Trophy Purchase?

Having just written an article on pirce anomalies in the Journal of Advanced Appraisal Studies which looks into buyer behavior and value systems, I was very interested to see Blake Gopnik's article in the Style section of the Washington Post. Gopnik's article title is Buying a Picasso? Or an auction record? He then states the winning bidder took home the painting but really paid for the bragging rights. Gopnik mentions that bidding slowed immediately after the auction record  was set and that this particular Picasso was not included in the recognized Zervos catalogue of Picasso's work. Meaning, the work itself was not considered, at least at one point in time, one of the better Picasso's. He also points out the notoriety can of course impact future prices, but also may have a tendency to push out many buyers with more limited budgets, such as museums. He also claims it also impacts the property itself, as now all that many collectors see are the dollar signs and the significance of the work.

A very interesting article, and one that all appraisers should read.

Interesting, isn't it, how quickly the bidding ended once the previous Picasso record, the $104 million paid for a work in 2004, had been passed? It's almost as though what was really being witnessed in that auction room was a battle for the rights to the record. That turns out to have cost exactly $2.5 million, by my calculation -- the difference between the $104 million that you had to pay just to equal the old record, and the final price paid.

What wasn't at stake that evening was a superlative object. In terms of overall art-historical importance -- how much it shook up what we think about art -- no Picasso from 1932 could come close to competing with his landmark cubist works from 20 years earlier. (These radical objects, such as the National Gallery's "Nude Woman" from 1910, almost never set sales records. They're too tough on a collector's eyes.)

In terms of direct influence, on other artists or on the course of scholarly research, "Nude, Green Leaves and Bust" couldn't have had any at all: It wasn't included in the great Zervos catalogue of Picasso's works and went underground during World War II, then was bought in 1951 by an American couple who exhibited it only once and wouldn't let it be photographed in color.

Those years in the shadows were no huge loss. If the painting hadn't existed, we wouldn't have had to invent it. It reveals the 50-year-old Picasso, by then filthy rich and a darling of the cultural establishment, working hard to please. But when Picasso goes easy, he's not at his best. The painting's most notable qualities are its large scale and bright colors -- decorator values, not art-historical ones. The best words to describe it would be tame, un-Picassoid ones such as "stylish," "charming," "handsome." The racier pictures Picasso did of this model, his mistress Marie-Th?r?se Walter, some three decades his junior, are greater because they have more than a little threat in them and get at the tensions inherent in the couple's relations.

To read the full article, click HERE.