Word: auction
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...last Wednesday night, Picasso's 1905 Au Lapin Agile was widely expected to become the most expensive painting ever sold at auction. It had been put on the block at Sotheby's in New York City by heiress Linda de Roulet, whose brother John Whitney Payson had sold Van Gogh's Irises for $53.9 million two years before. It was a far better picture than the Picasso self- portrait, Yo Picasso, that had made a freakish $47.85 million last...
...than $25 million for a work of art. Au Lapin Agile could go, said rumor, to $60 million. But in the end, publishing magnate Walter Annenberg bought it for $40.7 million, and two or three people clapped. It was the third most expensive work of art ever sold at auction...
...James Wood the damage comes down to a confusion between aesthetic and material value. "When a work of art passes through our doors, it should leave the world of economics," says Wood. "Walking through a great museum is not going to give you a profile that reflects the auction market. You have to educate people to grasp that the money paid for a work of art is utterly secondary to its lasting value, its ability to make them respond...
...would be $5 billion, and the show could never be done. In the wake of Irises, every Van Gogh owner wants to believe his painting is worth $50 million and will not let it off the wall if insured for less. Even there, the problem is compounded by the auction houses: when consulted on insurance values or by the IRS, they tend to stick the maximum imaginable price on a painting to maintain the image of its market value and tempt the owner to sell...
Bloomingdale's may fetch as much as $2 billion in an auction that is expected to attract bidders from Manhattan to Tokyo. Among them is Marvin Traub, chairman of the chain, who is planning a management-led buyout. But selling Bloomie's will not be enough. Campeau's firm conceded last week that it may default on $1.27 billion in fourth-quarter debt payments. The disclosure sent prices of Allied junk bonds plunging 20% in value in just one day, while Federated's fell...