Speaker 1: This is Masters in Business with Barry Ridholts on Bloomberg Radio.
Speaker 1: This week on the podcast, I have a special guest.
Speaker 1: Her name is brook Lampley. She was the former head
Speaker 1: of Impressionist and Modern Art at Christie's. She is the
Speaker 1: incoming chairperson of Fine Art at South Abees. And this
Speaker 1: is a little off the beaten path of hedge fund
Speaker 1: managers and economists and traders, um, but it's no less
Speaker 1: fascinating if you're at all interested in how artwork is
Speaker 1: determined to have a specific valuation, how we can tell
Speaker 1: the provenance and and whether or not something is real
Speaker 1: or not, what takes place at auctions, and what the
Speaker 1: future of modern art looks like. I suspect you will
Speaker 1: find this to be a fascinating conversation. I wish I
Speaker 1: had it for another hour because I have hundreds of
Speaker 1: more questions I just didn't get to. But with no
Speaker 1: further ado, my conversation with Sothobes brook Lampley. My special
Speaker 1: guest today is Brooke Lampley. She is the incoming vice
Speaker 1: chairman of the Fine Art Department at Sothoby is a
Speaker 1: job she will begin in early her undergraduate at Harvard
Speaker 1: and her master's at Yale were in art history. She
Speaker 1: did curetorial work at the National Gallery of Art before
Speaker 1: joining Christie's in two thousand and four, where she quickly
Speaker 1: became a rising star in the art market, getting named
Speaker 1: to Crane's forty under forty list. Eventually, she rose to
Speaker 1: the position of head of the Impressionist and Modern Art
Speaker 1: department at Christie's, where she oversaw the sale of more
Speaker 1: than a billion dollars in Impressionist and modern art. Brook Lampley,
Speaker 1: Welcome to Bloomberg. Thank you. So now is as good
Speaker 1: a time as any to talk about what's going on
Speaker 1: in the art world. But I have to back up
Speaker 1: a little bit and get a little bit of background
Speaker 1: about you, um undergraduate at Harvard, your studying art history.
Speaker 1: Did you have any idea you wanted to pursue a
Speaker 1: career selling art? Annoyingly? I did know for a long
Speaker 1: time that I was interested in art. I was quite
Speaker 1: a bookish, kind of nerdy kid um and I came
Speaker 1: from an artistic family. My mother was a painter, my
Speaker 1: aunts and architect. To my other aunt works in fashion.
Speaker 1: I didn't have any um, more conventional career models. I
Speaker 1: didn't have a lawyer or a doctor or a banker
Speaker 1: in my family. So when I discovered art history, it
Speaker 1: was the perfect fusion of my kind of academic um
Speaker 1: inclination with an artistic interest. And I loved it. UM.
Speaker 1: I loved it in high school. UM. I went to
Speaker 1: college and I actually I did a joint concentration or
Speaker 1: major in literature and history of art because I didn't
Speaker 1: want to solely focus on history of art, because UM,
Speaker 1: I highly suspected that that was something that I was
Speaker 1: going to focus on in my life. So I enjoyed
Speaker 1: taking a lot of comparative literature classes as well as
Speaker 1: history of art classes. And I was pretty certain at
Speaker 1: the end that I was going to apply to art
Speaker 1: history graduate school. So how do you go from art
Speaker 1: history to the big auction houses. That's an unusual transition.
Speaker 1: It wasn't intentional. I started out. I really believed that
Speaker 1: I wanted to be a curator. I was very academic
Speaker 1: and my interest I was reading Art Forum every week,
Speaker 1: reading like really theoretical, um out there stuff about art,
Speaker 1: and that's what I was really interested in. I was
Speaker 1: really interested in critical theory. UM. I thought that I
Speaker 1: was going to spend my life writing UM. Quite esoteric
Speaker 1: observations on art that a very narrow audience might read. UM.
Speaker 1: But I went to graduate school really young UH, and
Speaker 1: I discovered there that I was young and I didn't
Speaker 1: have UM a lot of professional experience inform the career
Speaker 1: path that I was choosing. UM, and I started to
Speaker 1: get some cold feet about the fact that I was
Speaker 1: going to be there for potentially five years accomplishing my
Speaker 1: PhD before then having a real work experience. So I
Speaker 1: took a leave of absence to go work at the
Speaker 1: National Gallery UH in a curatorial department. I was working
Speaker 1: in the department of Photographs UH, and I did that
Speaker 1: to confirm that I wanted to be a curator, and
Speaker 1: for better or for worse, it didn't work out that way. UM.
Speaker 1: It's quite It's a wonderful institution, and the department I
Speaker 1: was in was doing incredible work. At the time. UM
Speaker 1: Sarah Greeno had just made it an independent department, moved
Speaker 1: it out of the administration of the Prince Department. They
Speaker 1: were having their they had recently endowed independent galleries within
Speaker 1: the museum, so they were having their first full UM
Speaker 1: schedule of exhibition programming. So UM three temporary exhibitions. In
Speaker 1: the year that I was there, it was full on,
Speaker 1: but it was also highly administrative UM. And I also
Speaker 1: it was the first time that I realized that museum
Speaker 1: work wasn't as free of commercial interest as I had
Speaker 1: been given to think. So I felt that when I
Speaker 1: was in Academia UM there was a very ivory tower
Speaker 1: sort of division between UM, the academics and the museum
Speaker 1: world and the commercial art world. And I was reflectively
Speaker 1: very disdainful of the commercial art world. And so in
Speaker 1: order to get away from all of that commerciality in
Speaker 1: the museums, you end up at Christie's. How how did
Speaker 1: that happen? I decided to throw it open. I just decided,
Speaker 1: you know, it was time to see what the commercial
Speaker 1: art world was all about. And I was attracted to
Speaker 1: the auction houses, particularly because UM it gives a more
Speaker 1: macro cosmic view of the market as opposed to going
Speaker 1: to a gallery where you might focus on a few
Speaker 1: artists in great depth. And but I looked at I
Speaker 1: was just applying to jobs generally at that point I
Speaker 1: wanted to move to New York and have a different
Speaker 1: job experience. So at Christie's you discover you have a
Speaker 1: talent for helping to identify and sell art. Tell us
Speaker 1: about that a little bit. Well, Christie's, I really discovered
Speaker 1: that I loved business as much as I loved art,
Speaker 1: and that I loved the fast pace. I loved the
Speaker 1: competitive nature. UM, I loved the active discovery. UM. What
Speaker 1: you get at the auction houses that you don't get
Speaker 1: anywhere else is old fashioned connoisseurship. You're really seeing so
Speaker 1: much material by an artist. UM. In my prior experience,
Speaker 1: at you know, my academic and museum experience, you were
Speaker 1: only looking at masterpieces and you never had any context
Speaker 1: for why something was a masterpiece because you weren't seeing
Speaker 1: the drudgery. You weren't seeing run wire sketches. You weren't
Speaker 1: seeing his smaller paintings or vignettes that were then cut down.
Speaker 1: You didn't really have the full scope. UM. Suddenly at Christie's,
Speaker 1: I had the full scope. I got to see so
Speaker 1: much more, and it was really invigorating. I felt like
Speaker 1: I trained my eye and that was something that I
Speaker 1: hadn't truly done before. UM. It was a much deeper
Speaker 1: experience with the art, and UM it was thrilling to
Speaker 1: be working with people directly. UM. And talking to them
Speaker 1: about about art all along in a variety of capacity.
Speaker 1: Is whether I'm talking to a seller or a potential buyer,
Speaker 1: or appraising someone's collection. I just talk to people about art.
Speaker 1: You said something previously that I have to ask you about.
Speaker 1: You said you learn to train your eye when looking
Speaker 1: at an appraising art. Explain that a little bit by
Speaker 1: looking over years at many many examples of artworks by
Speaker 1: particular artists. So I have a field that I focus on,
Speaker 1: and that's primarily European art from the latter half of
Speaker 1: the nineteenth century in the first half of the twentieth century.
Speaker 1: That's my favorite grouping. So it's hard not to be
Speaker 1: a favorite. It's mine too, um. But by looking at
Speaker 1: so many examples by these artists over and over again,
Speaker 1: you really get a an instinctual sense of authenticity. That's
Speaker 1: what connoisseurship is. It's the It's what Malcolm Gladwell is
Speaker 1: talking about in Blink. It's looking at something and having
Speaker 1: a gut feeling. And you only get that by looking
Speaker 1: at a great range and multitude of examples by a
Speaker 1: particular artist. Ten thousand hours and hundreds and hundreds and
Speaker 1: hundreds of paintings later, when you first see something, is
Speaker 1: it immediate? I know you By the way, we'll get
Speaker 1: to this in our appraisal discussion, the tools of what
Speaker 1: you use. And it's not just instinct, but after a
Speaker 1: certain period of time, is it instantly you could look
Speaker 1: at something and say that's good, that's not good, that's authentic,
Speaker 1: that's not How fast do you make that decision after
Speaker 1: a decade of practice, Oh, it's instant. There of course
Speaker 1: exceptions um or you know, particularly excellent forgeries, or things
Speaker 1: that are troubling or juvenile lea by an artist that
Speaker 1: may not look exactly like what you expect from the artist,
Speaker 1: But by and large it's it's immediate. And then there
Speaker 1: are two wavelengths. It's not just the authenticity wavelength. Then
Speaker 1: there's also the um commercial appeal instinct that also becomes
Speaker 1: a reflexive reaction. So so explain that every artist obviously subjective.
Speaker 1: I like this, I don't like that, I love this artist,
Speaker 1: I can't stand that artist. But what is the is
Speaker 1: the commercial appeal subjective? Or obviously we get auction numbers,
Speaker 1: so we know what the most recent price transaction was,
Speaker 1: but how subjective is the evaluation of what's the commercial
Speaker 1: appeal of this particular painting. It's highly subjective, and in
Speaker 1: as an expert we learn to dissect and quantify that
Speaker 1: subjectivity to the degree possible. But it's also why, at
Speaker 1: least at the auction houses, we work in teams um
Speaker 1: and try to utilize a diversity of opinion to come
Speaker 1: to a conclusion about something. But generally, yes, I'm looking
Speaker 1: at something and I'm saying, Wow, this is sensual and
Speaker 1: romantic and has an incredibly luscious surface. And I'm looking
Speaker 1: at example B, which is a very similar picture. Um,
Speaker 1: but it's not the same because the color is just
Speaker 1: not quite as rich and the surface is not quite
Speaker 1: as thickly painted, and that makes an enormous difference in price.
Speaker 1: So I read a statistic the other day that that
Speaker 1: really shocked me. A recent poll noted that about six
Speaker 1: of wealthy U s art owners claim they've never sold
Speaker 1: a piece from their collection, and about have never even
Speaker 1: had their holdings appraised. How consistent is that with your experiences?
Speaker 1: That's somewhat unsurprising to me, in the sense that in
Speaker 1: my experience, there are many people who are very comfortable
Speaker 1: with the appraisal process, and there are some who are
Speaker 1: just skittish about it, who don't like the idea that
Speaker 1: somebody is going to know what they have UM and
Speaker 1: I understand that. I don't think that. You know, we're
Speaker 1: in a world where people are concerned about privacy and
Speaker 1: the private security I would image and their data, and
Speaker 1: I think that's changing UM and people are becoming more
Speaker 1: accustomed to UM needing to share information in order to
Speaker 1: receive insurance and services. But primarily people get appraisals for
Speaker 1: insurance provider and that's the primary reason UM or if
Speaker 1: they're receiving a loan, for example. UM And then in
Speaker 1: terms of selling, yes, many people collect art over their
Speaker 1: lifetime with no intention of selling it, either until they
Speaker 1: pass or their children determined that it will be sold,
Speaker 1: or until they gift it somewhere, So that can be
Speaker 1: that can be quite common. That certainly used to be
Speaker 1: I think, much more common than it is today. So
Speaker 1: let's let's talk about one of those collections that it
Speaker 1: appears where there hasn't been a sale over a long
Speaker 1: long time, the collection of Peggy and David Rockefeller. Some
Speaker 1: people have estimated this is three quarters of a billion
Speaker 1: dollars or numbers close to that um and have called
Speaker 1: the upcoming sale of this the sale of the century.
Speaker 1: What are your thoughts on this Rockefeller collection and what
Speaker 1: do they actually have? They have some stunning works, specifically
Speaker 1: from the period that I focus on. UM, there are
Speaker 1: going to be wonderful Monaise. There's an there's a sensuous
Speaker 1: Matisse Odalisk painting from the nineteen twenties that perhaps will
Speaker 1: reset the market for that artist. And when you say
Speaker 1: reset the market, Matisse is considered one of the grand
Speaker 1: masters of that era. I mean, how much further can
Speaker 1: Matisses be reset upwards? Or am I underestimating that he
Speaker 1: is widely recognized as one of the most important artists
Speaker 1: of the twentieth century. But the market is driven by
Speaker 1: the examples that come to market, and that differs for
Speaker 1: every artist. So for example, for Picasso, there have been
Speaker 1: great Picasso's, truly great Picassos that have sold publicly at
Speaker 1: auction in private hands, yes, And as opposed to Matiste,
Speaker 1: where a lot of work is in museums or hasn't
Speaker 1: been sold for whatever reason. So there haven't been equally
Speaker 1: great examples by Matisse in my view, that have come
Speaker 1: to market in the last ten years, and every decade
Speaker 1: the market is changing. So you set a record. For example,
Speaker 1: you know, a van Gogh that's sold in the eighties
Speaker 1: would sell for a completely different number today, and that
Speaker 1: would in a fact reset the artist market. So it's
Speaker 1: not just about completely fresh works, it's about the timing
Speaker 1: of those works arriving on the market. Thirty years is
Speaker 1: a long time. There's been a lot of appreciation in
Speaker 1: the stock market, that's been inflation. One would imagine that
Speaker 1: these are selling for more. But when you say reset,
Speaker 1: I'm assuming, hey, this is more than just eight percent
Speaker 1: a year um, a little above inflation. This is a
Speaker 1: whole order of magnitude change. Is that? Is that what
Speaker 1: you're suggesting about the Matisse for example, Absolutely, I think
Speaker 1: it could double the existing record the artist. So we
Speaker 1: started talking about appraisals and you said earlier you get
Speaker 1: a sense of our work of art in a millisecond,
Speaker 1: and that's just a function of many, many years looking
Speaker 1: at thousands of different paintings. But you don't just rely
Speaker 1: on instant tell us a little bit about the tools
Speaker 1: of the trade, and I recall you saying flashlight, camera,
Speaker 1: tape measure and UV light. What what can a UV
Speaker 1: light tell you, Um, outside of c S I, what's
Speaker 1: what can I tell you about a painting? A UV
Speaker 1: light typically reveals later stage painting, so that could in
Speaker 1: some instances even be the artist's own reworking of their
Speaker 1: painting later on, which is still important to recognize. But
Speaker 1: generally speaking, it is a restoration to the painting, and
Speaker 1: people are of course very interested to understand to what
Speaker 1: degree the original artists work is preserved in the painting
Speaker 1: that they're looking at, or another hand has helped restore
Speaker 1: the image to what we believe it should be, and
Speaker 1: that would affect not so much the authenticity of the painting,
Speaker 1: but the final valuation is that is that a fair statement?
Speaker 1: There's a range, but generally yes, it just refers to
Speaker 1: the condition of the work. So it is a factor
Speaker 1: on the value of the work, but not generally the authenticity.
Speaker 1: Though of course, if a work has been broadly repainted
Speaker 1: and there is very little evidence of the original hand,
Speaker 1: then um, one would argue that that's an authenticity issue.
Speaker 1: So let's let's talk about authenticity a little bit. You
Speaker 1: you've discussed and we'll discuss provenance. You've referenced. Attribution is essential,
Speaker 1: so for a lot of paintings, we could literally trace
Speaker 1: from the artist painting it to the sale, and that
Speaker 1: chain of custody goes down right to today. What happens
Speaker 1: when you are confronted with what you think is a
Speaker 1: unauthentic original, but that providence is missing, that that custody
Speaker 1: chain is missing, and there could be decades where it
Speaker 1: was privately held and nobody knows. So I have a
Speaker 1: great example for this, actually, and it was one of
Speaker 1: the most fun things that I've worked on in my career.
Speaker 1: I given that I went to Harvard, I was contacted
Speaker 1: by a Cambridge local a few years ago, I think
Speaker 1: this was two thousand seven, and they had a painting
Speaker 1: that they invited me to come see, and it was
Speaker 1: a Lege still life from the nine twenties UM. It
Speaker 1: was fifty inches high, It was radiantly beautiful, and it
Speaker 1: clearly to me was consistent with the work by the
Speaker 1: artist that I had seen from this period. This would
Speaker 1: be an unusual painting in some senses to copy, not
Speaker 1: because forgeries of Lege are unusual, because they're actually very common,
Speaker 1: but because of the scale of the work UM, and
Speaker 1: how beautifully painted it is, and how reductive the style
Speaker 1: is it's particularly difficult to forge minimalist paintings very well.
Speaker 1: So I looked at it, and then I learned something
Speaker 1: even more important that the person who I was speaking
Speaker 1: to was a family descendant, direct descendant of the previous
Speaker 1: UM Guggenheim director and MoMA curator, James Johnson Sweeney. So
Speaker 1: they have no provenance, They had no bill of sale
Speaker 1: for the work, and they had There is no authenticating
Speaker 1: body for the artists Lege, so the only resources that
Speaker 1: we have in the market are the catalog resume and provenance,
Speaker 1: and this work was not in the catalog resume, and
Speaker 1: one had to believe that this work would have been
Speaker 1: given or sold directly by the artist to the curator,
Speaker 1: James Johnson Sweene. And that's why it was not featured
Speaker 1: in the book and also why it was you know,
Speaker 1: this had to be a proven implausible history. But one
Speaker 1: thing that was missing was Lege typically titled, numbered, and
Speaker 1: dated his works on the reverse of the canvas, and
Speaker 1: there was a backing on this painting, and that could
Speaker 1: not be seen. And my team and I basically came
Speaker 1: to the conclusion that as long as this had the
Speaker 1: inscriptions on the reverse, that it would ring true, but
Speaker 1: if it didn't have the inscriptions on the reverse, it
Speaker 1: was implausible. And we brought it to New York and
Speaker 1: we reverse. We took the backing off the painting, and
Speaker 1: they're beautifully perfectly as we wanted to believe it would be.
Speaker 1: Was exactly the style of signature and inscription and titling
Speaker 1: on the reverse that we have come to expect from
Speaker 1: Lege in this period, and we were able to solve
Speaker 1: the work. It was estimated at I believe three to
Speaker 1: five million dollars and sold for eight million, and it
Speaker 1: was stunning success. That's fantastic. So I'm a car guy
Speaker 1: and we call um the occasional find garage finds where
Speaker 1: there's some old Porsche Ferrari that's gathered us for thirty years.
Speaker 1: Literally the sun went off to Vietnam, didn't come back,
Speaker 1: the parents couldn't sell the car. It's worth many times
Speaker 1: more than what was paid. Many years ago, not too
Speaker 1: long ago, I read about a garage find somewhere in
Speaker 1: the Midwest of a Jackson Pollock. Someone had called somebody
Speaker 1: in to authenticate like a three hundred dollar um sports
Speaker 1: piece of memorabilia, and in the pile in the garage
Speaker 1: at the bottom is this Jackson Pollock. At this point
Speaker 1: in the world, with the Internet and everything else, how
Speaker 1: realistic is it that great works of art are buried
Speaker 1: in people's addicts or garages or what have you. It's
Speaker 1: still uncommon, as much as we'd all like to believe
Speaker 1: it will happen to us. But what needs to be
Speaker 1: understood is that we now live in the information age.
Speaker 1: So we assume that there is a clear archive of
Speaker 1: historical data associated with every artwork that is available to us,
Speaker 1: and it's just not true. Yes, if you're buying a
Speaker 1: contemporary artwork, that should be able to easily be traced
Speaker 1: back to the dealer and the artist. And if you
Speaker 1: can't do that, well, then um, you should be out
Speaker 1: of luck, because that should be so easy, that information
Speaker 1: chain should be unbroken. But for as recently as the
Speaker 1: early twentieth century, the information chain is definitely broken for
Speaker 1: so many artists. There are so many artists for whom
Speaker 1: we have incomplete archives, or the dealers didn't preserve um
Speaker 1: their journals and their invoices well enough for us have
Speaker 1: a complete picture of sales, and so for the dealers
Speaker 1: who did do that in the early twentieth century, it's
Speaker 1: a huge boon to the market. Or for example, the
Speaker 1: fact that Picassoum was quite logical and UM he codified
Speaker 1: a lot of his work, He numbered and dated almost everything.
Speaker 1: He also cooperated in UH the publication of a fairly
Speaker 1: thorough book, a catalog resume of his very extensive production.
Speaker 1: These these are huge market tools. I remember when sixty
Speaker 1: Minutes had Picasso on and in the back of his
Speaker 1: property is a barn literally filled with hundreds of his work.
Speaker 1: I don't remember which UM correspondent was interviewing him, it
Speaker 1: might have been Leslie Stall and she says, aren't you concerned?
Speaker 1: You have thousands of these works worth millions of dollars,
Speaker 1: anyone could steal them? That they're invaluable, and his aunt
Speaker 1: it was not until I signed them, and I always
Speaker 1: was very much amused by that. But how realistic is
Speaker 1: that someone steals a Picasso from his garage that's unsigned?
Speaker 1: Is there any value there? There are unsigned works UM,
Speaker 1: and for every artist, actually there are works that generally
Speaker 1: remained in the studio and we're unsigned, unfinished, unsigned, or unloved.
Speaker 1: That's that's also for a subjective there is an opinion
Speaker 1: to that whether unsigned and unfinished are the same, and
Speaker 1: whether that is that is different for every artist. It's unstable.
Speaker 1: It's not a direct equation. But um, there is value.
Speaker 1: There's definitely value. It's just like anything. It's a factor
Speaker 1: on the value, and so everything is an exponent on
Speaker 1: the artwork itself. Makes sense. Let's tell a little bit
Speaker 1: about some of the auctions and things that are going
Speaker 1: on in the world of art today. And we would
Speaker 1: be remiss if we did not discuss that giant da
Speaker 1: Vinci sale a few weeks ago. Tell us about that.
Speaker 1: Does four fifty million dollars make any sense for a
Speaker 1: da Vinci work that, let's be honest, not his best
Speaker 1: day in the studio. Here's how it makes sense. The market,
Speaker 1: the art market is definitively shaped right now by individuals
Speaker 1: who are aligned with institutions or creating institutions. The fusion
Speaker 1: of the institution and the individual is hugely powerful at
Speaker 1: the top end of the market. So the way I
Speaker 1: see it, there could be no greater attraction for the
Speaker 1: louver of Abu Dhabi. There is no greater single object
Speaker 1: that they could add to their collection to make that
Speaker 1: institution makes sense, especially in its pendant relationship to the
Speaker 1: Louver in Paris than a painting by da Vinci. There
Speaker 1: are what twenty or less examples? There are fewer than
Speaker 1: twenty paintings that exist in the world, all of them
Speaker 1: in museums, and all of them just utter masterpieces. Is that?
Speaker 1: Is that a fair statement? Or am I overstating it?
Speaker 1: I I wouldn't personally attest that they're all utter masterpieces
Speaker 1: because I haven't seen every single one of them. What
Speaker 1: are you doing? You travel so much, shouldn't you do
Speaker 1: like a da Vinci world tour? That I would think
Speaker 1: that I could actually quit my job and do a
Speaker 1: da Vinci world tour. Probably that should be the time
Speaker 1: job between college and grad school. That's a in the
Speaker 1: hierarchy of works by da Vinci from the Last Supper,
Speaker 1: And I'm not a Mona Lisa fan, so that I
Speaker 1: don't put that at the top of the heap. It's
Speaker 1: kind of small, and there's a weird history of it
Speaker 1: being stolen, which is what made it so famous. But
Speaker 1: where does this current piece rank? And is it four
Speaker 1: d and fifty million dollars because it's a da Vinci
Speaker 1: and any da Vinci would have gone for that for
Speaker 1: this museum or there is. Is there an inherent value
Speaker 1: that I'm completely missing. No, it's a notional value based
Speaker 1: on it being a da Vinci. It has almost nothing
Speaker 1: to do with the object itself. I really don't believe
Speaker 1: that the people who are pursuing this object cared deeply
Speaker 1: about how it looked or the condition of the work.
Speaker 1: Um I. And that's that's fine, that's their right. But
Speaker 1: the the value of this object is founded almost entirely
Speaker 1: in the fact that there is no other da Vinci
Speaker 1: painting that you can ever acquire, none of these other
Speaker 1: sixteen or seventeen or coming up for sale. And there's
Speaker 1: such a premium in the market in the world for
Speaker 1: paintings over works on paper. If you could ever have something,
Speaker 1: it would be perhaps a pencil drawing, and and he
Speaker 1: did lots and lots of drawings, and people want paintings
Speaker 1: so much more. That makes sense. So let's talk about
Speaker 1: some of your favorite paintings. We mentioned the legare uh
Speaker 1: that that you sold. Let's talk about La Femme Dajare
Speaker 1: by Picasso, which is I think lovely work that went
Speaker 1: for lots and lots of money. Tell us about that
Speaker 1: that was a stunning painting. It is a work that
Speaker 1: had previously been an auction in the Gan sale, so
Speaker 1: it was interesting that it was not the first time
Speaker 1: that it was ever appearing on the market. And what
Speaker 1: did it sell for, because I want to tee up
Speaker 1: the surprise ending three million dollars alright, so not an
Speaker 1: insubstantial amount of money, but twenty years less than twenty
Speaker 1: years later it went for how much eighty million dollars.
Speaker 1: That's a lot of money, and that's a lot of appreciation.
Speaker 1: What changed in the not even twenty years to make
Speaker 1: that rise sixfold? First of all, there's just general inflation,
Speaker 1: because if you just do the math on the over
Speaker 1: that time, it would have multiplied significantly. But it's also
Speaker 1: the power of the painting is staggering. This is a work.
Speaker 1: This is unlike the painting we were previously talking about.
Speaker 1: This is a seminal painting. This is a fully realized, complex,
Speaker 1: multi figure, rich abstraction. It is balancing um. It is
Speaker 1: walking the fine line and Picasso's work between abstraction and
Speaker 1: figuration perfectly. It's incredibly colorful, dense. It just really shows
Speaker 1: off both his is pain early prowess and his tight
Speaker 1: draftsmanship because it is a very architecturally designed, fractured painting.
Speaker 1: So it's just it's Picasso. It's the epitome of Picasso.
Speaker 1: And what you have in those intervening years is you
Speaker 1: no longer have a largely Western driven market for great
Speaker 1: Western art. You have a global market for great Western art.
Speaker 1: You have people from every part of the world competing
Speaker 1: for the best Picaso. So that's Asia, especially China, South American,
Speaker 1: Brazil and of course the Middle East. Let's talk about
Speaker 1: another Picasso. I my French is not as good as
Speaker 1: it should be. Um, but Painter and Model is another UM.
Speaker 1: His English translation is another work that that you I
Speaker 1: believe helped bring to auction, and I am I correct
Speaker 1: in that recollection. They are the only thing about that
Speaker 1: is the Painter and Model was a very popular series
Speaker 1: or a series that Picasso pursued for a period in
Speaker 1: the sixties. So there are a number of them. So
Speaker 1: how many of those did you help sell? I've worked
Speaker 1: on I've probably sold ten Painter and Model. Really, there's
Speaker 1: that many of them, alright, So we mentioned Picasso Legier,
Speaker 1: let's talk about the grain Stack by Monet, which everybody
Speaker 1: is seen there. They're fairly seminole um it's the Not
Speaker 1: Dame series and the grain Stack series. Tell us about that.
Speaker 1: What was that sale like? That was a real highlight
Speaker 1: for me. I had seen that painting for many years.
Speaker 1: He's done a few of those, a number of studies
Speaker 1: and various versions, but there hadn't been one on the
Speaker 1: market for fifteen years. And in that time, in that
Speaker 1: intervening fifteen years, there had been a huge surge in
Speaker 1: prices for water lily paintings, and that had essentially moved
Speaker 1: the market. The modern market or the contemporary market from
Speaker 1: Mona is all about the profundity and abstraction of the
Speaker 1: serial pictures, whereas the market for Mona twenty years ago
Speaker 1: was all about the classicism and clarity and beauty of
Speaker 1: the eighteen seventies Impressionist pictures. So the market for money
Speaker 1: has completely changed over twenty thirty years. And during this
Speaker 1: course of time, we have a fifteen year gap between
Speaker 1: the last Haystack coming to market and this one. So
Speaker 1: we knew that there was an opportunity here, Um, we
Speaker 1: did not know exactly what the market tolerance or on
Speaker 1: the benchmark price would be for a haystack. And and
Speaker 1: tell us how that transaction worked out? So I believe
Speaker 1: the bidding opened at around fifty or fifty five million dollars.
Speaker 1: The work ultimately sold for eighty million dollars. I was
Speaker 1: on the phone with the direct underbidder and it was
Speaker 1: a fight. It was a real duel till the end,
Speaker 1: and they were very disappointed because it was a staggeringly
Speaker 1: beautiful picture that not only really bridges this important period
Speaker 1: of art Impressionism, but also can be situated perfectly in
Speaker 1: a contemporary or modern collection. So let's talk about a
Speaker 1: few others that you've brought to market. Modigliani, Van Go
Speaker 1: Jacom Eddie tell us about an example of each and
Speaker 1: ps I don't mean to downgrade these artists in any way.
Speaker 1: We could talk about any of the billions of dollars
Speaker 1: of artwork you helped sell, but for time's sake, I
Speaker 1: just want to reference these three together. Well there, Madigliani
Speaker 1: is remains one of the most fascinating artists to bring
Speaker 1: to market today because of the profound scarcity of his production.
Speaker 1: He died young, um and really at his at the
Speaker 1: peak of his artistic power, so you'll never know his
Speaker 1: His biography really fits into the mythology that people much
Speaker 1: like Van go as well. Um like to associate with
Speaker 1: great artists and the tortured soul who dies young? Is that?
Speaker 1: Is that what we're yes? And you never perhaps got
Speaker 1: to see their fully realized greatness. We can only imagine
Speaker 1: how much we got to see Picasso live a full
Speaker 1: life and see what he how his art changed decade
Speaker 1: over a decade. And there's a great fascination in that.
Speaker 1: But there is an equally great fascination in the curtailed genius,
Speaker 1: in the genius that never came perhaps to complete fruition.
Speaker 1: Where would his art have gone? And with Madigliani, you
Speaker 1: have beautiful, full portraits, stately portraits. We've sold arrange, we've
Speaker 1: sold great male portraits, and that exceeded our expectations because
Speaker 1: the market is so impoverished of Medigliani, and that people
Speaker 1: are truly thrilled or excited by any examples that come
Speaker 1: up and really will chase them. It's another scarcity issue.
Speaker 1: There's only so many of them, and if you want one,
Speaker 1: you're going to pay up that. And then of course
Speaker 1: we sold in my time at Christie's the Marquis Medigliani,
Speaker 1: the best Mendigliani you're ever going to get a reclining
Speaker 1: female nude and what did that go for? A hundred
Speaker 1: and seventy three million? Not not too shabby. We have
Speaker 1: been speaking with Brook Lampley. She is the former head
Speaker 1: of Modern Art and Impressionists at Christie's, soon to be
Speaker 1: the vice chair of Fine Arts at South Abs. If
Speaker 1: you enjoy this conversation, be sure and stick around for
Speaker 1: the podcast extras, where we keep the tape rolling and
Speaker 1: continue discussing all things aren't related. We love your comments, feedback,
Speaker 1: end suggestions right to us at m IB podcast at
Speaker 1: Bloomberg dot net. You can check out my daily column
Speaker 1: on Bloomberg dot com or follow me on Twitter at
Speaker 1: rich Halts. I'm Barry Rich Haults. You're listening to Masters
Speaker 1: and Business on Bloomberg Radio. Welcome to the podcast, Brook,
Speaker 1: Thank you so much for doing this. I am fascinated
Speaker 1: by the topic and really want to delve into so
Speaker 1: many more questions. And I don't know whether to pick
Speaker 1: up with the Jacob Addie Vango and Brank Quc or
Speaker 1: let's let's let's talk about the question I would imagine
Speaker 1: is on a lot of people's minds is how investable
Speaker 1: is art? Because everything we've been talking about has been.
Speaker 1: Forget da Vinci, what do we say there was seventeen
Speaker 1: sixteen paintings? When when? And then even if you go
Speaker 1: to as prolific as Picasso and to a lesser degree,
Speaker 1: money have been, there's still only a finite number of
Speaker 1: those works. And when we look at the modern worlds,
Speaker 1: and I don't mean modern painting, I mean twenty eighteen
Speaker 1: painting from artists that are working today and selling their works,
Speaker 1: how investable are those works? Is it the sort of
Speaker 1: thing that we're gonna a century from now those are
Speaker 1: gonna be the next hundred million dollar paintings, or has
Speaker 1: the golden age of art production kind of come to
Speaker 1: an end and everything going forward is something different. It's
Speaker 1: a funny thing, you know, Hindsight is always so. I
Speaker 1: think we look back at our view of the art
Speaker 1: market of eras past, and the works that we're still
Speaker 1: selling today is defined by a selection process that's already happened,
Speaker 1: and today we're faced with how we make that selection
Speaker 1: process in real time. Surely a great number of the
Speaker 1: artists working today will be valuable in the future. But
Speaker 1: if I had a crystal ball to know exactly who
Speaker 1: those would be and who they wouldn't be then I would,
Speaker 1: you know, I would quit what I'm doing and just
Speaker 1: do that full time. Well, you still need the capital
Speaker 1: to go out and spend even even at five and
Speaker 1: ten thousand dollars a painting. So I'm doing that to
Speaker 1: some degree myself. I'm interested in that, but I really
Speaker 1: believe I can't help but be wooed in the stories
Speaker 1: and the people I've met by the people who collected
Speaker 1: with their hearts just for the love of it, with
Speaker 1: a passion, and that passion stood the test of time.
Speaker 1: I think time and again you hear and see that
Speaker 1: people who really cared about what they were looking at
Speaker 1: and collected with a view to that level of quality.
Speaker 1: Um that the market rewarded them, because at the end
Speaker 1: of the day, that's what we all care about, and
Speaker 1: that's also what drives the market, is the quality. So
Speaker 1: how much how much of that is the luck of
Speaker 1: the era? And let me rephrase that. So we mentioned
Speaker 1: earlier the Rockefeller collection from from David Rockefeller, that here's
Speaker 1: a person who inherits his fortune in the mid twentieth century,
Speaker 1: so he's got the preview is hundred years of works
Speaker 1: that we now know are worth hundreds of millions of dollars,
Speaker 1: tens of millions of dollars um. But he's buying what
Speaker 1: he and his wife like. He's buying what's available. He's buying, um,
Speaker 1: what is actually up for sale, and a hundred years later,
Speaker 1: fifty years later, it's it's an enormous collection. If we
Speaker 1: were to do the exact same thing today, somebody inherits
Speaker 1: a few billion dollars and they start buying what they
Speaker 1: like over the next fifty years, what are the odds
Speaker 1: that what they pick up over the next few decades
Speaker 1: are going to appreciate the way uh, the Impressionists, the
Speaker 1: early modernist Because when we look at the arc of
Speaker 1: history of painting, we're now in a totally different sort
Speaker 1: of zone than what's developed over the past previous few centuries.
Speaker 1: But I think we still need to recognize that even
Speaker 1: when the Rockefellers were acquiring so it's interesting, it was
Speaker 1: a mix of his story, oracle and contemporary art. I
Speaker 1: think those prescient Picasso and Matisse choices that people made
Speaker 1: when these people were still actively producing works, um were
Speaker 1: incredibly wise and wonderful selections, but they were pretty much
Speaker 1: they were already established artists they were. This is like
Speaker 1: buying a Richard Sarah. Okay, this isn't buying um you know,
Speaker 1: an artist down in Chelsea who is having their first
Speaker 1: gallery show. This is buying a very well regarded Jeff Coon's,
Speaker 1: someone who is has already been shown in museums and
Speaker 1: already has a commercial following and established collecting base. So
Speaker 1: I believe what the Rockefellers did. And there are many
Speaker 1: other examples, though not to the same degree. Us. Yes,
Speaker 1: that will prove valuable time and again. If you were
Speaker 1: able to go out today and buy career, mid career
Speaker 1: examples by already established artists, and you saw that in
Speaker 1: fifty years. I do believe in that value. There's I
Speaker 1: there's no question in my mind. But I think the
Speaker 1: greater question is how you buy truly contemporary art and
Speaker 1: how how do you And for that I think, um,
Speaker 1: the people who have been most successful are people who
Speaker 1: had some kind of governing philosophy or um metric. So
Speaker 1: whether that be I'm buying German photography from the nineteen eighties,
Speaker 1: I'm buying women artists of earlier historical periods. I'm buying
Speaker 1: um great Cuban art from the nineteen fifties, whatever it
Speaker 1: may be. UM, the people who really dedicate themselves to
Speaker 1: some sort of theme and they buy the virtue of
Speaker 1: collecting in that theme are already they are working in
Speaker 1: tandem with their collection. They're enhancing the value because they
Speaker 1: are creating a story, a narrative. They're creating the category
Speaker 1: essentially for people to follow. So how does one determine
Speaker 1: this is a tricky question. So whether you're looking at
Speaker 1: contemporary art that's being painted today or finding a niche
Speaker 1: such as nineteen fifties Cuban or nineteen twenties UM German photography,
Speaker 1: how do you determine what is a realistic valuation when
Speaker 1: you're making a purchase, because there really isn't a whole
Speaker 1: lot in the way of comparables. You're kind of figuring
Speaker 1: out some number, but it seems to be I don't
Speaker 1: want to say random, but really subjective and in a
Speaker 1: tremendously broad potential range, if that makes any sense. Oh,
Speaker 1: it's incredibly difficult, and this is why people love auction.
Speaker 1: Auction and the secondary market provides the security of um
Speaker 1: comparables of a market history and some parameters for pricing
Speaker 1: that are based on historical data. But when you go
Speaker 1: to a gallery, there is no data, there is no context.
Speaker 1: It's just what they're pricing it at, and you have
Speaker 1: to make an evaluation that is really subjective about whether
Speaker 1: you think something is worth that value. Now, of course
Speaker 1: you're welcome to ask the dealer, and you should um
Speaker 1: what the pricing history has been for the artist, what
Speaker 1: you know previous shows they've had. UM, if they can
Speaker 1: give examples of other sales, that can bolster the information
Speaker 1: that you have UM. But that market is essentially untested
Speaker 1: until someone tries to re sell their work. So a
Speaker 1: challenge the auction houses face very often is people artists
Speaker 1: used to contact me all the time wanting to sell
Speaker 1: their works directly through the auction house, and I'd say,
Speaker 1: I'm sorry, this is a bit of a chicken and
Speaker 1: an egg, but you we don't really sell anything that
Speaker 1: hasn't already been sold. We need there to be a
Speaker 1: track record that's the floor at the very least. So
Speaker 1: let's talk a little bit about the auction process. I
Speaker 1: was surprised to read that a lot of these lots
Speaker 1: go off in a matter of seconds or barely minutes,
Speaker 1: because when we see something like that Da Vinci it
Speaker 1: was seven or eight minutes of bidding and it got
Speaker 1: frenetic and crazy. What is the typical auction process, like,
Speaker 1: how do you determine how what the starting prices and
Speaker 1: how long do the actual bidding process take. It's a
Speaker 1: great question because it's hugely variable. So watching the Da
Speaker 1: Vinci sale, I think it was actually fifteen minutes of
Speaker 1: bidding and that's a really long time in the auction room.
Speaker 1: And I'm not sure what the record is, but it
Speaker 1: may be up there. For a single lot, every lot
Speaker 1: is the auctioneer has a tremendous amount of discretion going
Speaker 1: into an auction, which is a live auction, which its
Speaker 1: state you know, for the purpose of this conversation, live auctions,
Speaker 1: the auctioneer will sit down and look at something called
Speaker 1: the auctioneer's book before the auction and think about where
Speaker 1: they would like to start the bidding on each lot,
Speaker 1: based not just on where the reserve prices, because most
Speaker 1: lots offered at you know, Christie's or Sabbs, say, have reserves,
Speaker 1: which meaning if it doesn't at that price, it doesn't
Speaker 1: get sold. It's the confidential minimum below which the work
Speaker 1: will not be sold. But in addition to the reserve.
Speaker 1: The other information that they may be considering is how
Speaker 1: many phone bidders have signed up to been on the lot,
Speaker 1: how many internetters are registered for that lot. If somebody's
Speaker 1: left an absentee bid, So, if you have a lot
Speaker 1: of competition on the lot, you would probably start higher
Speaker 1: and closer to the reserve. Then if you have nobody,
Speaker 1: you might start further away from the reserve and chandelier
Speaker 1: bid more give yourself more room. What does that mean?
Speaker 1: Chandelier bid So the auctioneer in New York State can
Speaker 1: leally bid on behalf of the auction house, so essentially
Speaker 1: fake bid up until the reserve, so that if someone
Speaker 1: comes in and bids ten tho dollars but the reserve
Speaker 1: is eighteen thousand, the auctioneer will bid against them in
Speaker 1: an effort to entice them to bid up to eighteen.
Speaker 1: If it doesn't hit reserve, it doesn't get sold. So
Speaker 1: it's a harmless process and it perhaps moves a sale.
Speaker 1: And it also protects the confidentiality of the reserve because
Speaker 1: what is less effective is to just say, okay, seventeen thousand,
Speaker 1: does anyone want to bid eighteen and everybody is just
Speaker 1: waiting and looking at each other to see if anyone
Speaker 1: will bid. That would discourage people from bidding, because they
Speaker 1: would wait and let the work not sell and then
Speaker 1: try to make a cheaper off after what is and
Speaker 1: does that happen? If something doesn't go for reserve, there's
Speaker 1: the option. So again my frame of references automobiles, it's
Speaker 1: the same thing. The auctioneer says reserve has met or
Speaker 1: the auctioneer says says reserve is withdrawn. This is a
Speaker 1: car that's going to sell and lo and behold. Very
Speaker 1: often that runs the price up. What is the bidding
Speaker 1: process like, um in terms of increments? What is it
Speaker 1: like beyond the reserve? Once we know that a sale
Speaker 1: is taking place. So the increments are fairly standardized, and
Speaker 1: they go in fives or ones, between one and two, twos,
Speaker 1: between two and three, zero to five, eight, ten, between
Speaker 1: three and five and then five above that, between five
Speaker 1: and ten um in all iterations, UM in hundreds and
Speaker 1: thousands and hundreds of thousands. But um the bidder can
Speaker 1: always request a smaller increment. They can always try to
Speaker 1: break the bid and then break the bid. Meaning is
Speaker 1: that what we saw with the da Vinci going up
Speaker 1: in three million dollar lots when they could have gone
Speaker 1: up in one or two million dollar lots. Well, with
Speaker 1: the da Vinci was particularly unusual and very interesting. UM.
Speaker 1: But yes, essentially, the bidder can determine their own bid
Speaker 1: at the auctioneer's discretion, and then the auctioneer might try
Speaker 1: to control um. The bid increment is their greatest control
Speaker 1: over the momentum of the auction. So the only reason
Speaker 1: they don't want the bid increment to break down is
Speaker 1: because they want UM. There's no reason if you have
Speaker 1: multiple bidders to work in very small into increments UM.
Speaker 1: But with the da Vinci, it was fascinating because the
Speaker 1: direct underbidder was always bidding two million dollars and the
Speaker 1: next bid, the eventual buyer, bid eight million dollars each time,
Speaker 1: and then eventually made like a thirty million dollar bid.
Speaker 1: So they were kind of saying, dude, give it up,
Speaker 1: I'm taking this home and you can't here. They were
Speaker 1: communicating through their bid, and yet the underbidder continued to
Speaker 1: come along, thinking, so is that a little bit of poker?
Speaker 1: They're there, Hey, this guy is bluffing at eight million
Speaker 1: of pop. I'm going to stay in. I thought it
Speaker 1: was their own demonstration of determination. I thought it was
Speaker 1: really interesting. I thought the direct underbidder was even more
Speaker 1: interesting than the um the buyer, because of their resilience
Speaker 1: and saying you won't move me. I was a little
Speaker 1: um depleted that they didn't win that battle at the
Speaker 1: end because and we don't know who the underbidder was.
Speaker 1: No one stepped forward and said you that was mad.
Speaker 1: No nobody has identified, so I guess at this time
Speaker 1: I can reveal I'm just kidding. So that that's kind
Speaker 1: of fascinating. It sounds like there is this very specific
Speaker 1: set of rules and a very specific um dynamic to
Speaker 1: the bidding process. How does somebody who is you know,
Speaker 1: there's a lot of I hate the word newfaux reach,
Speaker 1: but there's a lot of new money. Let's say you're
Speaker 1: a bitcoin millionaire and you want to go buy some
Speaker 1: art because bitcoin can be lost, but the art at
Speaker 1: least you can ensure it. How does someone learn on
Speaker 1: some of these ten and twenty million dollars or more paintings?
Speaker 1: How do you learn how to engage and behave at
Speaker 1: an auction? You talk to me, is that what I'm
Speaker 1: here for? So, so, if you're working for the auction house,
Speaker 1: who you know obviously is incentivized to maximize the price
Speaker 1: on behalf of the seller. How do you sist the
Speaker 1: buyer you're with a house, the real estate agent is
Speaker 1: usually the seller's agent. Unless you go out and get
Speaker 1: a buyer's agent, you're fighting, you know, fighting um or
Speaker 1: negotiating with someone who isn't working on your behalf. If
Speaker 1: you're at the auction house and I say, hey, I
Speaker 1: really have a thing um for BRINCUSI and I want
Speaker 1: Brooke to help me, uh find one, how does that
Speaker 1: work with you and the auction house? If the auction
Speaker 1: house is representing the seller, it is tricky that we
Speaker 1: work on both sides. Um. My response that would be
Speaker 1: that the market is repetitive and cyclical, relationships are long.
Speaker 1: I'm not interested in a short term relationship with a client.
Speaker 1: I'm not interested in over selling them on one object
Speaker 1: to the detriment of what our long term relationship would be.
Speaker 1: Because I have so much art to sell um more
Speaker 1: than four times a year. I have so much art
Speaker 1: to sell all the time, and we have so much
Speaker 1: on offer. The market is so voluminous, UM, so transaction
Speaker 1: heavy right now that it's really in my interests to
Speaker 1: help someone find the right thing and have them be happy.
Speaker 1: Also because in my line of work, I work, as
Speaker 1: you mentioned, with both buyers and sellers, so every perspective,
Speaker 1: buyer is a future seller. So I want them to
Speaker 1: be happy with their purchase because if they're going to
Speaker 1: sell it someday, I want them to come back and
Speaker 1: talk to me. Um. But the other answer would be
Speaker 1: that there are lots of independent advisors in the art
Speaker 1: world who are full time, who are consultants, who UM
Speaker 1: would love to make themselves available to people to advise
Speaker 1: them on transactions. And you know how to work with
Speaker 1: an auction house. Um. The only thing is, as with
Speaker 1: any industry you know, there, they take a commission and
Speaker 1: I take no commission. So you're working for the house
Speaker 1: and the house is taking their pound of flesh. But
Speaker 1: your your job is to just make everybody happy and
Speaker 1: look look for repeat business related to the auction. I
Speaker 1: have a couple of other questions I don't want to forget.
Speaker 1: So something doesn't get sold and it doesn't meet the
Speaker 1: reserve or whatever, and it isn't sold then and there
Speaker 1: you're suggesting, Hey, these auction houses eventually become giant galleries
Speaker 1: with warehouses full of stuff to be sold. Even if
Speaker 1: it's not being sold at auction, it may be sold
Speaker 1: at some other non auction date. What do I have
Speaker 1: that right? So everything that happens after the auction is
Speaker 1: variable and at the seller's discretion. The first thing that
Speaker 1: happens is, um, we will generally accept offers after sale,
Speaker 1: offers for things that didn't sell, not not like the
Speaker 1: day after. You're talking weeks or even months immediately after. Okay,
Speaker 1: maybe in the hours after you really three days to
Speaker 1: five days maybe after the auction. So but once a
Speaker 1: week goes by, that's it. It's done. It's probably it's
Speaker 1: probably too late. So I miss I miss purchasing something
Speaker 1: at the last auction. But I'm you know, it's been
Speaker 1: on my mind for a few months, and I call
Speaker 1: up Brooke and say, hey, remember that monet that didn't sell? Um,
Speaker 1: I'm interested in pursuing that. How How what can we do?
Speaker 1: Can can you reach out to the seller? Do things
Speaker 1: like that happens all the time, really, and there is
Speaker 1: no limitation. I definitely can, and I will when it's appropriate,
Speaker 1: And then the auction house gets paid their normal pan
Speaker 1: of flesh. Anyway, if they facilitate the transaction, it would
Speaker 1: be then classified as a private sale. We do non
Speaker 1: auction transactions as well. What's the balance typically is how
Speaker 1: much is auction and how much is non auction. I'm
Speaker 1: kind of curious about Well, it's changing all the time.
Speaker 1: I think the last statistics UM for Christie's in um,
Speaker 1: we're we're non auction, but I could I'm not sure
Speaker 1: if I'm utterly correct about that. That sounds about Bullpark, right,
Speaker 1: but it's it's a growing sector of the business and
Speaker 1: there's because really, um, what everybody is realizing is that
Speaker 1: while we all know the gross auction revenues of the
Speaker 1: auction houses year on year, and there fluctuates, say between
Speaker 1: Christie's and Southeby's together, in the last ten years it's
Speaker 1: been anywhere from ten to fifteen billion a year. But
Speaker 1: then there's a whole another potentially forty five billion dollars
Speaker 1: worth of art being sold every year that is outside
Speaker 1: of that, there's a lot more market to capture. Are
Speaker 1: you familiar with artsy So? Rich Barton is the person
Speaker 1: behind Expedia and Zillo and glass Door, and this new
Speaker 1: site he's developed he's co founded is below everything we
Speaker 1: see it at auction is a huge market of art
Speaker 1: that doesn't really have a way to be tracked and transacted.
Speaker 1: Is that potentially the next larger wave of art sales?
Speaker 1: I think digital is I'm going to transform the art world. Transformed.
Speaker 1: That's that's a big word. I don't think it's necessarily
Speaker 1: outside of the auction houses. I think, um, it's already happening.
Speaker 1: There are increasingly digital auctions taking place or sales online
Speaker 1: at both Christie's and Southebys, as well as other auction houses,
Speaker 1: as well as other online platforms. And yes, what I've
Speaker 1: seen is that there is a remarkable appetite to buy
Speaker 1: things online at much greater price points than I think
Speaker 1: people would fathom. Um, and we should know because I
Speaker 1: buy everything else in my life online. So Um, clearly
Speaker 1: we're all getting much more comfortable with buying online and
Speaker 1: that is now extending significantly into the luxury space. That
Speaker 1: makes sense. Amazon is now twenty years old. So when
Speaker 1: we talked earlier about about providence and fraud, I read
Speaker 1: a crazy statistics somewhere had said that art theft and
Speaker 1: fraud and they didn't break it out is six billion
Speaker 1: dollars a year is that is that number remotely plausible?
Speaker 1: That seems like an insane Wow, that's that is significant.
Speaker 1: That's shocking to me. I wouldn't know. I am fortunate
Speaker 1: that we're not really directly involved. We do see people
Speaker 1: bring us four juries, but we don't because we try
Speaker 1: to avoid them and refuse them and not price them. Um,
Speaker 1: we're not really quantifying that space as unthinkable as it is. Hypothetically,
Speaker 1: a non original slips through and gets auctioned off and
Speaker 1: then subsequently, as we've discovered recently with a handful of
Speaker 1: not auction houses but galleries, people have sold hundreds of
Speaker 1: millions of dollars worth of stuff that's that's forgeries. Does
Speaker 1: the auction house stand behind the prominence of what they
Speaker 1: sell or is it simply they're facilitating a transaction and
Speaker 1: not making any sort of guarantee. Now there's a warranty.
Speaker 1: There's a five year warranty, and UM, I believe that's
Speaker 1: standard in the industry, which is that this is if
Speaker 1: this is sold as a picasso, it's a picasso. The
Speaker 1: warranty is specifically on the attribution of the work. It's
Speaker 1: u pretty much, UM, not about anything else. It's not
Speaker 1: about the condition. It's not about um other specifics. I mean,
Speaker 1: surely if we said the work was fifty one by
Speaker 1: thirty inches and it turned out to be you know,
Speaker 1: two by three inches, UM, that would be included. But
Speaker 1: if nobody cares it's it is by the artist as
Speaker 1: as it's either by the artists or not, that's the issue.
Speaker 1: And it's a five year warranty. But beyond that, UM,
Speaker 1: there's significant reputational hazard. You know, they would be a
Speaker 1: serious issue for either auction house. And has any of
Speaker 1: these come up in the past twenty years where something
Speaker 1: was sold discovered to be not who it was supposed
Speaker 1: to be by and the auction house made good. Absolutely.
Speaker 1: It happens UM and generally and hopefully not usually at
Speaker 1: the um you know da Vinci and Picasso fumtall jaire level.
Speaker 1: But it happens UM when there are changes in scholarship
Speaker 1: or what we call in the industry expertise UM. There
Speaker 1: are authenticating bodies for a lot of these artists, particularly
Speaker 1: in the in my field an Impressionist and modern art
Speaker 1: UM in France the Duat morale Um. It is a
Speaker 1: legal right authentication on behalf of one of these artists
Speaker 1: is illegally appointed or given right in France. So, um,
Speaker 1: when these when this changes hands, when different scholars take
Speaker 1: over and perhaps change the view that was given ten
Speaker 1: years ago. Um, that can be an issue that is
Speaker 1: brought back to an auction house. And I keep coming
Speaker 1: back to Jackson Pollock. I recall an issue with I
Speaker 1: remember a girlfriend or a mistress. It was a painting
Speaker 1: that was supposedly gifted to her or then was it
Speaker 1: by her? And is this a fifty painting or a
Speaker 1: fifty million dollar painting? How do these sorts of things
Speaker 1: get resolved or do they remain unresolved? And hey, you
Speaker 1: want to take a chance for fiftys maybe you're getting nothing,
Speaker 1: maybe you're getting a ten million dollar Pollock? Is it
Speaker 1: that open ended? So all roads lead back to Da Vinci.
Speaker 1: The Da Vinci is a great example. The Da Vinci
Speaker 1: is a painting that in two thousand five I believe,
Speaker 1: was purchased at a very small regional auction house and
Speaker 1: after extensive research was re attributed to Da Vinci. It
Speaker 1: was not attributed to Da Vinci at that time when
Speaker 1: it was purchased for I think ten thousand dollars. So
Speaker 1: what is most incredible in the story of this Da
Speaker 1: Vinci is that a work of this importance by such
Speaker 1: a famous artist would have been so recently rediscovered and
Speaker 1: reattributed to the artist. And the way that that happened
Speaker 1: was that there was an important an exhibition at the
Speaker 1: National Gallery of Art in London in I want to
Speaker 1: say UM. But in addition to scholarship that was done
Speaker 1: by the purchaser and just generally in the field UM.
Speaker 1: Through this exhibition, a consensus was able to be established
Speaker 1: among leading scholars in the field UM and communicated to
Speaker 1: the world at large through this exhibition that this is
Speaker 1: now known as a Da Vinci Um. That's essential. It's
Speaker 1: that's where the commercial and the academic world's really converge.
Speaker 1: We do not rely on ourselves as a soul arbiter,
Speaker 1: because clearly we have a commercial incentive to sell. So
Speaker 1: we look to academics and we look to a scholarly
Speaker 1: community to make these attributions. How often does do we
Speaker 1: see a major change in attribution like that where something
Speaker 1: literally goes for ten thousand dollars to half a billion dollars.
Speaker 1: I mean, that's a forget the price. How often do
Speaker 1: we discover a Da Vinci that we previously didn't think
Speaker 1: was a DaVinci. And I don't mean just with that artist,
Speaker 1: I mean any major artist from Picasso, Amoni to Rothcot
Speaker 1: or whatever. Hardly Ever, what is much more common rather
Speaker 1: than adding works into the cannon, is that there are
Speaker 1: works that are excluded from the canon that could potentially
Speaker 1: be real. So you have any number of people who
Speaker 1: own medigliani is today um coming around clamoring saying I
Speaker 1: have all of this information, this is a real Medigliani UM.
Speaker 1: And you have a bunch of experts in the art
Speaker 1: world or commercial experts saying I'm really sorry, I can't
Speaker 1: help you because there is no universally recognized expert in
Speaker 1: the field for Medigliani right now. There are some people
Speaker 1: competing for that um kind of status in position, and
Speaker 1: hopefully perhaps one day we will have someone who we
Speaker 1: all recognize, But right now there are a lot of
Speaker 1: people who own Igliani's who can't be helped. Those could
Speaker 1: be good value purchases, because they're not or could be
Speaker 1: a waste of money unless you really like it. Let
Speaker 1: me get to some of my favorite questions. Tell us
Speaker 1: the most important thing people don't know about your background.
Speaker 1: I think it's the fact that I grew up in
Speaker 1: London from the time I was twelve until I went
Speaker 1: to college. No accent whatsoever. I would never have guessed
Speaker 1: I have no accent. So no Madonna was there for
Speaker 1: a weekend, then she ended up with a British accent bingo.
Speaker 1: This is always what I say. So the reason I
Speaker 1: don't have an accent is because people would show up
Speaker 1: from like Austin and two days later have an accent
Speaker 1: and we'd say, who are you Madonna? That's funny. Tell
Speaker 1: tell us about some of your early mentors. I was
Speaker 1: really fortunate, as I mentioned before, to not have a
Speaker 1: family where I was expected to follow a conventional career path.
Speaker 1: I would say that my father was an early influence.
Speaker 1: He is a sportscaster. He's had the pre viedge in
Speaker 1: his life to do something that he loves, and he
Speaker 1: really made me feel that it was possible to do
Speaker 1: something that I love as a career. That's a really
Speaker 1: interesting history. Tell us about who influenced your approach to
Speaker 1: working in the world of art and and the commercial
Speaker 1: side of it. A lot of people. I've worked with,
Speaker 1: so many great people. I really enjoyed working with Stephen Murphy,
Speaker 1: the previous or recently previous CEO of Christie's. He was
Speaker 1: someone who was a really inspirational leader and created great
Speaker 1: opportunities for me at an important moment in my career.
Speaker 1: What are some of your favorite books, be they fiction, nonfiction,
Speaker 1: about art or anything else? And and by the way,
Speaker 1: this is everybody's favorite question. They listeners wanna learn about
Speaker 1: new books or books they may not be familiar with.
Speaker 1: Why if I fear my answer won't be surprising enough,
Speaker 1: then I am a great lover of fiction, of great novels.
Speaker 1: I am you know the corrections? Um? Great? Like meaty?
Speaker 1: Right now? What am I reading? Uh? I'm reading The Knicks.
Speaker 1: If I could only remember, it's like a first time novelist,
Speaker 1: I think, Um any favorite art books? There are many
Speaker 1: to choose from the Life of Picasso's pretty good, John Richardson,
Speaker 1: you can't beat the Life of Picasso for being not
Speaker 1: only informative, but saucy and gossipy and scintillating. Picasso's Life
Speaker 1: is richly entertaining. And give us one more fiction that
Speaker 1: you're reading? Oh I have if I could only Oh,
Speaker 1: I read a Little Life. Who didn't love that book?
Speaker 1: It's devastating a little life. All right, Let's talk about
Speaker 1: changes in the art market. What is different today than
Speaker 1: twenty years ago? And is this a good thing? So
Speaker 1: many things. It's so much more global as a marketplace,
Speaker 1: and that's definitely a good thing. It um it puts.
Speaker 1: It changes the way that we appreciate art, and we're
Speaker 1: now seeing our exposing and publicizing great regional works almost
Speaker 1: to the same degree that we are great examples of
Speaker 1: the canon. Overall, I think that there was a much
Speaker 1: more Western perspective in the past. Tell us about a
Speaker 1: time you failed and what you learned from that. I
Speaker 1: was challenged by working at a museum in my early career,
Speaker 1: and it was a surprise to me at the time
Speaker 1: because it wasn't that the work was hard. In fact,
Speaker 1: it was that I wanted to work harder, but there
Speaker 1: wasn't a place for it there at that moment, and
Speaker 1: it was I was really limited by the fact that
Speaker 1: I hadn't completed my PhD in terms of what type
Speaker 1: of work I was engaged to work on. And that
Speaker 1: was part of what motivated me to work in a
Speaker 1: more commercial, business minded environment because it felt more meritocratic.
Speaker 1: I wanted to work hard, and I wanted to work
Speaker 1: somewhere where that was innately valued. You have a fun job,
Speaker 1: tell us what you do for fun outside of the office.
Speaker 1: I have two kids, so that's pretty full time in
Speaker 1: my non working time. Um, two kids under the age
Speaker 1: of five, two boys. Um, so I got a lot
Speaker 1: of exercise just hanging out with them. I also like
Speaker 1: to spin. What sort of advice would you give somebody
Speaker 1: who's a millennial or recent college grad if they came
Speaker 1: to you and said, Hey, I am interested in a
Speaker 1: career in the world of art. So I have a
Speaker 1: conversation a lot. Uh, and I always look forward to
Speaker 1: it because I try to be more candid than I
Speaker 1: feel either people were with me or actually I think
Speaker 1: I just didn't ask enough. And um, it's usually you
Speaker 1: know what, This isn't any easier than any other field.
Speaker 1: You have to really love it. There's a scarcity of
Speaker 1: opportunity here. It's an oversubscribed career path. There are so
Speaker 1: many people coming out of school with art history degrees.
Speaker 1: And if you do love it, then take any job
Speaker 1: that you can get and keep going and it will
Speaker 1: inform your next step. And our final question, what is
Speaker 1: it that you know about the world of art today
Speaker 1: that you wish you knew back in two thousand and
Speaker 1: four when you were first getting started. That's such an
Speaker 1: interesting one. I speak Mandarin, Oh really, I I was.
Speaker 1: I wanted to learn Japanese as a kid, um, and
Speaker 1: because I thought it was an interesting culture, and not
Speaker 1: because I was so business minded. Um. But there's there
Speaker 1: are incredible opportunities in the art world right now in
Speaker 1: regional markets, especially Asia, particularly China. You were in London,
Speaker 1: did you want to spend more time in Asia? What
Speaker 1: what would you have done different if you had a
Speaker 1: perfect other than collecting certain works? What would you have
Speaker 1: changed in your career path had you known how the
Speaker 1: future would unfauld? No, I think I could do what
Speaker 1: I do, but also connect. Uh. It's very difficult to
Speaker 1: connect authentically with collectors um without speaking their language. And
Speaker 1: that makes perfect sense, um, and I respect that. But
Speaker 1: if I want to really help collectors in any other
Speaker 1: part of the world, UM, I need to speak their language.
Speaker 1: That's quite interesting. We have been speaking with Brooke Lampley.
Speaker 1: She is the incoming chair of Fine Arts at Sothabes.
Speaker 1: Thanks Brooke, thank you so much for doing this. If
Speaker 1: you enjoy this conversation, be sure and look up an
Speaker 1: inch or down an inch on Apple iTunes, SoundCloud, overcast
Speaker 1: uh or Bloomberg dot com wherever finer podcasts are sold,
Speaker 1: and you could see any of the other hundred and
Speaker 1: seventy or so such conversations that we've had. We love
Speaker 1: your comments, feedback and suggestions right to us at m
Speaker 1: IB podcast at Bloomberg dot net. I would be remiss
Speaker 1: if I did not thank my Cracks staff who helps
Speaker 1: us put together this conversation. Asian Taylor Riggs is my booker.
Speaker 1: Producer Medina Partwana is our audio engineer. Michael Batnick is
Speaker 1: our head of research. I'm Barry Ridholtz. You're listening to
Speaker 1: Masters in Business on Bloomberg Radio.