A beautiful November in Christie's New York, an international auction house, which is confirmed as a very high peak of the current art's secondary market. This is the market where there is no close contact between the artist, often introverted and shy, the gallerist or, in the grand sense, the dealer, and the collector, who is often also a bit of a dealer and a propagandist for their ability to see, choose, and add value; with all the affection that can be born, “positively” interfering with the relationship between quality and price. In calling it secondary, I do not wish to emphasise a superiority or inferiority, but simply a diversity, which is not insignificant, as it codifies, not one
a nascent state, a promise, something with a whiff of the future about it, but an achieved conquest. At auction, especially if it's openly international, the variable but weighty factor of investment comes into play, where economics (not that it didn't matter before) becomes the absolute factor, without infatuation and sentimentality; it becomes finance.
Here, the millions are visible and there are many, concentrated on established names, the usual suspects, those who represent immediate liquidity values. So much so that Van Gogh places three of his works here for almost $150 million, with multi-million dollar figures also for Monet, Twombly, Basquiat, Richter, and Picasso, who can never be missing. The Young Man at the Window by Gustave Caillebotte makes headlines, exceeding $50 million, a testament to a vibrant 19th century and the fact that the game is afoot and one simply needs to know how to play. It's not my preferred pursuit, but the auction is a stage where different factors clash and battle, typical of capitalist economics and the society of spectacle, phenomena of visibility and mastery effects, which a discretionary purchase can generate in the media that demand lavishness in abundance, the more wealth accumulates towards works of art. That's how it is, but it's a hope for everyone, because the wheel turns... and it's the great gamble of life, in the great debate between what happens now and what might happen... later. Today, Van Gogh.!!!
KLESSIDRA | EDITED BY FRANCESCO GALLO MAZZEO
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