Trophy Hunting

Alberto Giacometti Joan Miro Edouard Vuillard Auguste Rodin Edgar Degas Claude Monet Fernand Leger Camille Pissarro

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While Christie’s May 6 evening session, which opened the spring season and was brilliantly conducted by Christopher Burge, ended in financial triumph, with 44 works bringing a total of $277.3 million, the attendance was not exactly bubbling with mirth. Rather, the mood was one of prudence and concentration, with no one indulging in the bouts of prankish spending on a sudden whim that seemed sometimes to characterize last fall’s sales.

The new attitude may account for the peculiar makeup of the sale, in which quality contrasts were more marked than usual. Three lots of stellar importance stood out, buttressed by half a dozen extremely good paintings and sculptures, in the midst of a host of unremarkable works. There is nothing mysterious about this imbalance: When owners feel unsure about the probable outcome of success at auction, even though art has so far been performing very well, they take precautions.

Holders of exceptionally important works will release them only if the auction houses agree to huge estimates with commensurate reserves and, often, guarantees; consignors are thus assured of tidy profits. Holders of pieces that are extremely good but not spectacular are more reluctant to let them go, fearing that these might not find takers and could be commercially harmed by public failure. On the other hand, owners of weak works graced by well-known signatures readily consign them, reckoning that the shortage of goods and the presence of new buyers provide a better chance than ever to unload them.

Did this atmosphere of ill-defined unease impel auction-house specialists to take extra care in preparing the sale during the weeks preceding it? At the viewing, Thomas Seydoux, the remarkable connoisseur of Impressionist and modern art who heads Christie’s international department together with Guy Bennett, told me that they had exerted themselves more than usual. This could explain the large number of absentee bids, left with Christie’s staff before the sale, which played no mean part in the brilliant outcome of the session.

At first, the auction appeared to proceed very easily. It began with the highly geometric white plaster sculpture Homme (Apollon), molded by Alberto Giacometti in 1929. The dainty structure, only 16 ⅛ inches high, belongs to the early phase of the sculptor’s career. A touch of cartoonlike humor, highly popular these days, and instant legibility helped send the piece flying to $3.6 million, nearly triple its high estimate.

A gouache by Joan Miró followed. Done in the manner of six-year-olds enjoying themselves with brush and paint pot, it bore the stamp of what I term fun Surrealism laced with Dada absurdity and shot up to a suitably comical $1.2 million.

The third lot, a nearly abstract Cubist painting done by Georges Braque around 1913, could easily have run into trouble. The small oval format is out of favor, and the color scheme in browns, grays and off-whites enhances the severity of its composition. The estimate, $3 million to $4 million, seemed optimistic. Yet Verre et pipe Jour ascended to $3.8 million.

The auction seemed on course as all but one of the first 10 lots sold, the exception being Fernand Léger’s harshly oversimplified Jeune homme au chandail, which was so unappealing that its failure appeared inevitable and thus of no consequence. The atmosphere gradually changed, however. Enormous prices were paid here and there, and six world records were set, while mediocrities fell unwanted. It was one of the most curious sessions I remember attending, with intense interest, triggered by true rarities, alternating with moody boredom as works of limited merit came up and nevertheless sold, sometimes quite well, for which credit surely goes to the spadework done by the Christie’s team.