Claude Monet- $85 million at Christie’s

To no one’s surprise, the big news in the art world is the successful result of the round of sales from the estate of David and Peggy Rockefeller. With fine quality artwork and fairly good quality furniture and decorative arts, most of it acquired in the late 1940’s and early 1950’s as the couple furnished their homes in New York City and nearby country, it was not only equipped with excellent provenance, but for purposes of the trade, fresh to the market.

Not, mind you, that the trade was in evidence other than in body at the salesroom- very nearly everything was knocked down to private buyers who found a Rockefeller provenance enough reason to pay shall we say a handsome price for very nearly every lot in this compendious sale. With all that, the trade press has been replete with arguments about the favor period material is now finding, witness the success of same at this recent series.

From their lips to God’s ears. I am reminded of so many sales over the years, with burgeoning collections that made huge prices at auction, only to have very many of those pieces then finding their way sooner rather than later back into the salesrooms, and commanding on resale a bare fraction of what had been paid sometimes as little as 6 months before. Buying frenzy, enhanced by the successful marketing efforts of the long purses of the major salesrooms, renders after a very short time very many cases of buyer’s remorse.

Still, anything that raises the profile of the fine and decorative arts- particularly those periods though well-established in the canon but overlooked by the shelter publications in favor of looks like and may have come from the local Target store- is of course a good thing.

Our own ‘Contemporary Classics’ proudly made in the US

It is so much of what we’ve heard over the last couple of years, that manufacturing jobs long lost to the Far East would return to this country. I don’t think flipping burgers at McDonald’s down the road from me is what would be counted as a manufacturing job. It would be interesting, within the nearby McDonald’s, to see what of their interior fittings, even their kitchen equipment, is manufactured in the US.  Not much if anything, I’d wager. Where from and the why? You already know, gentle reader- overwhelmingly, the where from is China, and the why is an acquisition cost fractionally what it is to buy from a US manufacturer. For myself, I would happily pay more for a burger made not just with domestic ingredients, but also prepared using domestically made cookers and afterward to sit on domestically manufactured stools and lean on domestically made counters.  In this, I suspect, I am in the distinct minority.

I mention this by way of introducing something closer to what it is we do, selling period material, and how much has been made over the last couple of years about how changing tastes have been detrimental to the trade. I saw an ad this morning on TV for the company Home Goods, which along with a number of other retailers sells job lot and end of season decorating material for home use- throw cushions, bath towels, decorative flower pots and mirrors- you know it, and you name it, they’ve got it. What you would have trouble naming, though, are the items in stock that are made in the US. Overwhelmingly, the items on offer at any of these retailers were made in low wage countries. Now mind you, nothing is very expensive, but everything is, as an old colleague of mine in the trade used to say when trying to avoid using an opprobrious term to describe third rate material, cheap and cheerful.

Not expensive, and cheap enough to be thrown away, but not very good quality, either. Hopefully biodegradable, too, as so much of it is destined in the not too distant future for the landfill. That sounds sour, and I apologize to my gentle readers, but I ask you- can you say it isn’t so? And while pundits decry the change in taste that seems to now grace the pages of the shelter publications, the internet and HGTV, bear in mind that we’ve a huge number of Chinese manufacturers that are laughing all the way to the bank. The cheap schlock that younger buyers seem so eager to acquire is likewise extremely cheap for low wage countries to produce.

Are you looking for quality and durability? Well, you won’t find it. A few months ago, we sought to replace some Fieldcrest toweling, worn out after some thirty years of use. We were able to find a local outlet that sells Fieldcrest bath linens, but although 100% cotton was clearly of an inferior manufacture. While the towels we were replacing were produced with domestic cotton and spun in a mill in North Carolina, the same brand toweling available now was made in India. A year on, and it’s worn out. Let me see- we got thirty years worth of wear out of the first set of towels that were domestically made and a year’s worth of wear out of the towels made in India. Were the domestically made towels thirty times more expensive than those made in India? Not hardly. Cheaper to acquire, yes- cheaper to own? Not hardly.

Can China, can India produce goods that are of excellent and enduring quality? Of course they can, and have a tradition of doing so that stretches back millennia. Will they do so? And that begs the question- why should they, when we want to price shop and buy looks-like- but- isn’t. For me, of course, when I see what’s on offer at Home Goods, or what graces the pages of most shelters and is broadcast on very many HGTV programs, I know that the typical viewer has never had to replace 30 year old Fieldcrest towels. In more direct terms, our own buyers these days are not only price driven, but don’t actually know domestic quality, because they’ve never seen it.

Pablo Picasso ‘Personnage’, 1965- nearly laundered

Bloomberg is reporting today on a money laundering scam originating in London involving Matthew Green, scion of one of the most vaunted names in the art trade. Simply, it involved Green providing a painting to be purchased from an anonymous seller using dirty money- in this case a late work by Picasso- which Green would then resell in the retail art market, netting himself, presumably, a nice commission, and the remaining proceeds, clean now, remit to shady characters behind the scene.

In the trade, this kind of scam is an old, old story- art or antiques purchased abroad for cash, then brought duty free to this country and sold legitimately. Easy peasy, and very, very difficult to stop. For ourselves, we have witnessed what we concluded was an influx of dirty money with dealers whose inordinate expansion and acquisition of stock seemed out of reasonable proportion to their sales. At a certain level, the trade involves a relatively small number of players, and it is hard for a dealer to keep his activity entirely to himself. Most of us deal with the same small pool of clients, and while clients do prefer to trade with only a few dealers, there is enough shall we say crossover that one invariably finds out about significant private purchases.

And of course, too, there is and has been for centuries a thriving gray market in art and antiques from which underworld types and dealers who are of a mind might, shall we say, ‘source’ items for cash for resale in the open market. With yet untold thousands of works looted by the Nazis still floating around unaccounted for, there are still plenty of pieces to acquire. The underworld appreciates the inherent value, and indeed the cachet of utilizing fine art as both a vector for money laundering and as a crypto currency. Donna Tartt’s novel of a few years ago, The Goldfinch, centered around a Dutch old master painting that was used as surety by mob types. And I’ve heard it suggested that the paintings stolen from the Gardner Museum are thought to be now in use in the same manner.

While I wouldn’t say the trade is any less honest than any other business, it is rather more secretive and this might make it easier for its infiltration by those who seek to launder cash. Even in the most straightforward sales, buyers and sellers wish to remain private. While we do hear about some of the larger sales at auction- witness the purchase of the crypto da Vinci- in the main, the well-heeled like to keep their wealth away from prying eyes.

Matthew Green has now sadly joined nefarious company with Knoedler, Berry Hill Galleries, Salander-O’Reilly, and Mallett. One might presume that it is the nature of the trade, but something to note- these are dealers whose business in London and New York is very, very expensive to pay for. Another feature, dealers sometimes fall into the trap of wanting to maintain a lifestyle akin to that of their clients, and once geared up, when the money stops flowing, find themselves backed into doing things they might not otherwise. Mind you, I’ve cited some high profile bad apples, but the trade internationally constitutes a small-ish barrel. But before my gentle readers believe that the auction houses are the place to trade, I would point out that they are not precisely bastions of probity, either. The huge commission price fixing scandal involving Christie’s and Sotheby’s is not yet ancient history.

I’ve just finished reading the study authored by the redoubtable Sir David Cannadine entitled ‘Why collect?’ commissioned by Art Fund and the Wolfson Foundation. With the focus primarily on art museums, the impetus was to consider why it is, given the large amounts of money given through, for example, the Heritage Lottery Fund, museums are nevertheless pretty generally floundering.

In a brief article in the recent online edition of Apollo, Robert Hewison distills Cannadine’s study into the following abstract- museums have abandoned their traditional core mission of acquisition and curatorial scholarship in favor of education, outreach, and inclusivity. Modern notions of political correctness, for both authors, are not much of a consideration, as they lay the blame for museum malaise at the feet of the pervasive influence of postmodernists like the late Michel Foucault, for whom museums in their traditional guise functioned as no more than institutional excrescences whose primary objective was to enhance the political, social, and economic hegemony of northern Europe.

While I suppose reinvention, even if that reinvention results in a throwback to an earlier day, might arguably work to instill some vigour, what both authors mention obliquely is, to my mind, nearer the mark. Specifically, for some (read ‘very many’) museums, their day is done.

Certainly in this country in the late 19^th and most notably the first half of the 20^th centuries, a source of local pride was the building of a grand edifice to house art treasures- mostly European- aping as it did both in its collections and its building European imperial glory of past centuries. Local grandees in places like Des Moines, St Louis, Chicago, Cincinnati, and Detroit considered an art museum on a grand scale to be an essential feature of urbanity, marking not just the prosperity which made the building and the stuffing of it with art treasures, but serving as an emblem of sophistication and optimism for a future that would be grander than the past.

Well- it hasn’t been, the future I mean, not entirely, anyhow. Everyone knows about the so-called ‘grand bargain’ that saved the Detroit Institute of Arts from selling off its collections to pay the city’s debts and even more prominently the venerable Metropolitan Museum of Art is having a severe financial struggle. While museum attendance numbers dwindle overall, and costs of basic maintenance, to say nothing of the not just politically correct but oftentimes mandated education and outreach programs, these efforts at modernity have generally not paid off. Not so long ago, a local art museum person told me how a recent exhibition of the decorative arts of Southeast Asia had been successfully supported by the local Hmong community. My rejoinder was it was natural for the Hmong to turn out- what would have been impressive was to see it supported by all the other ethnicities comprising the local community.

By in large, though, I am at one with Foucault- the survey art museum continues to be very largely the province of the social and political elite of northern European heritage, with education and outreaches of inclusivity an add-on to comply with current notions of political correctness, to say nothing of government, grant, and accreditation requirements. Would though a return to an earlier day, with a renewed primary focus on acquisitions and curatorship ameliorate any run off in attendance?

In some instances, perhaps. In his article, Hewison begins by citing the full day closure of the National Portrait Gallery in preparation for the use of its facility for a fashion show. While the fashion show was a money-spinning venue hire, Hewison said the closure was at the expense of turning away 5,000 visitors. No question, the NPG is a viable institution, whose mission to stay open free of charge must needs then field fundraising activities to continue to make it accessible. Bear in mind, the fashion show was held on site, bringing not only those attendees but presumably a few deep pocketed grandees who might not otherwise have darkened the threshold. Whether or not the NPG, to continue, would benefit from additional acquisitions is an open question. For myself, I never tire of making my way to the top floor to see the Tudor portraits, even if only to see for the umpteenth time the full length Holbein cartoon of Henry VIII. New acquisitions, though? As the name and function imply, the museum continuously adds images of the great and the good, and even exhibits its holdings at ‘out station’ branches- the National Trust properties Montacute in the West Country, and Beningbrough Hall in North Yorkshire. To my mind, this is a well-functioning institution, where acquisitions though their effects cannot be measured, must certainly be considered as part of its viability.

I contrast this with the fate of our local art museum, just finished with its annual fundraising bash held not at the museum but offsite. Presumably, museum management and governance must have assumed no one locally would be particularly interested in attending anything at the museum, but the party was what intrigued donors. While again the function is to raise money to keep the museum open and affordable, its typical attendance is so light it can only justify unlocking the front door 4 days out of the week. Where the NPG might have 5,000 attendees in a day, the local institution wouldn’t have that many in two months.  The question then in this case is clearly begged- for whom is the museum operating? And the larger question certainly being asked in the trustees’ meetings- why stay open at all?

So, then, any public museum, large or small, big city, formerly big city, and small city in this day and age must constantly be faced with similar questions and I don’t mean the ‘Why collect?’ posed by Cannadine and Hewison.  I would initially add a subsidiary question ‘For whom are you collecting?’ If this question cannot be answered by way of robust visitor numbers, then the more basic question must always be on the mind of those in the museum world- ‘why stay open at all?’

Fendi, Bond Street- Mallett displaced

So goes the headline in a recent issue of the Antiques Trade Gazette, touting an upcoming trade conference in London featuring, so the article goes, experts on the marketing of luxury goods from whom, presumably, the ailing antiques trade might take a lesson.

Frankly, I don’t know that the trade, composed entirely of smallish, independent businesses have much to learn from what is now the international trade in luxury goods, overarched by LVMH, the behemoth whose marques include Chanel, Fendi, and innumerable others besides the Louis Vuitton and Moet Hennesy brands from which initials the company derives its name. How on earth the trade can compete in promotion with the capital brought to bear by a company such as this, I do not know. Witness my earlier blog posts, Bond Street has become a thoroughfare almost entirely devoted to the retail outlets for the various LMVH brands, with the venerable storefront occupied for so many decades by Mallett for some years now taken over by Fendi.

Moreover, I would question the underlying premise, that the trade might wish to ape luxury goods marketing as this assumes competition for the money spent on what it is the trade has to offer comes entirely from the same pool of buyers. I have for a long time considered that my competition comes from all online retailers who sell furniture and decorative objects, whether period or not. The so-called big box stores and online platforms selling looks-like- but-isn’t non-period and vintage items siphon very much of what formerly went to dealers. The accredited trade also has had much of its business spirited away by the auction houses who now see themselves very much as retail vendors in the business of antiques and fine art. The major houses, in particular, are keenly aware of the benefit of online trading, with Christie’s and Sotheby’s offering commission free buying in their online auctions.

So what to do? It might be thought that dealer organizations might band their members together for purposes of cooperatively promoting the trade. Good luck in doing that- cumulatively, I doubt that every member of the accredited trade could even with the most generous whip around accumulate an annual budget for promotion that would match what Chanel spends in a week. And promotion in what manner and to what effect? Print media? Media ads are hugely cheaper than they were a few years ago, but one needs only to see that very many of the connoiseurial and shelter publications in which ads might be placed have a size of book that is now hugely less, reflecting an ever-growing disinterest in print.

No answers or suggestions in this post, I’m afraid to say, with Chappell & McCullar not a stranger amongst the dealers casting about trying to stay in front of new and prospective clients. While certainly time tested methods can hardly be relied upon to be effective, the imitation of other luxury goods merchants offers no real way forward either. Sadly, the trade in art and antiques counts these days as an ornamental small fish under threat from much bigger fish in a large, international retail pond.