Hyperbole is always the order of the day when the auction houses unveil their wares at their press previews for the big evening sales of Impressionist, modern and contemporary art. But the back-to-back presentations by the Big Two auction houses on Friday (“Taxi!”) were even more boastful than usual.
In my CultureGrrl Video, below, you’ll hear the experts from Sotheby’s and Christie’s tout their offerings as “fresh to the market,” ” the best of the series,” and that old standby, “masterpiece.”
Special mention for promotional puffery goes to Sotheby’s deification of A. Alfred Taubman, whose estate’s first sale tonight, Masterworks, from its 500-work consignment, guaranteed by the auction house at about $500 million, could prove a make-it-or-break-it moment for the auction house.
Photo by Lee Rosenbaum
In my video, you’ll hear Simon Shaw, Sotheby’s co-head of Impressionist and modern art, extol the late real estate and shopping mall magnate as “a collector up there with Havemeyer, Gould [and] Thannhauser.” Although Shaw called Taubman “a self-made man with very much a self-made eye,” the dates and location of a large chunk of his purchases of works in the “Masterworks” catalogue—sold by by Sotheby’s in the early 1980s—demonstrates how influenced he was by the experts from the auction firm that he purchased in 1983. He also relied on a well known art advisor, Tamara Thomas (whose chief clients were corporate executives), to help guide his collecting. (I used to see them attending auctions together.)
One personal note: Starting tomorrow, I’ll be traveling and not covering the auction results until I return next week. I may or may not have time to tweet the proceedings of tonight’s big Taubman sale.
Here are the sale pitches: