Sale-rooms
Seduction techniques
Peter Watson
of least of the surprises in Manhattan last week was the stunning, six-foot-tall woman close to me at dinner one night who turned out to be the head of Sotheby's `presentation department'. This, she said, was 40 — yes, 40 — strong, every one of them a statuesque Amazon like herself with as much rouge as the average Renoir. Their job is to help make the 'Sotheby's experience' more seductive.
One cannot imagine Christie's doing this. The more Sotheby's uses the techni- ques of Madison Avenue to persuade the world that the sale-room is basically a branch of Broadway, or Hollywood, the more Christie's keeps its upper lip stiffer and stiffer. The 'Christie's experience' of George Goldener, of the Getty Museum in California, was about as seductive as the armed robbery on 71st Street which I was also close to last week.
A few days before the sale Mr Goldener, who had shown interest, on Getty's behalf, in the $20–$30 million Manet, 'La Rue Mosnier aux Drapeaux', rang Christie's to ask for four tickets for the auction. The woman in the ticket department told him they had all gone. Amazed at this treat- ment, he insisted on being put through to the office of Christopher Burge, the com- pany's president in America. There, Burge's assistant repeated that the tickets had indeed all been issued. Still Goldener wanted to talk to Burge, but when he succeeded it was to be told that the firm's system was 'first come, first served'. Mr Goldener eventually got the tickets (and, as it happens, the Manet, for $26.4 mil- lion), but this approach of Christie's seems like taking the British notion of fair play to uncommercial extremes.
The most marked difference between Christie's and Sotheby's at the moment, and one that reflects what appears to be a growing contrast in styles, is that between their two chief auctioneers, John Marion at Sotheby's and Burge himself. Whereas the latter is cool, reserved, slightly stiff, Ma- rion is the opposite: coaxing, joking . . . one is tempted to add 'seductive' except
that Marion, a John Wayne look-alike, would probably hit one with his gavel.
Whether this difference in style accounts for the fact that, at the mega-sales here last week, Christie's had 29 lots bought in, Compared with Sotheby's three, and pro- duced a lower total for more pictures sold, is impossible to say. This was just one episode and the many dealers who were bidding at the sales are supposed to be professionals and unaffected by such mat- ters.
A less obvious but possibly more impor- tant difference between the two houses lies in the way they structure their auctions. Intrigued by the variation in 'buying in' rates last week, and wondering what else may have accounted for it, I made a statistical analysis of both major sales, plotting the estimate of each picture on a graph. This exercise revealed two impor- tant variations in style.
In the first place, Christie's graph was much more jagged than Sotheby's, zig- zagging up and down like the wires in a Calder sculpture. In other words, Christ- ie's tend to arrange things so that a relatively expensive picture is followed by a relatively cheaper one, which is followed by a more expensive picture, and then a cheaper one. . . . Sotheby's, on the other hand, are more likely to group together pictures of a similar value. This is not invariably so, but when you look at the two graphs the tendency is plain.
One effect of this may be to help people read' an auction better at Sotheby's. With the Christie's approach, seesawing about much more, buyers — even professionals — may be more confused during the sale, less able to read the situation. This could make them more conservative.
The second difference relates to the peak' of the sale. Each house arranges a segment in their sale of some half a dozen lots which are more expensive than most and lead up to the 'star' — Manet's 'La Rue Mosnier', for example, or Picasso's 'Au Lapin Agile', in the recent sales. But whereas Christie's put their 'peak' very early on, after only four lots, Sotheby's held off until about a third of the way through, after 23 lots.
Now, this may not make the slightest difference. And yet, after four lots people are still arriving at a sale, the three prior objects are hardly a guide to what the current buying mood is — and the remain- der of the sale may feel flat in comparison. The Sotheby's approach, in contrast, allows for a sense of anticipation to grow. I think Louis H. Mayer used to say: 'Keep 'em smiling, keep 'em crying, but keep 'em waiting.'
Christie's had a record sale last week, just as Sotheby's did: the bubble shows no sign of bursting. But the actual world title is currently held by Sotheby's. Without those 29 'failed pictures', the honour would have gone to Christie's. In America at least they should consider being more seductive.
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