Word: world
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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What kind of people are spending for such things? And why? An immensely wealthy individual-a Getty, a Norton Simon, a Mellon-finds in great art what eluded Alexander of Macedon-a last world to conquer. It is a lust to which overachievers have been notoriously susceptible, from Catherine the Great, who built Leningrad's incomparable Hermitage ("I am not a nibbler but a glutton") to U.S. Industrialist Joseph Hirshhorn, the great benefactor of the Smithsonian ("I have a madman's rage for art"). To be sure, such stupendous collectors and donors still make record purchases...
...points out: "There's not a single person who believes that if you put $100 in an envelope and decide you want to give it to your son when he is 21, in 20 years' time that $100 will buy what it does today. Nobody in the world believes really in currency any more...
...years, said to TIME'S Georgia Harbison: "A good auctioneer is very much like a good lecturer. Everyone should understand what's going on and be sitting forward in his seat." He added: "Sometimes the atmosphere in the salesroom is absolutely crackling. The eyes of the whole world are on you at an impressionist sale. As much as $5 million may change hands in one evening. You just feel the weight of money in the room...
...auction firms also assiduously cultivate known collectors in the hope that, alive or dead, they will some day assign their possessions to the market: auction executives are among the world's most diligent readers of obituary pages. William Doyle, the ebullient Boston-Irish owner of a seven-year-old Manhattan house, who expects to gross $15 million this fiscal year, flies in his own plane to reconnoiter rumored treasures. On a trip to Warrensburg, N.Y., he found a trunkful of letters autographed by five of the signers of the Declaration of Independence...
...used to be buried in newspapers along with ship arrivals. Now, with the tremendous increases in fine arts prices and the expansion of public interest, big auctions have become flash bulb and video-tape fiestas. To a large extent the transformation has been wrought by Sotheby's, the world's largest, canniest and most aggressive house. In the late '50s Sotheby's introduced such techniques as international telephone hookups, bidding by closed-circuit TV, the gala evening sale crammed with formally clad celebrities, assiduous ballyhoo and greatly increased sale schedules. More recently, Sotheby's pushed...