The art world has collapsed into the world of commerce, and while there may be celebrations at Christie’s, there is an almost apocalyptic level of gloom everywhere else. The level of disgust is deeper and more visceral. But something different is in the air today. And the fear of mass commercialization has been a perennial theme of art at least since the days of the pop artists a half century ago. Going back as far as the Renaissance, artists have had an uneasy relationship to patrons and the money they offer. Jed Perl of the New Republic wrote: “At Christie’s and Sotheby’s some of the wealthiest members of society, the people who can’t believe in anything until it’s been monetized, are trashing one of our last hopes for transcendence.” Peter Schjeldahl of the New Yorker said that for a critic to argue about the insane prices being paid today for art would be to “don a clown costume and to join the circus,” but he put on the costume long enough to note that, “the present art market plainly won’t quit until it hits the end of the line,” which he defined as “psychosis” and “ruinous passion.” Bloomberg News put the sale into global context: “Collectors are bidding up art prices as easy-money policies among central banks and rising global stock markets boost the fortunes of the world’s richest people.”Īnd the critics, once again, bristled at writing yet another story about yet another epic sale. Some worried about speculation and a market bubble. Magazines that cater to the business-minded and the super wealthy parsed the details of the sale and what it meant for investors. Those were both new records, but with records shattered on a regular basis, they don’t mean much anymore. Included in that sale were a triptych by the Irish-born painter Francis Bacon, which sold for $142.4 million dollars (claimed to be the most expensive work of art ever sold at auction), and a Jeff Koons “Balloon Dog,” which sold for $58.4 million (the highest price paid for a work by a living artist).
And they were still giddy from one day in November when they sold almost $700 million of art. For the fourth year in a row, Christie’s broke its own record, with more than $7 billion in sales. As 2013 came to an end, the art world took stock of its remarkable fortunes: Leading auction houses announced records for total sales, as new wealth and new collectors clamored for art and collectibles.
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