This May, the same week that it held its Imp/mod sales, Sotheby’s released its first-quarter 2009 financial report. The results were bleak: a 58 percent plunge in auction revenue compared with the first quarter of 2008, and a net loss of $34.5 million. The statement also revealed that "dealer revenues," including those from sales of Robert Noortman’s Old Masters inventory, are down $12 million, and that the house continues to pay dearly for real estate. Complete disaster was avoided only by recent premium hikes and cost reductions like layoffs.

Yet perhaps the true bottom line of this report is that it stings to be the world’s largest publicly traded, and thus publicly scrutinized, auction house. We all know that Christie’s and Sotheby’s have, since their 18th-century origins, become near mirror images of each other, competing for the same great estates and auction talent. They both have offices in more than 75 cities and tend to match each other’s strategic moves like basketball players locked in fierce one-on-one defense. If one firm adds sales in a new market like Hong Kong or in a new field like 20th-century design, you can bet that the other is not far behind.

But the fact that Sotheby’s is publicly traded and Christie’s is not has, at key moments in the houses’ competitive history, radically upset the even playing field. For whenever times are tough, Sotheby’s is subject to infinitely greater scrutiny than Christie’s, because infinitely more data is available in those Securities and Exchange Commission filings.

While Sotheby’s has its operating losses and real estate missteps reported in detail, Christie’s almost always gets off with a line that comparable information is not available because "the firm is privately held." When Bloomberg’s Philip Boroff was investigating the salary of Sotheby’s CEO William Ruprecht this March, Christie’s executives were enjoying their unexamined income. While Sotheby’s debt was downgraded to junk-bond status by Standard & Poor’s this May, its archrival’s financial health might as well have been a riddle wrapped in a mystery inside a Magritte painting.

Public perception of Sotheby’s is thus bound to be substantially darker than that of Christie’s. And what is the auction business based on if not perceptions?

The disparity wasn’t always so dramatic. Christie’s was traded on the London Stock Exchange from 1973 until 1998, when the French billionaire François Pinault took it private. And, after initially going public in 1977, Sotheby’s was reprivatized in 1983, when the Michigan billionaire A. Alfred Taubman and friends bought it.

Five years later, at the height of the 1980s IPO mania, Taubman took the company public again in what at the time seemed like a no-brainer and would later look like one big PR mistake. For during the price-fixing scandal of the late 1990s, which ultimately forced both firms to pay buyers and sellers $512 million to settle a civil suit, Sotheby’s got the short end of the stick. Only Sotheby’s executives ended up in prison or under house arrest. And only Sotheby’s had to settle a $70 million class-action suit with stockholders irate that their shares had lost so much value. Yes, Taubman’s decision to take the company public is the kind a businessman could regret from a prison cell.

Don’t get me wrong. As a journalist working to shed some light on the art world’s backroom dealings, I’m all in favor of financial transparency and strict SEC reporting rules. But I can’t help sympathizing with Sotheby’s plight back then. Or now, as financial analysts and shareholders (save the investor Steve Cohen) are again turning against the company.

Most of all, I feel that we’re getting an unbalanced picture, in which Sotheby’s appears weaker than it is because Christie’s seems stronger. Perhaps that’s why media coverage of the Imp/mod sales at Christie’s was so positive, with outlets like the Wall Street Journal calling the house’s results "heartening" while terming those at Sotheby’s "disappointing." Yes, Christie’s outperformed its rival in gross revenue, but both had 80 percent sell-through rates. The biggest difference between the two that week was not in their auctions but in all the negative news about the Sotheby’s financial results. And so it goes: Sotheby’s becomes the scapegoat for the failing art market, because it’s the only target in plain sight.

"Target Practice" originally appeared in the July/August 2009 issue of Art+Auction. For a complete list of articles from this issue available on ARTINFO, see Art+Auction's July/August 2009 Table of Contents.