Author: Michael Chappell

In what must be characterized as the desperate move of a slow learner, Sotheby’s has made their financial straits apparent in their plan to, yet again, link with eBay in an attempt to bolster their core auction business. In a New York Times article of a couple days ago, it appears that Sotheby’s feels left in the dust given the bricks and mortar expansions of rivals Bonham’s, Phillips, and Christies, and so is desperately, it seems, moving down-market. I suppose senior management overlooked the fact that, in the case of Bonham’s, following on from their 60,000 square foot expansion on Bond Street last year, the auction house is now on the market.

Still, I suppose the prospect of tapping into the reported 150 million eBay users at the lowest of the low end of the art and antiques market seems too tempting to pass up. All this reminds me of the story of the optimistic little boy who, when put in a room full of horse manure, started shoveling furiously. When asked why, the boy replied, ‘With all this horse manure, there must be a pony in here somewhere.’

Well, perhaps there is, but what I know for certain is that eBay serves as a recreation for vast numbers of their users, who spend their spare time tinkering with their accounts while selling and buying $25 items. I’d opine that the rate of compensation for the average eBay user is probably about 30 cents an hour.  And how is that divisible, exactly, by the six figure salaries  of Sotheby’s senior employees?

Suffice to say, the linkage between Sotheby’s and eBay strikes me as, shall we say, a poor fit that cannot be any better now than it was the first time the company’s tried it.

When word surfaced a few weeks ago that Bonham’s was in play, I asked my partner Keith McCullar if he was interested in being in the auction business. His response was an emphatic no. Actually, his no was intensified by a word we hear frequently these days that begins with the letter ‘f’.  Nevertheless, point taken. The better auction houses in the better venues are plagued inherently by high overheads and wildly fluctuating revenues. Yes of course a high end collector would prefer to make his purchase or consign his seven figure item in a lovely venue, but the fact is, these types of items are not daily making their way through any saleroom.

Moreover, the actual number of these types of items is finite, and so, frankly, are those people who would constitute a market, either as buyer or seller. After we had been in business ten years, Keith and I thought we could put together an economic profile of our customers, and mind you, even at the lower end of our business, our buyers are not strangers to any of the major salesrooms. But the fact is, we calculated that this pool consisted of only perhaps 50,000 people- in the world! To say, for instance, that on any given day an Eli Broad will be purchasing a Jeff Koons sculpture is ludicrous, but the fact is, in terms of appearance and accompanying overhead, the auction houses have to appear as though that very thing will happen.

The news media is historically given to hyperbole, so to say the art world is reeling over the revelations of fake Rothko and Pollack paintings is for me, albeit cosseted in my own little sphere, not much news. After the ABC Nightline broadcast, my email inbox was about as full as it always is and no welter of phone calls prevented anyone from ringing through.  In fact, I sold a painting- mind you, a painting by an artist well established in the canon, and the painting itself with a fairly long provenance.  I suppose what I’m saying is that the art world remains pretty much as it’s been.

What amidst the media brouhaha I managed to sell was a painting by an artist whose work we had handled before, which painting had been fairly extensively restored, with the upshot of those restorations creating some problems of their own. While one of the giveaways, per the ABC correspondent, that a Pollack was a phony was the use of a yellow pigment of a type unavailable to the artist, our painting, of mid 19th century vintage with a fine linen support, had been cleaned, revarnished, and mounted on hardboard sometime in the middle of the last century.  Does this make for difficulty in determining a painting’s authenticity? Absolutely. Does or should this kind of thing raise suspicions and affect the picture’s merchantability? Well- yes and no.

I hedge because, frankly, what results in a sale is as varied as the paintings we handle and the buyers who purchase them. We always chuckle when we see on broadcasts like Antiques Roadshow discussions about original condition, because the fact is, for most period material, either fine or decorative, if it is a century or more old, original condition often time means poor, unsalable condition. Invariably, canvas stretches and paint shrinks, leading to paint loss and tears to the support, and the very varnish used to protect the painting’s design layer is typically over time so yellowed and so approaching opacity that what’s depicted in the picture plane is often difficult to make out.  Our general rule of thumb is, whether painting or furniture, everything requires significant restoration at least once a century. When one sees a picture of some age that appears fresh from the easel, what one is admiring, without knowing it, is oftentimes the restorer’s art.  The yellowed varnish that is removed takes with it a fair old bit of the design layer which the skillful restorer oftentimes has to put back with his brush which, he hopes, will be guided by his knowledge of the original artist’s working technique- if that can be determined. Or, as is frequently the case, by the restorer’s own best judgment.

That there is no hard, fast and immutable rule for restoration, and that techniques have changed over time, complicates matters even further.  In the case of the painting remounted on hardboard, we see this fairly often and while it is perhaps not ideal, in the cases where we have seen it, it provided a simple, durable lining. No lining is ideal. Stretching the canvas over the lining and the effect of the heat table invariably result in a flattened appearance, with brushstrokes and impasto marking the technique of the artist diminished in the process.

Perhaps this discussion of restoration runs afield from outright fakery, but the fact is, artworks, even when genuine in their origin, oftentimes, and perhaps inevitably, have that originality occluded the result of attentions that were of the best intention. And these attentions might be interpreted to be if not fakery, than at least misleading.  Moreover, though personally we try to limit whatever restoration we carry out to what is the least required and always the least invasive, most of our clients require that paintings be wall ready and furniture pieces be room ready.  We do, like everyone else, have our living to earn, so pieces do need to be in saleable condition.

That’s where disclosure by the dealer comes in, as it should with all members of the accredited trade, and where better to disclose than in writing and on the face of the invoice.

The art newspapers are full of the possible fate of the Detroit Institute of Arts. Will the so called ‘grand bargain’ that allows a few heavy hitters to stump up save the museum and its artwork, or will there be a selloff in an attempt to whittle down the city’s enormous debt? Based on a Christie’s valuation of a few months ago, with the collection valued in the $500 million range, the grand bargain seemed likely. Now, however, it appears creditors want the collection revalued, with some indication that the Christies figure is very low indeed, with the collection probably worth in the range of several billion dollars.

On the one hand, the disbursal of any great collection is freighted with powerful emotion, and none of them positive, except for those, in this instance, felt by the city’s creditors, but the fact is, collections come and go. Nearly all the period holdings of any institutional collection were at one time owned by someone else, and acquired when the fortunes of the acquisitor were waxing and those of the disbursing party were waning. One can be sentimental about the industrial gigantism that was Detroit through most of the 20th century, a byproduct of which was the purchasing of cultural trophies that bedizened the museum, but that time has come and gone, and the city is in eclipse. No- eclipse implies that its problems are short lived and its fortunes will, in the manner of an eclipse, inevitably recover. Does anyone believe that? I suppose we are all bit by the same nostalgia bug, with the belief that America’s postwar economic expansion will return with the same force and effect as felt by nearly everyone in this country in the 1950’s. As I look out my window, I don’t see a single man with a crew cut, white short sleeve shirt and dark narrow tie, or any women with Mamie Eisenhower bangs. By which I mean, of course, this country and the economic engine that powers it is as different now as the appearance and modes of endeavor of its population.

To think the Detroit Institute of Arts and its collections should be saved as a public institution is, in the abstract, laudable in the way that making culture accessible to the general run of the populace who might not otherwise have access to it is always laudable, but now the collection serves a purpose that might yield it of far greater and much more immediate importance than it held formerly. The Detroit Institute of Arts as a civic ornament has, as the city it adorned, seen its day come, and now that day has gone.

We are pleased to be on familiar turf, which turf is actually incorporated into the adobe walls of our Cliff May design premises. ‘No place like home’? Not exactly- but something along the line of a realization, in my seventh decade, that one’s hometown is an ineluctable part of one’s matrix. Of course, a body can change locales, but takes with him inescapable elements of home. I cannot ever escape the link I have with the clay soil of this neighborhood and at this point in my life, I have no desire to.

Some wags when reading this might, when considering our move, borrow a thought from Louis D’Ascoyne in ‘Kind Hearts and Coronets’, to the tune of changing the medieval splendors of Chalfont Castle for the modern conveniences of Balaclava Avenue, SW, but as with Fresno’s impact, so has everything else had an effect, arguably not as great, but nevertheless things that, wherever and how often I move, will stay with me. The occasional whiff of coal smoke on a cold night in Islington, the smell of sewer gas at Jackson and Sansome in San Francisco, and the enveloping warmth of the plumeria scented night air in Honolulu. Why all these smells? In fact, the clay soil of old Fig Garden in Fresno has a particular smell that when damp, adobe bricks give off, too. I don’t really know why scent is the predominant sense as I write this. Actually, I do- the lawn is being mowed and the scent of newly mown grass is pervasive as it can only be on a warm Fresno day.

We’ll further consider vernacular Fresno- art, architecture, and culture generally. My own interest aside, I have to say, however, that the arts organizations locally find fundraising more than a modest struggle, the presumption on the part of the well heeled donor base that anything locally must perforce be second (or third or fourth) rate, that high culture is a phenomenon found in the great urban centers. Piffle. Culture is the natural byproduct of the sentient beings we all are, and from the vantage point of experience, over sixty years worth, I look forward to exploring this from the respite of Shaw Avenue.