Seven Days in the Art World Read Online Free Page B

the sale makes them get their act together. They like the open nature of the auction, especially if there is a visible underbidder willing to pay a similar price. They also like the certainty that they’ve paid a market price on a given day in a given location.”
    One reason to buy at auction is to avoid the time-consuming politicking expected by primary dealers, who, in the interest of building their artists’ careers, try to sell only to collectors who have the right reputation. The lines to buy work, particularly by painters with limited annual output, can be very long—so long, in fact, that many may never be deemed elite or erudite enough to be “offered a work.” Some auction house people complain of the “complete lack of material on the market” and the “undemocratic” way in which primary dealers go about their business. “Quite frankly,” declares a Sotheby’s expert, “I think the waiting lists are obscene. An auction gets rid of these hierarchical lists, because you can jump straight to the head of the queue just by putting your hand up last.”
    At 6:50 P.M . I climb the stairs to the salesroom and join the members of the press, who are herded into a cramped standing-room area cordoned off by a red rope. The spatial arrangement suggests that the press should know its place. At a Sotheby’s Old Masters sale, we were given humiliatingly huge white stickers that said PRESS . In the hierarchy of this world of money and power, the reporters are visibly at the bottom. As one collector said of a particular journalist, “He obviously doesn’t get paid very much. He doesn’t really have access to important people, so he’s reliant on scraps to put his articles together. It’s not much fun hanging around at the big table when you’re not wanted there.”
    One journalist, who writes for the New York Times , is an exception to the rule. Carol Vogel has an assigned seat in front of the red cordon that allows her to get up and strut up and down in front of the press pack in her high-heeled boots and gray bob. She is the haughty embodiment of the power of her newspaper. I see Ms. Vogel talking to some of the top dealers and collectors. She obtains access because they want to influence her reports, even if their tips and insights amount to little more than generous helpings of spin.
    In the center of this jostling press pen is Josh Baer. He is not actually a journalist, but for over ten years he’s been sending out an electronic newsletter called The Baer Faxt that reports on, among other things, who is buying and underbidding at the auctions. Baer looks a bit like Richard Gere; he’s a cool New Yorker with thick silver hair and black-rimmed glasses. His mother is a minimalist painter of some repute and he ran a gallery for ten years, so he knows the milieu well. “The newsletter contributes to the illusion of transparency,” he admits. “People are overinformed and undereducated. They have this veneer of knowledge. They look at a painting and they see its price. They think the only value is an auction value.” Although the art world in general and the art market in particular are opaque, when you are part of the confidential inner circle, there are fewer secrets. As Baer explains, “People like to talk about themselves and to show that they know what they know. I’m fighting that urge right now—I have to fight the impulse to try to impress you that I am mportant.”
    Most of the reporters here are interested in a narrow band of information. They take note of the prices and try to see who is bidding and buying. None of them are critics. They don’t write about art, but trade in the currency of knowing who does what. One journalist is “paddle spotting,” or writing down the numbers of people’s paddles as they walk in so that later, when people are bidding, he can tell who bought the work when the auctioneer confirms the number aloud. Others are trying to clock who is sitting where. The