The False Alert and the Real Peril

NEW YORK—Reading or hearing the comments in some of the world media on November 8, you might have been excused for feeling that the end of the auction world had come. Sotheby’s, you were told, had had a bad experience the previous evening with its sale of Impressionist and modern art. A Van Gogh had crashed. An art market crisis was in sight.

Then, a week later, following the sale of post–World War II and contemporary art at Christie’s, commentators changed their tune. One analyst, who may have remembered the days when he was a bit of a wag at school, said that we had just witnessed the shortest market crash ever, or words to that effect.

Sure enough, Christie’s November 6 session, which grossed $395 million, was sensational. The only trouble with the wag’s comment is that it does not stand up to scrutiny. Sotheby’s Impressionist and modern art sale was also a considerable success, if not on the same scale. An auction in which 76 works of art bring an aggregate $269.7 million does not exactly point to a market meltdown.

Sotheby’s performance could, of course, have been even better had two or three supposedly star lots found takers. These include the  Van Gogh. But did those singing in lamentation ever look at the work? The Fields is not a full-blown picture but a sketch dashed off around July 10, 1890, shortly before Van Gogh committed suicide. The short white strokes, which seem mechanically applied, fail to create the rhythm intended, and the colors are too pale. Even great men have weak moments. Having been trundled through exalted art exhibitions a dozen times since 1952 is not enough to elevate The Fields to the category of unforgettable gems.

Given the current dearth of important works by major masters, the Van Gogh might have stood a chance if it had been given a plausible estimate, say half that proposed by Sotheby’s. Pegged at $28 million to $35 million, however, it was doomed. The picture fell flat on its nose, as the auctioneer’s hammer came down on a $25 million bid.

The next heavyweight up was Te Poipoi (le matin), painted by Gauguin in 1892 during his first Tahitian period. Consigned by the family of Joan Whitney Payson, heiress to a long-collecting tradition, the landscape had a glamorous provenance. Alas, it hardly ranks among Gauguin’s greatest. The brushwork is loose, and the woman squatting in the center gives the unfortunate impression of answering a call of nature. The estimate was a staggering $40 million to $60 million. The picture did not even make the lower number. Wisely, the auctioneer let it go on a $35 million bid, bringing the tab, including buyer’s premium, to a huge $39.2 million.

Sotheby’s didn’t have the same good fortune when the third would-be big lot came up. Picasso executed La Lampe between January and June 1931 in his simplified style, bordering on caricature with a faint whiff of Surrealism. The painting, however, lacks the punch of some of the artist’s one-day pictures, done in his in-your-face manner to convey his contempt for bourgeois society. The Picasso carried the same estimate as the Van Gogh. Bought in at $21 million, it suffered the same fate for the same reason: the consignor’s excessive ambitions. Slash the estimate by one third, and perhaps one of those buyers willing to shed millions on the strength of a famous signature might have tried his luck in the poker game that art auctions now often resemble.

Braque, to whom Picasso was indebted when both were devising the first full-blown version of the Cubist style, comes next in the fame scale. Late in life, he painted still lifes in a broad manner that sends back a feeble echo to the Cubist examples he was making on the eve of World War I. One done in the mid-1950s turned up at Sotheby’s New York on May 11, 1993, fetching $3.9 million, and reappeared at the house three years later, when the collector who consigned it to the November 7, 2007, sale bought it for $2.5 million. Was it plausible to expect the same picture now to realize $15 million to $20 million, plus the sales charge? I don’t think so. What is more important, neither did the room. The Braque did not sell. Like the other high-profile failures on November 7, this one was caused by the consignor’s wild profit expectations, reflected in the estimate.