National publications can be a bit more pointed than a poor dealer trying to earn his daily crust. As a follow-on from my last two blog entries describing the strange and mystical relationship between Chinese buyers and the major auction houses, herewith an article in this week’s Newsweek:
“Chinese bidders are offering record sums at international auctions–but sellers complain that getting payment is an imperial pain.”
Click to read the entire article
A trade publication is reporting, in response to the high numbers of buyers failing to complete on purchases, a number of continental auction houses are requiring significant albeit refundable deposits in advance of accepting bids. Worthy of note, this action has been so far limited to items of specific interest to Chinese buyers. It appears that the Chinese rogue buyer of the reticulated vase, formerly famous and now infamous and the subject of my last blog, must have some friends, or at least shares questionable business practices with others of the same collecting bent.
Of the many interesting facets of the high profile Chinese activity in the trade has been that its effects both good and ill have been felt largely in the salesrooms. The best private dealers have so far certainly not benefited from any of this, witness their numbers shrinking by the day in the world’s art cities. It has seemed to me that the received wisdom amongst Chinese collectors is that the best source at the lowest price has been the salesrooms. With so many moneyed new, still wet behind the ears collectors coming out of China, it is little surprise that they’ve not cottoned on to how fraught with difficulty buying at auction really is. I am reminded of attending several sales in London over the course of a week or so several years back. Every one of them was attended by the same woman, notable for her, shall we say, large appearance. Any piece of better quality English furniture with a bit of gilding on it, she tried to buy. And, she did, but every last one acquired at a huge premium. As any trade purchaser knows, the salesrooms always provide the novice with a baptism of fire, and this poor lady, though doubtless unaware, was well and truly burned. Everyone has a budget, and it serves trade buyers well to get rid of competitive buyers by exhausting their resources early. As a consequence, certain salesroom habitués will intentionally bid up a piece that someone is feverishly seeking to acquire. Then, when a piece has reached unreasonable levels of price, the unscrupulous underbidder will stop, and the fevered bidder will find themselves the owner of something inordinately expensive- and their wallets flattened. This is what’s known as having a piece dropped on your toes. Our large lady in London certainly must have had all her metaphoric toes broken. Has this happened to any of the redoubtable Chinese grandees? Unquestionably. Are a few of them now aware of this? With the recent defensive maneuvering of the salesrooms lately, I’d venture to say yes.
Mind you, most auction houses are able to withstand the predations of the rogue buyer. Rarely does an item leave the salesroom without its having been paid for, and if something remains unpaid and uncollected, the worst thing that happens is that a consignor is disappointed and the piece is reoffered for sale. Better luck next time, I suppose. In this day and age of huge and exhaustive price databases, private dealers all now know that, to stay in business they are obliged to be price competitive. Soon, the new collector pool that China represents will realize that dealers are just as good a resource as the salesrooms. Better, of course, because nearly all specialist dealers will have a much broader base of knowledge, and can spend considerably more time in working for the individual collector- assessing the quality of the requirements of the collector and putting good quality pieces before them, prior to being offered for sale to the general public. Times being the way they are, though, most dealers are pretty hungry, so it is my hope that, in an effort to cash in on the inevitable migration from the salesrooms to the dealer’s galleries, a lesson is learned from the experience of others, and that conservative trading practices prevail. By which I mean, taking a line from a well known film, ‘Show me the money.’
Just recently, more than any other topic, buyers and browsers in our galleries have wanted to chat about the now legendary sale of the Qianlong reticulated vase that set the world record price for a Chinese work of art. Though far eastern material is not our primary stock in trade, we do a fair old business in it, and, more than anything, with the numbers of dealers internationally becoming rather thinner on the ground with each passing day, we necessarily find ourselves the recipients of waves of information, some of it occasionally accurate.
What we had heard rumoured, but now confirmed, is that the still unnamed buyer for the vase has not, five months on from the sale, actually paid for the piece. The auction house reputedly is confident payment will be forthcoming in the fullness of time, and that, in the course of business, five months is not an unreasonable length of time for settlement. Presumably they must have not only a different class of trading partners than we do, but also a different banking relationship. Moreover, the occasional auction purchases that we make, if not settled within a (very limited) window, will immediately bring on some rather strident dunning notices from the salesroom.
The flip side of this is, auction houses, even in the best of times have a fair cadre of erstwhile buyers who renege on purchases. The why of this is not surprising, given the frequent incidence of so-called auction fever, where the novice and not so novice buyers get carried away in a pitch of bidding, only to find that, after the hammer has fallen to them, they’ve spent more than they can afford, or, on leaving the salesroom, are stricken with buyer’s remorse, and decide, once the invoice arrives, to DK.
Specific to the famed vase, however, I’ve heard an interesting notion explaining the non, or at least yet to materialize, payment. That is, with a Chinese art market still on the rise, it could be the erstwhile buyer is speculating on a rise in price over and above what he paid in November. Could be that the auction house is functioning, albeit reluctantly, as a clearing house, with settlement to come when the piece is ultimately resold. Let’s watch and see, shall we?
A brief Facebook exchange about the coronation portrait of Elizabeth I put me in mind of the importance of brand identification- hardly a new phenomenon and something that was used effectively by the woman who was happy to be lauded as Gloriana. That she was also known as the virgin queen was certainly reinforced, along with its attended benefits, by rigorously controlled visual imagery.
It’s been assumed with the absence of realism in Tudor portraiture that Renaissance painting techniques were late in arriving in England. Frankly, as pictures of Elizabeth had nothing to do with the real, but everything to do with the image, realism could at best only function to diminish a personage whose attributes were required to be superhuman. Not just her court, but Parliament itself drafted a resolution that only authorized images of the queen could be allowed- and, of course, all of them portraying virtuously favorable, if not photo realistic, aspects of the monarch. One portrait from the 1570’s includes as a major iconographic feature a sieve held by the queen- it was proof of the chastity of the vestal virgins who tended the sacred flame in Rome, to carry water in a sieve from the Tiber. And so it was, in this sieve portrait so-called, with the sanctity of the British state directly linked with the virginity of the monarch, just as the sanctity of the vestals was integral to the stability of the Roman Empire.
Not that images of Elizabeth are all politically inward looking, with the ‘Armada’ portrait clearly international and imperial. With the victory over the Spanish fleet grimly depicted in the background, an Elizabeth reduced almost to caricature has her hand placed on a globe. That it covers Spanish dominions in the Americas, of course, is no accident. Moreover, she is festooned with elaborate ropes of pearls- the jewel of the sea- indicating that her sovereignty has displaced that of Spain in the oceans as well as on land. Also, pearls were a symbol of purity- yet again, a reference to Elizabeth’s chastity, clearly linking her own virginity with not only a successful reign, but success in the defense of the realm from an aggressor- and portending an imperial future for England.
From caricature to the fantastic, the Ditchley portrait was commissioned by Sir Henry Lee in anticipation of Elizabeth’s visit to his Oxfordshire seat of Ditchley. This portrait of the 1590’s- late in the queen’s reign- places her image on a map of England, with her foot, coincidentally, roughly atop Oxfordshire. She is linked thereby as the human embodiment of the nation, with the sun over her right shoulder signifying her glory, and the thunderstorm over her left signifying her power. Here, again, the ropes of pearls around her neck- never is she without a symbol of the virtue in her virginity. It has often been noted that the queen was vain of her appearance, and sought, witness her continual succession of often substantially younger favorites, to seem sexually desirable. Though doubtless Henry Lee sought to curry favor with his sovereign, the Ditchley portrait nevertheless depicts a woman whose face at least is somewhat withered and lined with age.
The images are horrific, but the human cost, unless one’s in the middle of it, is unfathomable. Japan is an astonishing place, but the might of the natural world clearly maintains the upper hand. Regardless of one’s place in that world, even a society as developed as Japan, where thorough preparations are watchwords, assistance is required, and for those of us who, for the moment, enjoy the benefit of safety, all need to generously contribute for the benefit of those who in an instant had their lives shattered.