The Auction House Scandal

It had long been taken for granted that the art-auction business, like the art business generally, was immune to criminal investigation. Why? Because, you boring philistine, it was about noble and holy art. To stand on the podium and receive bids for a Rubens Crucifixion or a still life by Van Gogh, who died for our sins, was not like buying a vanload of AWOL television sets or a few vials of crack. But, of course, it is just another business. The auction market shifts more than $4 billion a year, and its two powerhouses, Sotheby's and Christie's, control 95% of that. For decades, rising to a climax just before the great art-market crash of 1989, Brits with pinstripe suits and faces like silver teapots have been flogging the benefits of art ownership to the rich on both shores of the Atlantic: art as investment, art as social elevation, art as confirmation of status, art as relic-hunting--the whole rigmarole that has actually done more to debase the real messages and values of art than anything else in our culture.

Sotheby's, with Christie's not far behind, has led the field in this enterprise of simoniac strip-mining. No excess, no necrophiliac vulgarity, was too great--the $54 million Van Gogh Irises that didn't really sell, the degraded spectacle of Americans hyped into bidding tens of thousands of dollars for gewgaws that once reposed in Jackie O.'s lavatory, the nitwits scrambling for sole and unimpeded possession of Marilyn Monroe's faded frillies. So for many, the idea that the mighty auction duumvirate should find itself humbled for any reason was almost too delicious to contemplate.