Word: auction
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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THREE weeks ago, a table was sold at auction in London. It had been made in France somewhere around 1780, probably by a craftsman named Martin Carlin: a spindly, exquisite and useless object, all tulipwood and Sevres porcelain plaques, the very epitome of the court taste of Louis XVI. An Iranian oilman named Henri Sabet paid $415,800 for it and so became the owner of the most expensive piece of furniture in history...
...past six months have seen some of the highest prices ever paid for works of art. From this ebullience one might deduce a healthy art market. In fact, the market is utterly schizophrenic. Living artists and their dealers are the casualties; dead artists and auction houses have been the beneficiaries...
...auction house, amid the deep carpets and the reverent murmur of bids, such prices are made to look like a belated homage to genius. In fact they are nothing of the kind. They represent a crass transformation of aesthetic experience into commodity. They stem from two iron rules of the market: 1) that as money devalues, it seeks to embody itself in commodities that seem more stable than bank notes or stock; 2) that a painting or sculpture has no "real" value at all. It is worth what some collector can be induced to pay for it, not a cent...
Spirited Selling. Heublein, which in recent years has bought several wineries in California's Napa Valley, stages its auctions to promote the expanding U.S. wine market (TIME, March 1), which has grown by 60% in total sales during the past decade. The price of rare wines, both foreign and domestic, is apparently rising even faster. Last week's auction grossed more than $230,000 (v. $55,000 and $106,000 in 1969 and 1970), and many lots fetched four to five times the price that Heublein's experts had expected. Broadbent, wine director of London...
...notions that great wine does not travel well, that very old wine fades almost immediately upon opening (some proved better several hours after being uncorked), and that white wine does not last more than seven years (one case of 1928 white Bordeaux brought more than $1,300 at the auction...