Christie's - Parisa

Christies 11/3/06

I took the BDFV to Rockefeller Center. The walk through Rockefeller Center leading up to the entrance of Christie’s was very different than any of the other places we have visited. Midtown Manhattan has an opulence about it that is much flashier than Gramercy Park and more modern than the Upper West Side.

We arrived an hour early and noted that many of the other visitors were old men wearing expensive looking scarves. Even the air in Christie’s smelled expensive. During our wait we were invited to look around. We saw mainly impressionist/modern paintings and paper drawings. Some of the names that stood out were Picasso, Renoir, Matisse and Chagall. Again, people there were predominantly over 50 and male, very affluent and men accompanied any of the women there.

Mr. Wahlgren was very warm. He first showed us the skybox that is reserved for very private clients. I could understand why a place like Christie’s that sells pieces for millions of dollars on a regular basis would have options for certain clients to preserve their privacy and security. If I was bidding millions of dollars on a painting, I may or may not want the world to know this piece was in my possession or sitting in my home. The fact that Christie’s caters to their clients shows how much business dominates the art world. Mr. Wahlgren actually emphasized the fusion of business and art at Christie’s. One of the rooms we walked through held $100 million worth of paintings alone.

We learned more Mr. Berland’s Shakespeare collection that Mr. Wahlgren auctioned off himself. When Mr. Berland began to have the means, he started collecting Shakespeare and then bought the First Four Folios from John Fleeming in New York in 1962. One of the mentioned aspects of selling collectibles is that the world sees you as a collector when you sell your pieces and you become a part of the catalog of owners. Berland sold his collection while he was still alive because he wanted to know to whom the pieces were going to. The entire collection sold for $13.5 million and made it to the Top 10 of book collections. Among book collectors, the First Folio is the cornerstone of great literature. It comes up every ten years at an auction. Christie’s holds the record over Sutheby’s. Their copy was missing a leaf and that damages the value. It may have been imperfect from its publication, but it sold for £3.5 million, which came out a little under the dollar record held by Christie’s five years ago. The sale took place three weeks after 9/11. Because of the timing, they didn’t know if people would be in the state of mind to buy such material. Mr. Berland came to both houses, Sutheby’s and Christie’s to look at the collections and they had to come up with a proposal of how they would market the auction (they tour it around the world, it gets press and is celebrated when it’s shown by Christie’s). A sale typically takes six months to prepare for. The catalog was prepared for the proposal. Wahlgren informed us that the rarity of Shakespeare is in its completeness because so many copies have missing leaves at the beginning and end. The bidder that eventually won this copy was on the phone with the Christie’s staff and the under bidder in the room was from a dealer from the west coast called Heritage Books.

According to Wahlgren Librarians know the significance of the books but at Christie’s they know the value and the “numbers” of the books. Librarians always insist on wearing gloves but the auctioneers prefer to use clean hands because you’re more likely to drop or rip pages because you exert more energy when wearing gloves. Regarding preservation/conservation: they’ll usually just have a box to protect a piece. They keep it in a glass jewelry case and if a potential buyer wants to see it one of the staff will come and take it out. It’s then stored in a room temperature-controlled vault downstairs. The binding is desired in its original form and the Provenance (list of owners) is very important.

Regarding the sale of pieces: If the price is too high, they scare away customers with “sticker shock” but if it’s too low, the seller gets upset. The Second Folio is more common than the Third Folio so it’s worth $80-120,000, whereas the Third Folio, even through published at a later date, went for $500,000. In order to research the history and value of books they consult New York Public Library and they are close with the Grollier Club and now they do a lot of work online. They also have book catalogers on staff. John Wolfson, one of the three owners of the First Folio in North America is a curator of the Rare Books collection at the Globe Theatre in London. The First Folio made up for half of the sale of the Berland collection at $5.6 million. The sale was $6.1 million because the buyer and seller pay commission. There is a 15% commission on the buyer side.

This was my first visit to Christie’s and one of the most memorable parts was entering one of the rooms of impressionist/modern art and feeling exhausted and overwhelmed by all the visual stimulation. One of the rooms actually had so many paintings crammed side by side that it looked like a well lit storage room! That Christie’s auctioned off one of Shakespeare’s First Folio’s for $5.6 million demonstrates that Shakespeare really is in a strata of art and culture revered by and reserved for the wealthy and elite.