2007 in Review: Stories of the Year

Damien Hirst Andy Warhol Mark Rothko Investors Indulge Appetite for Luxury Dealer Holly Solomon’s Papers Headed to Smithsonian The Appendix: Tracey Emin, Damien Hirst, Pipilotti Rist, and Paul H-O Phillips de Pury Makes Its (Small) Mark The Second Sex (at Auction, Anyway)

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1. $144,560,000
On May 15, Mark Rothko’s White Center (Yellow, Pink and Lavender on Rose) (1950) sold for an astonishing $72,840,000 at Sotheby’s New York, breaking the record for a contemporary painting at auction and far eclipsing the artist’s previous high of $22.4 million, achieved in November 2005. The contemporary record survived the following night at Christie’s, but only barely: Andy Warhol’s Green Car Crash (Green Burning Car I) (1963) went for $71,720,000, obliterating the artist’s previous record of $17.4 million, set in November 2006.

The real story of the May auctions, however, was not the $144,560,000 these two paintings fetched, but rather that these prices, though extraordinary, were not totally unexpected outliers. The new bar set in mid-May 2007 in New York was just the latest sign that we were in the midst of the wildly bullish contemporary market. The only question was: Had the market reached a once-in-a-lifetime peak or an impressive, but ultimately routine, vista on a long steady climb?  

2. The Skull As Gaudy as the Ritz
Whether it was a bald comment on the pervasive market or the latest example that success in the art world has very little correlation with taste, Damien Hirst’s For the Love of God (2007), a diamond-encrusted human skull, wins the award for Most Notorious Artwork of 2007. The chintzy bauble was valued at $100 million. At first it was this outrageous price that made news, then the fact that it hadn’t sold, and then that it did sell … to an investment group including Hirst himself. As the work journeyed from the artist, out into the ever-expanding art world, and back to the artist, it generated article upon article, keeping Hirst in the news. An abominable artwork or a nine-digit publicity stunt? You decide.    

3. Don’t Buchel Under
With its sprawling former factory campus filled with giant display spaces; its cordial, laissez-faire treatment of commissioned artists; its intuitive, flexible approach to installation; and its artist-friendly curatorial approach, Mass MoCA is a dream institution for an artist—at least that would be the museum’s side of this story. Christoph Buchel, the Swiss artist whose installation Training Ground for Democracy (2007) sat in limbo—abandoned, incomplete, and covered by a tarp—in the museum for several months, as a legal dispute regarding its fate raged on, would tell a very different tale: of promises broken, shameful parsimony, and a clear institutional preference for expediency over aesthetics.

While some have interpreted the standoff as deliberate provocation on the part of the artist—a publicity-generating institutional critique—it more likely was just a deal gone very wrong. As the artwork languished out of view in valuable exhibition space, both sides went to court. The museum wanted Training Ground removed or open for exhibition; the artist wanted it to be completely out of view, unless he could finish it on his terms.

In the end, the judge found in favor of Mass MoCA, which promptly disassembled the work. But the real winner of the dispute is less clear. The museum suffered a blow to its reputation, while Buchel generated plenty of free publicity. Meanwhile, the largest potential casualty of the whole affair may be the sort of creative, improvisational relationship between artist and museum on which Mass MoCA prides itself. The presiding judge’s comment that "a second-year law student could have drafted a contract that would have eliminated 90 percent of the problems the parties are now arguing about" will surely be a lasting legacy. One meaning more paperwork, more contention, more lawyers, more litigation, and, one fears, less risk-taking at museums.  

4. Dirty Larry
This is another legal dispute and another story likely to result in new laws and regulations, though in this case who is at fault is not in dispute. Lawrence Salander of Salander-O’Reilly Galleries was a respected, successful Old Master and 19th- and 20th-century art dealer who had achieved every dealer’s dream: he put on museum-quality shows, and he made money. Lots of it.

And yet it wasn’t enough. Not enough, that is, to pay off the creditors who began rushing to court this fall to file suits, sensing that this creditee had limited funds to pay all he owed. Although the full story is still emerging, what has come to light so far is already devastating—a slew of allegations insinuating that the dealer had essentially created a Ponzi scheme and sold artworks he didn’t have the right to sell, resulting in the closure of Salander-O’Reilly and seizure of its assets and Salander’s declaration of personal bankruptcy.

It’s a salacious story fit for a novel (Tom Wolfe, this one’s on us), and the fallout will likely take years to fully make itself known. But one can’t help but wonder how unusual Salander’s business practices—he’s essentially been accused of shifting money from one client’s account to another’s, hoping at some point he would come upon a big enough sale to make the whole thing add up—actually are. And that’s why, though Salander is the only one alleged to have committed a crime, many gallerists may soon be paying the price. It’s a safe bet that the art market is about to get some strict new regulations.

5. Subprime Surprise
Around midsummer, the art world learned a new word: subprime. A crisis in home mortgages threatened to destabilize the booming financial markets, and the word subprime itself, with its ominous prefix, suggested by inversion the very thought on everyone’s mind: that the art market was overvalued. Suddenly pundits became pessimists. A correction, long overdue, would be short in arrival, they said, and the November auctions were supposed to be the site of the bloodbath.

And then something funny happened: nothing. The two weeks of auctions brought in the same robust, record-breaking numbers we’ve come to associate with the art world of late (even if no single work equaled Rothko and Warhol’s May results); the one disappointment was the exception that proved the rule. Success went well beyond contemporary to other areas of the market. The bulls kept running in Miami. And so the party stretches on … at least until 2008.