Delivering the (luxury) goods

Spectator, The, Oct 14, 2000 by Moore, Susan

Susan Moore on the importance of `lifestyle' in selling works of art

It may seem perverse to cast an eye across the glossy, glamorous surface of the international art market when Sotheby's has just pleaded guilty to violating American antitrust laws, its former chief executive faces a federal prison sentence, and both Sotheby's and Christie's have elected to hand out a staggering $265 million each to settle a civil action out of court rather than have any more dirty linen paraded in public. But the truth is - for better or worse - that no one appears to be that interested in the scandal - save the New York Times, whose coverage has been little short of obsessional. Rather like the US electorate and President Bill, the punters don't appear to care what the auction houses get up to so long as they continue to deliver the goods.

And delivering the goods is precisely what the 21st-century auction house does so well. Ever since Alfred Taubman, the American shopping-mall magnate and, until recently, Sotheby's chairman - and, presumably, the scalp that the US Justice Department is really hunting in the antitrust case - set out to turn the saleroom business into a retail business, the big auction houses have shown considerable flair not only in expanding their client base but, more ingeniously, not disappointing it. This is a market where there is something to be found for everyone.

The challenge, of course, has not been to sell the great masterpieces: fabulous works of art are market rarities and, in any event, effectively sell themselves. More interesting is the way in which the rich have been courted, and how all of us have been subtlety seduced by our susceptibility as consumers. It is no coincidence that the success of the salerooms coincided not only with the strength of the financial markets but with the rise of the lifestyle magazine. There has never been a time when so many people across the globe, for whatever reason, want to collect works of art - and there has never been a time when so many expend so much thought or energy on creating the stage-sets on which to play out their domestic dramas. And the auction houses recognise that the two are intimately linked.

Smart, single-owner auction catalogues increasingly resemble World of Interiors or Architectural Digest - they employ the same photographers as well as similar design. Then there are the monthly magazines produced by the Big Two auctioneers that dwell, Tatler-style, as much on the parties and personalities of the art world as the paintings and other goodies on offer.

Christie's neatly combines both genres with its additional middle-market Living with An. In these magazines everyone's aspirations are allowed their full flight of fantasy. The current Christie's Magazine offered us the beguiling smile and idiosyncratic interiors of the feted London antiques dealer Christopher Gibbs: quintessential Romantic English country-house shabby-chic. (His two-day house-sale at Clifton Hampden fetched over 33 million - it would have raised a fraction of that if sold anonymously at Christie's South Kensington.)

Alongside were pictures of the late Baron and Baronessa di Portanova; he with almost preposterously Hollywood-casting playboy good looks, cigars and white shoes and sofas; his beautiful, bejewelled wife draped at his feet. Photographs of them (this time, less Tatler than Hello!) appear again and again, with Luciano (Pavarotti) and Kirk (Douglas). Their Faberge, jewels, French Old Master paintings and furniture are going to the block in New York on the 20th, but it is the jet-set glamour of Ricky and Sandra, and their life at the fantastical Villa Arabesque in Acapulco, that is stealing all the limelight in the American press. Anyone bidding here will be hoping, as they were very often at Clifton Hampton, to buy a bit of that lifestyle too.

There is a further ingredient to these magazines, and it is what makes these sumptuous glossies commercially viable as free magazines distributed to clients. It is, of course, more seductively photographed luxury goods and consumer services - ads for jewellery, watches, couture, grand hotels and private banks. The buyers, of course, are all but identical. When M. Bernard Arnault's mammoth LVMH empire - which embraces the likes of Chaumet, Givenchy and Lacroix as well as Moet, Hennessy and Louis Vuitton acquired Phillips in 1999, he only confirmed what had long been abundantly clear: that the art business had become a luxury-goods business, and could be honed, polished and promoted like any other.

Senior auction-room executives will argue the point that they are not part of this luxury-goods trade; they have just learned from it. They have come to understand that the survival of their business depends on the top end of the market, on quality rather than quantity, and they have had to learn how the new rich like to be treated. The majority of their new or potential clients don't care for scruffy premises or wading through innumerable lots. They like VIP pampering and client services, parties and a certain social profile.