Become a Creator today!Start creating today - Share your story with the world!
Start for free
00:00:00
00:00:01
O’Keeffe on the Block
26 Plays4 years ago
In mid-May, two paintings by Georgia O’Keeffe sold at auction, one in each of the world’s top sales rooms. Green Oak Leaves fetched $1.15 million at Sotheby’s, while Autumn Leaf with White Flower brought nearly $5 million at Christie’s. This month on our Curious Objects podcast, we bring you Reagan Upshaw—critic, dealer, appraiser, and all-around bon vivant—to expound on the lovely filaments, sepals, and stamens of O’Keeffe's oeuvre.
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Recommended
Transcript
Early Life and Career Beginnings of Georgia O'Keeffe
00:00:10
Speaker
Hello, and welcome to Curious Objects.
00:00:12
Speaker
I'm Ben Miller.
00:00:14
Speaker
In a lot of ways, Georgia O'Keeffe's background is pretty unremarkable.
00:00:19
Speaker
She was born in Wisconsin to a family of dairy farmers, one of seven children, decided she wanted to be an artist.
00:00:25
Speaker
She studied at the Art Institute of Chicago and the Art Students League here in New York City.
Breakthrough and Marriage to Alfred Stieglitz
00:00:30
Speaker
Her breakthrough, if that's the right word for it, came around 1918 when the photographer Alfred Stieglitz took an interest in O'Keeffe's work and used his resources to exhibit and promote while subsidizing O'Keeffe and, of course, eventually marrying her.
00:00:45
Speaker
That relationship would end in disaster when O'Keeffe discovered her husband was having an affair.
O'Keeffe's Flower Paintings Become Iconic
00:00:51
Speaker
But that's a story for another day.
00:00:52
Speaker
O'Keeffe's frequent subject matter was objects from the natural world, which she depicted in stylized and simplified, almost schematized ways.
00:01:02
Speaker
By the 1920s, she was producing the flower paintings that would come to be associated with her more than anything else.
00:01:09
Speaker
One of these, White Flower No.
00:01:10
Speaker
1, sold for $44 million at auction in 2014, setting the world auction record for a female artist.
Recent Auction Sales of O'Keeffe's Work
00:01:18
Speaker
In recent days, two important O'Keefe paintings have been sold at auction.
00:01:21
Speaker
One, deaccessioned from the collection of the Newark Museum, is a picture of tree leaves, which sold at Sotheby's for $1.17 million.
00:01:30
Speaker
The other, an image of a white flower in front of a dark leaf, sold at Christie's for just shy of $5 million.
00:01:38
Speaker
Here to talk with me about both these sales is Regan
Art Dealer Regan Upshaw Discusses O'Keeffe
00:01:41
Speaker
Upshot.
00:01:41
Speaker
Regan is an art dealer, advisor, critic, and appraiser based in New York.
00:01:46
Speaker
I first encountered him through his blog at ReganUpshotFineArt.com, where he writes colorful commentary on art and the art market.
00:01:54
Speaker
Regan, thanks for being here.
00:01:55
Speaker
Thanks very much, Ben.
00:01:58
Speaker
I want to start by talking about O'Keeffe and the context for these two paintings.
00:02:03
Speaker
Green Oak Leaves, the one sold by Sotheby's on behalf of the Newark Museum for about $1.2 million, is 12 inches by 9 inches and depicts a cluster of leaves against a gray background, possibly suggesting that the viewer is looking up at them toward the sky.
00:02:21
Speaker
The other painting sold by Christie's for $5 million, Autumn Leaf with White Flower, is a 20 by 9 inch portrait.
Controversial Interpretations of O'Keeffe's Paintings
00:02:30
Speaker
And the floral subject matter is more quintessentially O'Keeffe.
00:02:34
Speaker
Now, she herself denied that any of her paintings represented female genitalia, but this painting is one of many of her works where I think it's not crazy to draw the comparison perfectly.
00:02:46
Speaker
It is a fact that flowers are the sexual organs of plants, so it's not a huge leak to go from one to the other.
00:02:57
Speaker
But the difference in price, I mean, first off, I'd point out these are really done a couple of years apart in the 20s.
00:03:04
Speaker
You mentioned that the green oak leaves is about 12 by 9, and that's something that surprises many people because they see flower paintings that are just reproductions, and they think they must be
00:03:15
Speaker
20 by 30 or whatever.
00:03:17
Speaker
She did lots and lots of paintings in the 8 by 10, 12 by 9 format.
00:03:23
Speaker
So many of them are small.
00:03:25
Speaker
They're generally framed that she did not like in general big frames.
00:03:30
Speaker
And generally they just have a very simple strip molding of metal around it, which, you know, conservators and curators hate because they don't really protect the painting.
00:03:41
Speaker
The one that sold for about $5 million had a much more fancy, almost shadow box frame put around it, which I doubt that she did, but it's the kind of thing that collectors and museum curators like to do.
00:03:57
Speaker
I think that it made, certainly, the painting was about, the $5 million, the flower painting was about twice as big as the other, and the frame made it look even bigger.
O'Keeffe's Cultural Impact and Iconic Status
00:04:08
Speaker
But I think the main thing there is just, you know, there are, with O'Keeffe, there are the flowers and then there's everything else.
00:04:16
Speaker
And when we think of O'Keeffe, some people may think of the landscapes with a pelvic bone or something like that.
00:04:25
Speaker
But it's generally the flowers that come to mind.
00:04:28
Speaker
And it's no surprise, and of course they're enormously popular, and it's no surprise that when the U.S. Postal Service did...
00:04:39
Speaker
I know Keith's stamp, and this was, oh, 20, 30 years ago.
00:04:42
Speaker
It was one of the big red poppies.
00:04:44
Speaker
And I heard, and I see no reason to doubt, that at that time, that stamp sold more copies than any other stamp except Elvis.
00:04:54
Speaker
Wow.
00:04:55
Speaker
And, you know, because, you know, everybody likes them.
00:04:58
Speaker
So they are the things that are sought after.
00:05:01
Speaker
But, of course, she did many subjects.
00:05:03
Speaker
She did Lake George.
00:05:05
Speaker
You know, she painted in Hawaii and, of course, all the desert landscapes and occasional things like a kachina doll or something like that.
00:05:13
Speaker
Well, yeah, so let's put these pictures in some historical context because she painted both of these paintings in the 1920s, which was right when her career and her reputation were starting to skyrocket.
00:05:25
Speaker
So what is it about these two paintings?
00:05:28
Speaker
I know they're very different, but what about them and what about her work in general during this period was setting her apart from other artists of the 1920s?
00:05:36
Speaker
Well, I...
00:05:41
Speaker
I'm going to say that they set her apart, and yet she's actually not as set apart as you might think.
00:05:48
Speaker
I've spoken to the fact there was another artist born the same year as O'Keefe was, Marguerite Thompson-Zorak, who was also painting and actually earlier showed in the famous Armory show of 1913.
00:06:04
Speaker
And so there were other modernist painters, female modernist painters, though O'Keefe always said, no, I'm not a female, I'm not a woman painter, I'm a painter.
00:06:18
Speaker
And she declined to be included in shows that were strictly women.
00:06:22
Speaker
But her bringing in close-ups, and I think this also is something that comes out of photography,
00:06:30
Speaker
at the time, this close-up focus on paintings.
O'Keeffe's Artistic Style and Modernism
00:06:34
Speaker
And an early reviewer of her work back in the 20s said the paintings made him feel like a bee.
00:06:42
Speaker
You know, he was slightly tongue-in-cheek.
00:06:46
Speaker
But to bring something in that big and just focus you on it, on the sepals and the stamens and the, you know,
00:06:55
Speaker
filaments and all the parts of a flower was something that really hadn't been done and and in Mokey's way of simplifying and and you know the curves there they are this sensual and yes they are sexual but even though she would deny that was something pretty new the thing about them though of course is that they are so
00:07:21
Speaker
immediately identifiable with O'Keeffe that no one can paint like that, you know, anymore.
00:07:27
Speaker
If you paint a flower close up, you know, slightly modernist style, you're coming, you know, your derivatives.
00:07:34
Speaker
Yeah, she paints like Georgia O'Keeffe.
00:07:36
Speaker
Yeah.
00:07:37
Speaker
So she really just, just, she cornered the market.
00:07:40
Speaker
She, she, and then I think that's the other thing about O'Keeffe.
O'Keeffe's Personal and Public Image Management
00:07:44
Speaker
And, and, you know, she was,
00:07:47
Speaker
It's interesting.
00:07:48
Speaker
She was, you know, you say, you know, come from a dairy farmer, but she had two other sisters who were involved in the arts.
00:07:56
Speaker
One of them, Ida O'Keefe, taught for years at SUNY Cortland.
00:08:01
Speaker
uh... what is now state university of new york at courtland uh... i would show keep basically ran her out of new york every day now there's only room for one ok for the arts and and i'd have been getting some of her due in recent years there have been uh... shows but okie was very uh... territorial and of course with uh... our relationship with the quits she had a promoter genius and uh...
00:08:28
Speaker
the heat without him you know and this is has nothing to say with her about her talent but without somebody pushing you no matter how talented you are you're going to have a much harder time getting traction than in the art market than if you've got someone who's in your corner so I think and O'Keeffe also had a certain genius for what today would be called branding
00:08:54
Speaker
There was a wonderful show at the Brooklyn Museum a couple of years ago.
00:08:59
Speaker
I think it was called Becoming O'Keeffe.
00:09:00
Speaker
I can't remember.
00:09:01
Speaker
But she very consciously curated her public image.
00:09:08
Speaker
She was an excellent seamstress.
00:09:10
Speaker
She made her own clothes.
00:09:13
Speaker
They were made in lines that would not be weird today.
00:09:19
Speaker
I mean, they were classic, simple lines, simple colors, a minimum of decoration.
00:09:25
Speaker
And that really, people got an idea.
00:09:29
Speaker
I think that she's someone that the average person, if they saw a photograph of her,
00:09:37
Speaker
and you said, who's this?
00:09:38
Speaker
I would suspect a fair number, a majority of kind of average people would be able to say, that's Georgia O'Keeffe.
00:09:46
Speaker
Yeah, and there are some really sort of... You know, Marsden Hartley or Arthur Dove or anyone like that, they wouldn't know.
00:09:53
Speaker
O'Keeffe is, you know, she was iconic.
00:09:56
Speaker
She wasn't conventionally beautiful, but the camera loved her.
00:10:01
Speaker
And she knew how to, I think maybe partly because of her working with Stieglitz, she knew how to pose for advantage.
00:10:10
Speaker
I was going to say, I mean, some of the most recognizable pictures of her are, of course, by Stieglitz.
00:10:17
Speaker
But, you know, Ansel Adams later, and it's amazing to me that even late in her life, and this would be in around, oh gosh, I don't know, the late 70s, early days, Calvin Klein...
00:10:29
Speaker
went out to new mexico and did a photo shoot using her to uh promote you know his latest where there she is her silver hair her black very severe black you know dress with a con just you know with nothing but say a concho belt you know looking out over the landscape you know and everybody would know oh that's georgio keep in new mexico i mean meanwhile
00:10:56
Speaker
Marguerite Zorak, who married and had a couple of kids, and, you know, she's a, by that time, you know, she's a dumpy grandmother.
00:11:01
Speaker
I mean, no one's, you know, it's inconceivable that someone would have used her, but O'Keefe had a real, though she, you know, could be and was, you know, reclusive or, you know, putting off, but that just, that just encouraged people.
00:11:16
Speaker
You know, there she was in her home in Abiquiu, and, you know,
00:11:21
Speaker
So I think that with O'Keefe, as with someone like Andy Warhol, you know, the persona is as big, really, as the artwork.
00:11:36
Speaker
And you really can't think of one without thinking about the other.
00:11:39
Speaker
Unlike, again, Marsden Hartley or Max Weber or any other number of American modernist painters.
00:11:45
Speaker
And do you think that's why the flower pictures are so much more desirable, because they're so closely identified with her personality and her brand?
00:11:54
Speaker
I think so.
00:11:55
Speaker
Though you could certainly make a case that, you know, those paintings you did of Ghost Ranch or an Abacute where you've got a Western landscape and a, you know, a ram skull, you know, there.
00:12:05
Speaker
And maybe, you know, those are, again, you look at those and you know they're O'Keeffe.
00:12:10
Speaker
But certainly, you know, who doesn't like flowers?
00:12:13
Speaker
Everybody likes flowers.
00:12:14
Speaker
That's a fair point.
00:12:16
Speaker
Have them there, you know, and you have to give her credit, too, because flowers traditionally have been kind of, you know, denigrated as, oh, well, that's something ladies paint, you know, well-bred ladies in the Victorian times would paint watercolors of flowers.
00:12:32
Speaker
And, you know, that she could take a subject that was too often just seen as the...
00:12:38
Speaker
the amateurs province and to say no
00:12:45
Speaker
look at this you're not looking at i'm going to bring you in close i'm not going to have a nice well you know uh... made flower arrangement in a vase i'm going to bring you right in so there's almost something scientific about it because i'm in there and of course anyone looking at that can identify the you know that the species of flower but it's almost scientific in its close-up and yet it's still so sensuous and uh... you know i think that just speaks to everybody
00:13:14
Speaker
Yeah, but it's interesting.
00:13:16
Speaker
I mean, so one of the pictures we're talking about, this green oak leaves painting that sold for about 1.2 million.
Controversy in the Art Market: O'Keeffe's Paintings
00:13:25
Speaker
And, you know, that's obviously not a flower picture.
00:13:28
Speaker
And there's a little bit of controversy around it in that it is a museum deaccession.
00:13:35
Speaker
And, you know, in a recent episode, I talked with the director of the Philadelphia Museum of Art, Timothy Rubb, about the
00:13:43
Speaker
very complicated considerations around museum deaccessions.
00:13:47
Speaker
And there were objections to the sale of this Georgia O'Keeffe painting, along with a number of other pictures that were included in the same sale.
00:13:55
Speaker
You know, I'm curious, what are your thoughts about the museum's decision to sell that picture?
00:14:02
Speaker
In general, you know, on general principle, I'm opposed to deaccessioning.
00:14:07
Speaker
And I'm certainly opposed to deaccessioning for anything except
00:14:13
Speaker
accessing other using the funds as is permitted by the Association of American museums to buy.
00:14:21
Speaker
If you've got, and I don't know, I should have looked up, but I don't know how many O'Keeffe's the Newark Museum has.
00:14:29
Speaker
If it's got five of them and they, okay, if this one's just going to be sitting in the basement in storage,
00:14:40
Speaker
then why not let it get out and and and be seen but i think the danger of course in the pandemic brought it home and the bur the whole controversy about the berkshire museums deaccessioning stuff when you start eating your seed corn so to speak when you start selling off your assets then the you know that why people come to the museum to see it then you're you're going down a very uh uh you know dangerous uh road and uh
00:15:07
Speaker
So, again, I don't know.
00:15:09
Speaker
I'm sure museums are always broken, the best of times.
00:15:12
Speaker
And I'm sure that the Newark Museum, you know, though it draws from northeastern New Jersey, you know, I'm sure it's had a rough time, the pandemic.
00:15:21
Speaker
So if they've got five others, then, okay, they had to do something to keep going.
00:15:27
Speaker
But I would hope they would use the funds to buy it.
00:15:31
Speaker
you know, and particularly since this is a work by a woman artist.
00:15:35
Speaker
I mean, there is a move these days to deaccession to acquire works by women and artists of color, and that's fine.
00:15:42
Speaker
In this case, you're getting rid of a work by a woman.
00:15:46
Speaker
So I hope that they would use some of the funds to buy works by, you know, other women.
00:15:53
Speaker
Now, both of these sales, both of these pictures, sold either within or close to within the auction estimates.
00:16:03
Speaker
Do you think these were fair prices?
00:16:06
Speaker
Yeah, I mean, one thing about, you know, it's a crazy thing that I can, it's very hard to explain to a civilian.
00:16:14
Speaker
You know, what's a painting worth?
00:16:16
Speaker
Well, it's worth that somebody will pay for it.
00:16:18
Speaker
It has no practical value.
00:16:22
Speaker
So,
00:16:23
Speaker
I think that, I think, you know, the auction houses, these particularly because of the pandemic, have had to be conservative with their estimates.
00:16:32
Speaker
And I certainly think that five or seven was for a small, you know, 12 by nine inch painting that wasn't a flower.
00:16:39
Speaker
It's very attractive, but it's just leaves.
00:16:42
Speaker
I think that was a conservative and a realistic estimate and it went past that and that's great.
00:16:48
Speaker
I'm happy for them.
00:16:50
Speaker
So, you know, I can't...
00:16:53
Speaker
I think it'd be very hard to sell, you know, even the flower that sold for $44 million all this year.
00:17:01
Speaker
So that was a gymsum weed, I believe.
00:17:03
Speaker
You would have a hard time kind of selling that flower.
00:17:07
Speaker
Today, I mean, the market, the modernist market has largely recovered from the, you know, the recession where everything dropped, rolled back about 30 percent at least.
00:17:18
Speaker
You know, some things have not recovered as well.
00:17:20
Speaker
You know, Hudson River things and Victorian genre and that kind of stuff.
00:17:24
Speaker
But modernism is good.
00:17:26
Speaker
And again, if you know, if you're the man in the street and you know the name of only, you know, one modernist artist, it's going to be George O'Keefe, you know.
00:17:36
Speaker
Yeah.
00:17:37
Speaker
Well, and
Gender Identity and O'Keeffe's Art
00:17:38
Speaker
it's interesting.
00:17:38
Speaker
I mean, as you say, there's, of course, burgeoning interest in communities of artists who've been underrepresented in the past, women, people of color.
00:17:48
Speaker
And Georgia O'Keeffe, it sounds like, was not altogether comfortable with that designation.
00:17:54
Speaker
And yet, you know, it's hard to avoid categorizing her in that way regardless.
00:18:02
Speaker
Yeah.
00:18:03
Speaker
And of course, these days, she might push it because, I mean, you know, if you were talking to someone in 1930 or 35, a young artist about their work, they might have discussed it in terms of like Marxist, you know, economic things.
00:18:18
Speaker
And, you know, during the abstract expressions years, you would talk about the art, you know, the canvas is this arena in which
00:18:25
Speaker
you dance and then you know you get into post-modern.
00:18:28
Speaker
Today any, if you talk to young artists, you know the vast majority, if you say what's your art about, they're going to say my work is about gender and identity.
00:18:38
Speaker
And so I very much think that if Georgia were today or the Georgia O'Keeffe's of today, they foreground their gender and they would not be at all
00:18:54
Speaker
averse to people finding sexual references in their works.
00:19:03
Speaker
Well, and she was, as you've described, she had a keen market sense and a self-promotional sense.
00:19:09
Speaker
And so maybe she would see... She was also at a time when women, and it's not over yet, but to be a woman artist, you better be tough.
00:19:20
Speaker
I mean, you're there in the...
00:19:23
Speaker
in the ring with all these guys, and they're all tempted to pat you on the, oh, isn't she sweet?
00:19:32
Speaker
Oh, nice little pat, pat, pat.
00:19:34
Speaker
To hold your own as a serious artist and say, look, I am worthy of real consideration, she couldn't foreground her female.
00:19:45
Speaker
She obviously never denied it, but she wasn't going to stress it.
00:19:50
Speaker
Yeah, well, and clearly her relationship with Stieglitz is a very complicated part of that picture.
00:19:56
Speaker
If we were doing another podcast episode, I'd want to dive deeper into that.
00:20:01
Speaker
But we'll save that for another time, I think.
00:20:06
Speaker
We'll be back in a minute with Reagan Upshot.
00:20:09
Speaker
Thanks for listening and for your support.
00:20:11
Speaker
There are images of these O'Keefe paintings online at themagazineantiques.com slash podcast and on magazine's Instagram at antiquesmag.
00:20:20
Speaker
My Instagram is at objectiveinterest.
00:20:23
Speaker
If you enjoy Curious Objects and want to support our work, please take just a minute to leave a rating and review on Apple Podcasts or wherever you're listening now.
00:20:33
Speaker
And if you have ideas or feedback for us, you can email me at CuriousObjectsPodcast at gmail.com.
00:20:40
Speaker
I'd love to hear from you.
00:20:42
Speaker
Next episode, I'll be speaking with interior designer Thomas Jane about the history of the use of antiques in the home.
00:20:51
Speaker
And we're also coming up on the 50th episode of Curious Objects, and we'll be doing something special for that.
00:20:57
Speaker
So stay tuned.
00:21:02
Speaker
I want to change gears and talk a bit about your career in the art world, which
Regan Upshaw's Career and Market Changes
00:21:08
Speaker
goes back to 1981.
00:21:08
Speaker
And, you know, obviously a lot of business has, yes, well, you know, there have been plenty of changes in the industry since then.
00:21:20
Speaker
But of course, there are many things that have stayed the same.
00:21:25
Speaker
Now, you started working for a fellow that some listeners may know of, Iris Benearman.
00:21:33
Speaker
I stumbled into that.
00:21:34
Speaker
I had come to New York with a wife and a baby and was looking for a job.
00:21:39
Speaker
I figured I would get one in publishing because I had done that in Chicago, but I had been a grad student at the University of Chicago and
00:21:47
Speaker
one of my professors call me in New York in Brooklyn to say hey look iris spanderman second banana is leaving and then he's looking for someone so I I went to see him and he you know he was I he was the boot camp of the art world you know people left in one day or six months or stuff but but if you don't cut it if you could cut it you got a lot of responsibility very fast and
00:22:14
Speaker
And, you know, I learned so much from him.
00:22:18
Speaker
I'm still... But on the other hand, the art market has changed so much since then.
00:22:23
Speaker
I mean, the transparency, the enormous influx of auctions, and the very thin, almost invisible line now between auction house and private dealer or...
00:22:40
Speaker
Well, tell me a little bit before we dive full on into the contemporary market.
00:22:46
Speaker
Tell me a little more about this world that you were entering with Ira and what skills he was trying to teach you.
00:22:54
Speaker
Well, he taught me many things.
00:22:57
Speaker
But I mean, the main thing back then was that there was, you know, auctions had begun.
00:23:04
Speaker
Obviously, they'd been around for years, but in the 70s,
00:23:07
Speaker
the auctions made the decision to go into the kind of what we call the retail market.
00:23:14
Speaker
When I joined Aira, for example, there were beginning to be estimates, but they were in the catalog on a separate page in the back of the catalog.
00:23:23
Speaker
And once a year, a book would be published of auction sales, but it had no illustration to just say, you know, Joe Smith, landscape, 12 by 14, $4,000.
00:23:31
Speaker
So,
00:23:35
Speaker
auctioneers or rather dealers had so much inside knowledge that the average you know collector didn't have and also there were you know the on the addicts of America were not empty I mean people came in IRA ran big ads in antiques magazine that said we will pay over a million dollars for highly important paintings by
00:24:00
Speaker
you know Albert Bierstadt and you know Cropsey and Church Cole and all these people so we got calls you know every day and people would bring things in and so it was a we had the knowledge you know then the average person didn't really have it but options became much more you know how they they stress themselves they they began to publish the
00:24:27
Speaker
the estimates and put them right on the wall there they became much more user-friendly and they cease to be a wholesale outlet to the trade and they became you know they became retail so it became you back when I was started dealers owned most of their inventory they would buy it and then you know mark it up and sell it over the years that became harder and harder because they couldn't buy it at auction anymore because all your clients are there bidding against you so you can't you know you can't
00:24:55
Speaker
take it there and you know again the number of paintings still being out there decreased and so I mean nowadays most dealers in older art most of what they own is is consigned from someone like it's very hard to buy it and then to hold inventory you know I mean back I a friend of mine who was with Kennedy gallery who knew Kennedy galleries in the old days he said back then you know they had inventory equal to
00:25:25
Speaker
like seven years expenses.
00:25:27
Speaker
I mean, nowadays, I'd be amazed for dealers to own inventory that was even two years worth of expenses.
00:25:35
Speaker
I mean, it's just, it has changed.
00:25:37
Speaker
And of course, again, all the databases and the fact that you can send an image and just click and send, it's completely changed.
00:25:49
Speaker
Well, okay, so you've mentioned that auctioneers are now acting much more like retailers.
Auction Market Dynamics and Challenges
00:25:57
Speaker
Of course, they have full-on customer management departments and vast marketing budgets.
00:26:04
Speaker
Obviously, in some ways, that puts the squeeze on dealers because they have new competition.
00:26:10
Speaker
And in the decorative arts world where I work, you know, I'd argue that it's had an upward pressure on prices, but at the same time, a downward pressure on quality and connoisseurship.
00:26:21
Speaker
But, you know, of course, I'm biased as a dealer.
00:26:25
Speaker
And to be fair, so are you.
00:26:27
Speaker
But that's okay.
00:26:29
Speaker
I mean, would you agree with that assessment?
00:26:32
Speaker
Is that happening in the painting world, too?
00:26:35
Speaker
You know, the auction houses have...
00:26:39
Speaker
put an upward pressure on prices for masterpieces and a downward pressure and this is the case in all antiques I think you know the the masterpieces can still bring real money the I'm I'm lesser stuff you know it's hard because young people generally go that what we call brown furniture you know the Chippendales and the Apple whites in the Queen Anne and stuff like that the days when
00:27:09
Speaker
young people you made executive vice president you went out and bought a a set of you know Georgian dining room to mark your new status you know those are because they took on and people I think also you talk about connoisseurship there is much less in the terms of connoisseurship now we are into
00:27:33
Speaker
kind of lifestyle auctions where, you know, yes, they might buy a Georgia O'Keeffe, but they would also buy, you know, LeBron James' game-winning tennis shoes.
00:27:45
Speaker
I mean, you know, I say that only slightly facetiously, and there's no point in it.
00:27:50
Speaker
I'm not putting it down.
00:27:52
Speaker
I mean, the old days, you know, we loved the old collectors, the people who really were passionate and who studied and even with modest budgets were able to
00:28:02
Speaker
to study and to take their time and to trade up and knew everything about the painting and the field.
00:28:09
Speaker
And there are still a few people who do that.
00:28:12
Speaker
But generally now it's more, okay, we'll take one from column A, one from column B, one from column C. It's just different.
00:28:19
Speaker
And there's no point in complaining about it because the tide is coming in.
00:28:26
Speaker
It'll go out at some point, but I don't know when.
00:28:29
Speaker
Well, and as you mentioned, of course, there's also the matter of price transparency.
00:28:33
Speaker
It used to be, well, the way that our firm and many firms in our antique silver dealing field used operate is, you could go, and here I'm talking about 50 plus years ago, but you could go down to Park Burnett and look at all the pieces of silver that are coming up in the sale.
00:28:58
Speaker
And you could pick out, based on your connoisseurial knowledge, the pieces that you thought were the best 5 or 10 or 15 pieces in the sale.
00:29:09
Speaker
You would bid what you needed to buy them.
00:29:10
Speaker
It didn't really matter particularly how much.
00:29:14
Speaker
You'd bring them back to the showroom and you'd mark them up 50% to 100%, maybe more if it was a particularly good find.
00:29:22
Speaker
And you'd sit around in your shop until somebody came around and bought it.
00:29:25
Speaker
And that was a pretty good business model.
00:29:28
Speaker
And it made a lot of people a lot of money.
00:29:31
Speaker
Now, that's not quite so easy when what you paid for the object is published on the internet.
00:29:38
Speaker
And the first thing anybody does when they look at it is to Google it.
00:29:41
Speaker
And they know exactly what profit margin you're making.
00:29:45
Speaker
Now, you know, it's... God forbid you should make more than that.
00:29:49
Speaker
Well, you know, it's funny because of course there are two sides to the coin.
00:29:55
Speaker
And on the one hand, you know, it does seem sort of crazy to say, well,
00:30:00
Speaker
there shouldn't be transparency.
00:30:01
Speaker
You shouldn't know how much this piece sold for in a sale.
00:30:05
Speaker
You know, that should be secret information to the trade, and we should be able to charge whatever prices we want.
00:30:10
Speaker
On the other hand, you know, it can create these strange incentives where, you know, often these days I speak with my colleagues and with our colleagues in other businesses in the field and talk about how we would rather buy something for a higher price sometimes at auction.
00:30:27
Speaker
because it sends a signal that it's a more valuable object.
00:30:32
Speaker
And if it sells for too little, you know, it used to be you would get excited that you had made a great find that nobody else had recognized.
00:30:39
Speaker
But now when somebody Googles it and finds out it sold for much less than what you think it's worth, they get suspicious.
00:30:46
Speaker
Well, I think I always quoted Alfred Krauss, the book dealer, he was being interviewed once and
00:30:53
Speaker
someone was asking him about a book or a series of books that he had bought at auctions and sold, you know, like six months later for three times as much.
00:31:05
Speaker
And Krause said, when I find a dollar lying on the sidewalk, I don't sell it for 50 cents.
00:31:13
Speaker
And, you know, I mean, it's part of it to say, look, man, I saw it, I recognize it, and I'm, you know, and you've got to convince people that your eye or your expertise is worth it, but
00:31:23
Speaker
And one thing about buying it and owning it, you know, at least you've got your, it's yours.
00:31:29
Speaker
You know, I mean, you can wait.
00:31:32
Speaker
If you've got the wherewithal to wait, you can just wait.
00:31:36
Speaker
A story that Ira used to tell, he was once talking with another dealer.
00:31:42
Speaker
They wanted to buy a painting together by Theodore Robinson, and it was in a private collection, and the dealer was saying, well, Ira, what do you think we can do?
00:31:50
Speaker
What do you think we can ask for this?
00:31:52
Speaker
And I said, well, if we buy it for 250,000, we'll ask 350,000.
00:31:58
Speaker
If we buy it for 150,000, we'll ask 500,000.
00:32:03
Speaker
And what he was saying was, if we get this right, if we buy this, you know, if we're into this painting right, we'll just wait because it's a masterpiece.
00:32:13
Speaker
Someone eventually is going to, you know, come and recognize this.
00:32:19
Speaker
And meanwhile, you don't have quite as much capital tied up in it.
00:32:23
Speaker
Yeah, yeah, exactly.
00:32:24
Speaker
So with not as much capital, you can afford to wait.
00:32:27
Speaker
But I think, you know, things change.
00:32:30
Speaker
You know, certainly back in the early 80s when inflation was going crazy and stuff, you know, every month you didn't sell something, it was costing you X dollars, you know.
00:32:39
Speaker
So you had to turn it.
00:32:42
Speaker
Yeah.
00:32:43
Speaker
So as we look toward the future of art collecting, I'm going to ask you to be an oracle for us here.
Future of Art Collecting
00:32:51
Speaker
What is it that makes you, let me phrase it in an optimistic way, what makes you most excited as you imagine the coming, I don't know, 5, 10, 20 years of art collecting?
00:33:05
Speaker
I think, good question.
00:33:10
Speaker
You know, it's not going to go back.
00:33:12
Speaker
I think it'll again continue to be a much more mixed market where people, instead of collecting deeply in one field, will travel, you know, quickly across many and then you can complain about shortened attention spans or whatever.
00:33:31
Speaker
But that's going to continue to happen.
00:33:34
Speaker
But I think there is still always going to be a place for...
00:33:40
Speaker
that magical thing with that we call an artwork I you can talk about in F T's and you know all this stuff and that fine great but you know I I've always said you need to look at a photo if you Google the Mona Lisa in the Louvre venue could look up photos in there you know there's the painting on the wall and there are all these people you know pushing and shoving trying to get photos selfies of themselves with the with the Mona Lisa and there's a couple of guards standing there and I said what if
00:34:10
Speaker
the guard were to say to those people, oh, well, actually, this isn't the Mona Lisa is too valuable to be seen.
00:34:16
Speaker
So we've got it in the basement in a bomb proof vault.
00:34:18
Speaker
But we have experts, you know, create an exact replica and the world's greatest experts in Leonardo da Vinci standing where you're standing would be unable to tell the difference.
00:34:29
Speaker
And we put it in the original frame behind its glass.
00:34:32
Speaker
Right.
00:34:32
Speaker
So it's the same exact experience.
00:34:35
Speaker
I mean, you know, you're seeing exactly the same thing.
00:34:39
Speaker
Would the people stay and look?
00:34:41
Speaker
No, of course.
00:34:42
Speaker
This magic with which we invest objects, it's crazy, it's insane, and yet I think that will continue.
00:34:55
Speaker
So a great painting will continue to be a great painting, and there will be people.
00:35:02
Speaker
I mean, there's always people playing with the market and people trying to goose this artist and that artist.
00:35:09
Speaker
but you know sentimental as it may sound or naive as it may sound I think in the end quality quality will come out something well made and that you know that will last someone will like that and someone will want that and prices may go up and they may come down but if you buy what you really like then
00:35:32
Speaker
you're golden, you know?
00:35:33
Speaker
You'll always love it.
00:35:36
Speaker
Or if you don't love it, then if it's good, you'll sell it in a few years and find something else that you love.
00:35:44
Speaker
But I think that desire to own something beautiful will stay.
00:35:50
Speaker
So you're saying we may be all crazy and irrational, but we're going to keep being crazy and irrational, so it's kind of okay.
00:35:57
Speaker
Oh, it's, you know, since Neanderthal...
00:35:59
Speaker
People begin collecting pretty rocks to put on their, you know, I mean, that's enough.
00:36:05
Speaker
That's in our DNA, really.
00:36:07
Speaker
And that will stay.
00:36:11
Speaker
Well, Reagan Upshaw, thanks so much for your time.
00:36:14
Speaker
Is there anything else you want to get off your chest while I got you here?
00:36:17
Speaker
No, no.
00:36:18
Speaker
I mean, I'm just, just buy what you like.
00:36:21
Speaker
Buy what you like and love it.
00:36:24
Speaker
That's all.
00:36:26
Speaker
Well, you heard it here.
00:36:28
Speaker
Thanks, Reagan.
00:36:29
Speaker
Thanks, Ben.
00:36:30
Speaker
Bye-bye.
00:36:32
Speaker
That's our show.
00:36:32
Speaker
Thanks for listening.
00:36:34
Speaker
We'll be back next time with Thomas Jane.
00:36:36
Speaker
Very much looking forward to that.
00:36:38
Speaker
In the meantime, today's episode was edited and produced by Sammy Delati.
00:36:42
Speaker
Our music is by Trap Rabbit.
00:36:45
Speaker
And I'm Ben Miller.