Old paintings, big spenders

This week I went to my first art auction at Christie’s.  Firstly, I was surprised they would let me in as I hadn’t given them any promise of making a bid and therefore did not provide any financial information.  Much to my surprise, their auctions are open to the public (I’m guessing that’s not the case for the truly celebrity status sales, e.g. selling a Monet).

So there I am, making my presence known, not because I’m making a scene, but rather because I’m the only person in the room watching the audience and not the auctioneer and artwork.  I had already gone to the show room the day before to see the Victorian and British Impressionist paintings that were to be auctioned the next day, so I was much more interested in how an auction works, who attends them, what they do and who buys what.  I left with far more questions than I came with.  For example:

• Who are these people that sit or stand behind the desks and make bids for people via phone?  They’re not wearing Christie’s uniforms or name tags.  Can anyone who is a representing a bidder on the phone show up and snag a seat, first come for serve?  The auctioneer seemed to know them all by name, so I’m going to assume for the time being that I should not sit behind the desks because I seem to have two critical requirements for this post: 1. claim to know someone who may want to bid and 2. a cell phone.
• Do the mobile phone companies here list the auction houses as priority locations to ensure service?  Can you imagine that customer service call?  “May I ask why are you canceling your service with us, sir?” “Because you dropped my call while I was bidding on a £30,000 painting.”
• What if no one bids?  Does Christie’s claim to be the first bidder to get people competitive and cut their loses if no one bits?
• How do they validate the work?  They must have a team of experts evaluating each item ensuring that customers don’t come back claiming they were sold a fraud.  That sounds like a lot of overhead, but let me assure you, from my one observation, Christie’s does not seem to not hurting for money.  I lost track of sales after about 20 of 150+ paintings.

What did I learn by people watching?  Bidding on art is like playing poker, you have to have your game face on or you’ll pay more than necessary; auctioneers have phenomenal peripheral vision; when someone wants something, they’ll pay an absurd amount of money for it (see observation 1 bad-poker-face-bidders); and the recession has certainly bypassed a small number of fortunate individuals.