by Don Thompson
Dealer William Acquavella bid $127 million on the phone, and the bidding ended. With buyer’s premium, the total was $142.4 million. Acquavella bid on behalf of Elaine Wynn, former wife of Las Vegas casino owner Steve Wynn and a co-founder of the Wynn Resorts. Ms. Wynn already owned another major Bacon work. The third underbidder, for whom Gagosian was bidding, was rumoured to be her ex-husband.
To put the Bacon purchase price in perspective, it is $4 million more than the 2013 budget for the American National Endowment for the Arts. The Bacon was, at the time of the auction, the only artwork ever to have been purchased for over $50 million and later resold at auction for a profit.
London dealer Pilar Ordovas was one of eight bidders for the Bacon; she got in one bid, at $96 million. Her reaction was, “I was bidding on the behalf of a collector, and I almost didn’t get a chance to put my hand up … In my 14 years with Christie’s, I’ve never experienced anything like this.”13
In an interesting footnote to the auction result, Christie’s shipped the Bacon triptych not to Los Angeles, where Elaine Wynn is resident, but to the Portland Museum of Art. It was on display for fifteen weeks. Because the painting was shipped out of state, Wynn was not liable for New York sales tax. She could also avoid about $11 million in California use taxes because Three Studies was displayed and thus “used” in Oregon before being shipped to her home in Los Angeles. Whether she claimed the tax break is unknown.
Many American states levy the so-called use tax to catch residents who would otherwise avoid sales taxes by shopping in adjacent states. The use tax rate is the same as that of the sales tax. Buyers are supposed to calculate what they owe on their out-of-state purchases and remit the amount on an honour system. The tax was intended for items such as household furnishings rather than art, but it applies to all purchases.
If a newly acquired painting remains on display in a non-taxing state like California for a designated period—typically three to four months—the states regard the exhibition as being a “first use” of the item. The five states with no use or state sales taxes are Oregon, New Hampshire, Delaware, Montana and Alaska. The transaction is then free of tax in both the exhibiting state and the residence state.
Many in the art world thought the price achieved for Three Studies signalled a contemporary art price bubble about to burst. The same New York–based collector who consigned the Bacon to Christie’s also consigned Christopher Wool’s Apocalypse Now (1988). This had been purchased in a private sale a few weeks earlier. Christie’s gave it a low-ball estimate of $15 million to $20 million. It was hammered down at $26.5 million. The sale of Three Studies and of Apocalypse Now, the latter described in the next chapter, reinforced the idea of a bursting bubble.
CHAPTER FOUR
$26 MILLION FOR NINE WORDS
“Apocalypse Now is like an evil crossword puzzle filled in by the damned, the words breaking down with indeterminate angularity into chaos and confusion. The painting becomes a chant, a rant, a slogan, and a scream.”
—Jerry Saltz, art critic
“An elegant experiential treat, one that can teach a lot about pictorial power, the act of looking as exploration and the simple physical innovations that are basic to painting’s evolution.”
—Roberta Smith, art critic, on a 2013 Christopher Wool exhibition14
AT THE SAME NOVEMBER 2013 CHRISTIE’S AUCTION WHERE THREE STUDIES was offered, dealer Christophe Van de Weghe settled into a third-row seat and prepared to bid a record amount for lot number 8 in the catalogue. He was bidding on behalf of a client for the Christopher Wool word painting Apocalypse Now (1988).
The painting consists of thirty-three black boldface capital letters, SELL THE HOUSE SELL THE CAR SELL THE KIDS, with run-on letters in a grid seven spaces across and five columns down. It is stencilled on a 6-foot-11-inch × 5-foot-10-inch (2.1- × 1.8-metre) white-painted aluminum background. (See photo insert.)
Apocalypse Now had been purchased in a private sale a few weeks earlier. Christie’s gave it a lowball estimate of $15 million to $20 million. The midpoint of that estimate was more than double Wool’s previous auction record of $7.7 million, set at Christie’s London in February 2012. Van de Weghe was prepared to bid far more than that.
Van de Weghe did not have a formal contract with his client; he trusted that if his bid was successful, and even if he went over the discussed limit, the client would reimburse the auction invoice price plus a modest commission. Such informal arrangements are remarkably common in the art world. Van de Weghe was a long-time Christie’s client; he bid on credit with the auction house.
The work has a powerful backstory. The phrasing is from the 1979 movie that bears the same name, an adaptation of Joseph Conrad’s novel Heart of Darkness. The movie was directed by Francis Ford Coppola, with a cast that included Marlon Brando, Martin Sheen and Robert Duvall. The words are spoken by US Army Captain Richard Colby, who is on a mission to assassinate a rogue fellow officer. Colby is convinced he is also going to die. The wording comes from a six-line section of a letter from Colby to his wife. His letter says: “Sell the house, sell the car, sell the kids, find someone else, forget it. I am never coming back. Forget it.” The letter echoes the pessimism of the final days of the Vietnam War about the outcome of the conflict. Van de Weghe said of the Wool painting, “It is his masterpiece.”15
Christopher Wool (born 1955) is known for his word paintings. Most are, like Apocalypse Now, black stencilled letters on white backgrounds. The artist first created these in 1987. The idea came to him in New York, when he saw the graffiti “luv” and “sex” spray-painted in black on a white truck.
Sometimes the phrasing on a Wool word painting is enigmatic, as with THE HARDER YOU LOOK, THE HARDER YOU LOOK (2000), stacked in six lines. Sometimes letters are missing, as with the 1989 Trouble, which is presented as TRBL, the letters stacked two over two. Some of Wool’s letter paintings contain one long word. One that was auctioned at Christie’s New York in November 2005 for $1.24 million had fifteen letters on aluminum spelling RUNDOGRUNDOGRUN in four lines. The word paintings have no imagery and no brushwork. They invite the question “Is that a painting?” Wool’s work is not considered at the same exalted level of the contemporary art world as that of Jeff Koons or Gerhard Richter, but it has received critical acclaim.
A succession of distinguished collectors had owned Apocalypse Now. The provenance is also part of the backstory. The painting was first shown in an April 1988 show at New York’s 303 Gallery. Werner and Elaine Dannheisser, a collecting couple, bought all the works in the show. By their recollection they paid about $6,000 for Apocalypse Now.
Werner Dannheisser died in 1992. Four years later his wife offered to donate most of their collection to the Museum of Modern Art. MOMA accepted all but Apocalypse Now. There was one Christopher Wool word painting in the museum’s collection, and the curator thought one was enough.
In 1999 Elaine Dannheisser gave Apocalypse Now to dealer Philippe Ségalot to consign to auction. Instead he swapped the word painting to Per Skarstedt, another New York dealer, in exchange for $150,000 and Untitled, a 1990 Wool word painting bearing the word FOOL. Christie’s had estimated Apocalypse Now would sell between $60,000 and $80,000, so the swap was favourable for Dannheisser. Ségalot then offered FOOL for auction at Christie’s on May 19, 1999 with an estimate of $40,000 to $50,000. It sold for $420,000.
Later in 1999, Skarstedt sold Apocalypse Now to collector Donald Bryant Jr. for $400,000. Two years later Skarstedt again brokered its sale, this time to François Pinault, owner of Christie’s auction house and of fashion brands Gucci, Alexander McQueen and Yves Saint Laurent. The price was reported as $400,000 plus an unidentified painting. Pinault sold the work for $2 million in 2005, through Ségalot, to hedge fund owner David Ganek and his wife, novelist Danielle Ganek. Apocalypse Now is thought to be the model for the painting-with-huge-price-appreciation featured in her 2007 novel Lulu Meets God and Doubts Him.
In 2005 David Ganek joined t
he board of trustees of the Solomon R. Guggenheim, which was planning a Wool retrospective. The Ganeks became co-chairs of the Wool exhibit’s leadership committee, and Apocalypse Now was to be the featured work; the museum catalogue devoted three pages to it.
Being chosen as a major work at a retrospective inflates the value of a work, often to several times its previous value. In mid-2013, after announcement of the Guggenheim show but prior to the opening, Christie’s reportedly suggested to Ganek that he consign Apocalypse Now to the auction house’s November 2013 Post-War and Contemporary Art Evening Auction. That timing would allow Christie’s to build on the publicity that accompanied the Guggenheim show. To encourage him to consign, Christie’s proposed a staggering price guarantee, reported as $20 million and offered by a third party. Ganek said that he would consign, but he wanted to wait for the spring 2014 auction that would follow the Guggenheim show. Christie’s said the guarantee was valid only for the November auction, so it could leverage the Guggenheim publicity.
Ganek told the Guggenheim of the offer and that the painting would be absent from the museum show for four days during Christie’s auction preview. The museum apparently concluded that it should not be party to a commercial transaction. It removed the word painting from the retrospective. Ganek then resigned from Guggenheim’s board of trustees. The contemporary art world has no concept of insider trading when it comes to purchasing art. That lack of concern may not apply to selling when a museum show is involved.
There are several versions of what happened next. The most frequently reported is that the Ganeks sold to a third party, financier David Martínez Guzmán, who then consigned the work to Christie’s. Another version is that a sale to Martínez occurred prior to Christie’s offer. In any case, Apocalypse Now left the Guggenheim and was hung at Christie’s Rockefeller Center headquarters for the preview period. The Guggenheim replaced Apocalypse Now with a small study for the work, on loan from collector Peter Brant.
Christie’s again produced superlatives to promote the work. In a news release Brett Gorvy, then chairman and head of postwar and contemporary art at the auction house, stated:
Christopher Wool’s Apocalypse Now is the essential image of our times. Executed with a raw power and gritty directness that gave new purpose to the medium of painting in the 1980s, this legendary statement of absolute nihilism makes it one of the most seminal works of contemporary art. Its much anticipated appearance at auction firmly places Wool amongst the pantheon of great masters of the 20th century.16
An “essential image of our times,” “raw power,” “absolute nihilism” and “great master.” Wow! Those descriptors provide a great story for a successful bidder to recount to friends.
On the evening that Apocalypse Now came up, Van de Weghe raised his paddle when the bidding hit $18 million. At that price three other bidders remained involved in the room, with one on the telephone. Van de Weghe kept raising his paddle until the hammer fell. The final price for catalogue lot number 8, including the buyer’s premium paid to Christie’s, was $26.5 million.
The price of the painting had increased 4,400 times in twenty-five years, the final spurt coming with the Guggenheim show and publicity about the backstory. The painting sold for three and a half times the previous Wool auction record. It sold for two and a half times the price Sotheby’s achieved five months earlier for The Garden of Eden With the Fall of Man (1613), a painting by Peter Paul Rubens (who influenced the figures) and Jan Brueghel the Elder (the flora and fauna). It is considered one of the finest examples of Brueghel’s Paradise landscapes.
After the sale the art world speculated about the identity of the players. The most common guess was that the guarantor was Pinault, not because he wanted to again own the painting, but to motivate its consignment. The most common speculation was that the purchaser was the Qatari Royal Family, acquiring it for a future museum.
A record price at auction has a positive effect on the next work offered, in this case Three Studies. If Three Studies had been moved to lot 8 and Apocalypse Now had been moved to 8A, would this have changed the relative prices? Reportedly one Christie’s specialist argued for that switch, while Gorvy concluded that supporting Three Studies with a possible record price for Apocalypse Now was more important.
The Three Studies and Apocalypse Now auctions took place under what can be called the windfall gains irrationality. Financial traders (and all humans) treat windfall gains, like annual bonuses or lottery winnings, differently from predictable monthly incomes. That is one reason (income level being another) why so many contemporary art buyers are from the financial world. For November New York auctions, which come just before financial-sector bonuses are announced, both major auction houses and some dealers motivate potential buyers with the advice: “Bid if you love it, don’t worry about cash flow; you can pay in January next year when your bonus cheque arrives.”
The bonus does not change the buyer’s expected lifetime income much. If the bonus were spread over a ten-year period, buying behaviour would probably not change at all. But if the bonus comes in a lump sum it is a windfall gain; bidding high on a lusted-after new work may be irresistible. The bonus idea goes beyond that. Think of visiting a casino, starting with a winning streak and being “up $1,000.” You treat this gain as “house money,” and will gamble with it in a less careful way. You are less concerned about losing the $1,000 than you would be if you were already down $1,000.
Auction house specialists claim that some art buyers treat bonus money in this less-careful way. They are more willing to gamble on speculative art that they hope will double in price in a short time than they would be if investing their regular income. Bonus recipients are more susceptible to “this artist in our day sale is hot and will become more so.”
Wool’s word paintings are the perfect example of “Is this art?” and “Why those prices?” coming together. Perhaps value is whatever someone bids, or perhaps this is another signal of a looming price bubble. Or maybe it does not have great significance; art adviser Amy Cappellazzo said of the Wool sale that the collectors pursuing Apocalypse Now represented “trophy hunting rather than looking at an artist’s career in an encyclopedic manner.”
Apocalypse Now has made one other public appearance in the United States. When the Wool retrospective moved to the Art Institute of Chicago in February 2014, the new owner loaned the painting to that show.
The next chapter introduces another auction with a head-shaking price. This one was at Sotheby’s New York, and involved casino owner Steve Wynn and a Koons sculpture of a cartoon character.
CHAPTER FIVE
JEFF KOONS AND POPEYE
“Art is anything you can get away with.”
—attributed to both artist Andy Warhol and philosopher Marshall McLuhan
THE MAY 2014 CONTEMPORARY AUCTION WEEK IN NEW YORK COULD HAVE been called Jeff Koons Week. He was about to have a major retrospective of his work at the Whitney Museum of American Art. A few months earlier he had regained the auction record for a living artist for Balloon Dog (Orange). Then his stainless-steel sculpture Popeye (2009–11), standing 61/2 feet (2 metres) tall, was hammered down at Sotheby’s New York for $28.2 million to casino owner Steve Wynn. Wynn was the only one to raise his paddle at the opening, below-estimate requested bid. Even with a sole bidder, the auction combined with the Whitney event reinforced Koons’ position as the best known and most written about living contemporary artist.
The Popeye sale generated extreme adjectives from a hundred art writers. Popeye is an American cartoon character, remembered by those who were around in the 1950s and ’60s (and earlier). He is a “sailor man” with muscular forearms and a corncob pipe, known for his favourite saying “Well blow me down!” Koons had explored the Popeye character in paintings for a decade. His Popeye series includes stainless-steel sculptures of Popeye’s girlfriend Olive Oyl (2004–09).
The Wynn Popeye sculpture is one of a series of three. The other two belong to Larry Gagosian
and Steven Cohen. There is also a granite version of the Popeye sculpture; it also comes in a series of three. Koons offered the wonderful backstory for the Popeye sculptures that the sailor man’s consumption of spinach to produce super-strength was a metaphor for the transformative power of art.
The Whitney show in 2014 was the first opportunity for North American audiences to see work from all three decades of Koons’ career. Koons had more narrowly focused shows in Europe, the most publicized at the Palace of Versailles outside Paris, where he displayed one version each of Balloon Dog and Pink Panther (1988). The latter is a sculpture of a bare-breasted blonde hugging a panther. It was displayed at Versailles in front of a 1729 painting of Louis xv. Pink Panther and Balloon Dog were as well received in Versailles as at the Whitney show. What other contemporary artist’s work could do that? Perhaps only that of English artist Damien Hirst and Japanese artist Takashi Murakami. After the Whitney show closed in late 2014, the Koons show moved to the Centre Pompidou in Paris, then to the Guggenheim Museum Bilbao in Spain.
Scott Rothkopf, the Whitney’s associate director of programs (now chief curator) said at the time that the Koons show was the most expensive the museum had mounted. “Many of the sculptures are as delicate as Fabergé eggs.”17 The show’s 120 works were said to be insured for half a billion dollars. The exhibit was shown over the museum lobby and on four other floors.
There were challenging technical hurdles. The Whitney’s front doors had to be removed for an almost 8-ton granite Gorilla (2006–12) and a 4-ton granite Popeye to get in; each was too large for the museum’s loading dock. Gorilla had to be lifted on an elevator rated for 7 tons. The manufacturer added additional chain hoists at a cost of $85,000. Installation of the show took three weeks, the removal another two.
