Beyond Celebrity

Man Ray Constantin Brancusi Henri Matisse Giorgio de Chirico Paul Klee Marcel Duchamp James Ensor Thomas Gainsborough

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The three-day auction in which the various collections amassed by the late French couturier Yves Saint Laurent and his close friend and business partner Pierre Bergé were dispersed at Christie’s Paris from February 23 to February 25 is unique in market annals, no matter what standards are applied to assess it.

The total sold, €373.9 million ($483.8 million), is unprecedented anywhere, and so is the exceptionally low failure rate in a sale of that size, a mere 5 percent. The works on offer ranged from 20th-century paintings to German silver-gilt of the Renaissance and the Baroque age to Art Deco — and more. Briefly put, the stunning outcome of the Saint Laurent-Bergé event has proved beyond possible doubt that the art market on one hand and the general economy on the other do follow spectacularly divergent paths, as I have been pointing out since October.

It must be remembered that the auction took place at a time when worldwide gloom was already deep on the economic front. Bergé said at the press conference held at the end of the February 25 session that he had rejected suggestions that the sale be postponed.

So taken aback were most media commentators by the stupendous success of the auction in such an untoward economic environment that some felt obliged to invoke factors unrelated to art. It was the celebrity effect, one reader claimed in a letter to an international daily. But such an explanation does not hold water when one considers the experienced collectors and seasoned dealers who furiously bid against each other on German silver-gilt, painted enamel wares from 16th-century Limoges and other rarefied antiques. Buyers such as these would not have been swayed by the fame of Saint Laurent or Bergé.

The first factor behind the phenomenal success of the auction was psychological, but of a very different order. The sheer number of works, many of good to very good quality, created the critical mass that triggered a chain reaction such as had never been witnessed in the auction arena, and the astonishing tempo was kept up from beginning to end.

The tone was set in the first few moments on February 23 as the session devoted to 19th- and 20th-century avant-garde art took off. Of the 61 lots that came up, 59 were sold for a total of €206 million ($267 million), making it the biggest single-owner sale ever in the field. This outweighs even the celebrated Victor and Sally Ganz sale held at Christie’s New York in 1997.

Remarkably, out of the seven record prices paid that day, six went to works that would not have seemed to warrant particular enthusiasm.

This began with a group portrait by James Ensor, Pierrot in Despair, painted in 1892. The eight circus characters with part-comical part-tragic expressions that fill a composition bordering on the genre scene lack the dramatic stridency for which the Belgian Symbolist is sought after. Nevertheless, Pierrot in Despair was saluted with loudly joyous applause from the room as it ended its upward course at an extravagant €5 million ($6.5 million).

This, though, was nothing compared with the performance of a wooden sculpture carved by Brancusi between 1914 and 1917. Despite a title that suggests a figural likeness, Madame L.R. (Portrait de Madame L.R.) looks like a variation on the theme of some African totem made up from abstract geometrical volumes. It bears no connection to the sleek stone or brass sculptures leaning toward abstraction that have made the Romanian-born artist famous. Realizing a breathtaking €29.2 million ($37.8 million), the portrait of Mrs. L.R. became the most expensive Brancusi ever auctioned.

Moments later, it was the turn of Piet Mondrian’s Composition in Blue, Red, Yellow and Black of 1922 to set a world auction record at €21.56 million ($27.9 million). Here there was good reason. Superbly preserved, unlike many works by the artist, the Composition shows up Mondrian’s bold sense of space and color balance at its finest.

The next three auction records were more unexpected. Les coucous, tapis bleu et rose, painted by Matisse in 1911, at a time when the French master was experimenting in several directions, no longer has the vibrant colors of the Fauve phase that had ended four years earlier. However, it offers a rare case of Surrealist influence over the painter with its ambivalence in image and word. The word coucous in the title can be understood to refer to birds or to flowers, and the composition shows both — bird silhouettes can be made out on the rug. As with the Brancusi, the appeal of such a work owes more to art history than to the art itself. The world record price that the Matisse fetched on February 23, €35.9 million ($46.5 million) is as astounding as the Brancusi record.