to find that the price of the world's most expensive painting, Van Gogh's Irises, auctioned by Sotheby's in 1987 making the then highest price ever of [pounds]30,000,000 ($49 million), was a much massaged figure. The auction house had advanced fifty per cent of the money to the buyer, Alan Bond, who subsequently went bust, exposing the pre-auction dealing and Sotheby's had to take the picture back.