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Snipe | |||||||
Dear Uncle Jackdaw, Selling art is all about presentation. This means more than a few squirts of Windolene on the glass, but a whole tradition refined by haughty art dealers and pretentious auctioneers. In the current ‘must buy nothing’ climate I am often sent on research missions, scouting in top galleries and noting down who was buying what. While my intern is ahead of me (on time) and my boss half an hour behind (on phone) I take work-inspired detours to see how art is presented outside of my little gallery. I bumped into Damien’s shop Other Criteria the other day. I don’t recommend you go looking for it. Like the Leaky Cauldron in Harry Potter, it is almost impossible to spot. Also there’s the other let down: the contents. Squeezed into a claustrophobic, cave-like shop is the retail outlet for Hirst’s merchandising website, Other Criteria, a commercial celebration of The Cult of Damien. Bargains include a limited edition charm bracelet with 23 pills attached – a snip at £25,000. Very exciting are his new butterfly prints, new because the glitter in this edition is scarlet instead of crimson. These masterpieces are wedged alongside spatially illogical padding, such as arms by Sarah Lucas and jewellery by a nobody. The media meister has failed. His eclectic muddle had the colours of a dressing-up shop, the imagination of someone who goes to Oxford Street on a Saturday afternoon, and prices ranging from 10,000 Kit Kats-worth upwards. The shop was deserted. That ambience could not be further removed from the solemn activity of Picasso: Challenging the Past at the National Gallery. In the middle of a working day, the Sainsbury Wing was busy with people who paid more than the average British hourly wage to enter the high-minded setting and read patronising captions. It was more than the works, several of which you can see for free in our national collections, or the lighting, hanging and framing, which drew in the people. This blockbuster exhibition was ensured success through how it was presented: advertising,PR and the National Gallery’s reputation. In my view auction house glamour surpasses all other ways of exhibiting art. The excess of the contemporary and impressionist black tie sales is stupendous. The preview parties are spectacular for their unspoken courtship of potential buyers. Or they were. This year’s Modern British preview parties were markedly parsimonious, to say the least. Sotheby’s did not exist and, heaven forbid!, Christie’s substituted Champagne for watery Pimms. On entering the saleroom one is hit by a barrage of opinions about how art should be looked at. Attempting to cater for all tastes at the Modern British sales in May, Christie’s rooms were new with chic, daring, dark grey walls but an aged auctioneer. In contrast Sotheby’s had a traditional, trust-inspiring saleroom with suave, youthful Oliver Barker as auctioneer. He judged me from his pulpit with strigiformic eyes, manicured eyebrows and crab-like arms allowing him to sweep physically over the laity in our seats below, backwards and forwards between the Sloaney girls on phones and the aristocrats twitching their paddles.To be accurate, however, more recently Barker seems to be clinging on to the stern of his sinking ship rather than orchestrating the bidding. The sales themselves are media fests with theatrical auctioneers picking numbers ìoff the chandelierî and making record prices through eye contact and inciting rivalry. Auctions have moved on a lot since the corrupt days when slaves were sold in the same sales as art (in America). Today there is far more routine procedure than spontaneity in the sales performance. The catalogue is an articulate sales pitch written by auction staff presented as ìexpertsî. Their agenda is, obviously, to sell at high prices. The sale is predictable too. It begins with a wave of popular lots which then dwindle to obscure pieces before the sale gains a second wind as prices peak at lot 32 or 33, far enough into the sale that rich collectors bid for lots they had not intended to while they wait. A more overt construct is the hierarchy of auction house personnel. In height order are the auctioneer on his pedestal and then to his right the thick-necked public school boy allowed to work the exchange rate computer and to his right, sharing the podium, the shorter girl who is not. Below this ruling triumvirate wander some androgynous types in branded aprons, occasionally faffing with lot numbers before disappearing again for the length of time it takes to smoke one cigarette. After the saleroom melodrama I slope off, annotated catalogue under my arm, back to my empty gallery where sales are a hushed discussion not a synaesthetic bombardment. A few dealers from out of town usually drop by to make cutting statements about my favourite artists and claim the sale went well, when sometimes it did not. They wrinkle their noses at the smell of dog and compliment the Sandra Blows on the wall, but don’t bother to descend to the new show downstairs, before speeding away again. Pass on the good news to Auntie Jackdaw: I still haven’t been sacked. Love, Snipe | |||||||
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Snipe All of this site is | |||||||
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