Page 61 - Studio International - April 1966

Art prices current

Critical faculties in the saleroom by George Savage

It is impossible to comment adequately on the art- escent value as wall decoration. It does not differ not lacked art of importance, and, especially in
market without adopting a critical standpoint. One very much from chimpanzee art, dearly bought at relation to the rubbish, a great deal of it is under-
must attempt to separate good art from bad, the a thousand dollars a canvas-the current price. valued. If, for instance, a chimpanzee canvas is
enduring from the trivial, because judgements Fundamentally the value in terms of money of worth a thousand dollars, surely a Braque or a
based solely on comparison of prices are valueless. any work of art is what it costs in time and materials Kokoschka is cheap at fifty or a hundred times as
Popular judgements on contemporary art often to produce. The added value is the price of enter- much ? But they are among the most sought of
make reading which is sad and richly comic by tainment to the purchaser. This varies in its nature twentieth-century artists, and it is a sobering thought
turns, and it is a positive relief to turn to a sale- and quality from keeping up with (or surpassing) that a good Sickert, for instance, is only considered
catalogue from one or other of the large auction- the Joneses to providing material for mature and to be worth five or six times as much. I have no
rooms. The works are there listed and baldly serious study. Let us not be too superior about the doubt that there are many as yet unknown artists
described; the rest is a matter for the bidder's Joneses, however. The principal function of art has doing notable work who would be glad to achieve
judgement. If publicity hand-outs are flamboyant always been to act as a status symbol of one kind the chimpanzee's price-level.
in their claims-if they describe an exercise in or another, even though the artist does not see his Today it is much easier to recognize novelty than
barrel-scraping as an assemblage of masterpieces work in this light, and this is apt to put a premium to estimate quality. Yet novelty, per se, is not what
-at least experience soon teaches us by how much on what is fashionable at the moment. art is about. An artist may legitimately devise new
they ought to be discounted. I see nothing to be said against buying art as an techniques if what he has to say cannot be ade-
Although sale-room prices are not the only yard- investment. In these days of punitive taxation it quately recorded by the old ones, but to adopt a
stick by which the value of a painting ought to be would be foolish to ignore this aspect, and since new technique merely for its own sake regardless
measured, they often have the merit of being the works acquired for this purpose must necessarily of whether it adds anything worthwhile to the re-
most realistic. No matter how lush or persuasive the have some permanent value, the shrewd investment cording of human experience and imagination is
prose, what good judges will pay for a painting in buyer must be a perceptive critic as well. The most valueless.
hard cash is probably the most reliable guide to certain way to choose wisely is to substitute Quality, in these days, is very difficult to estimate.
what it is worth otherwise. Nothing else sharpens judgement for attention to the ephemera of fashion An appraisal of this kind depends on an intimate
the critical faculties to so fine an edge, and the only and the persuasions of publicity. acquaintance with bad art as well as good, and an
rational test of monetary value is, after all, what a Works likely to achieve permanence are those ability to compare what has been produced in the
willing buyer will pay to a willing seller. with something to say beyond the merely trite and past with what is being produced today. Not only
But the sale-room can never be the ultimate test the banal. I find nothing worthy of preservation in must it take into account the care and skill and
of value. This must always depend on what the art based on the most vulgar kind of twentieth- talent which the artist has brought to his work, but
painting has to say, whether it has been worth century exploitation, commercial advertising; nor it must be able to assess the ideas which motivated
saying, and how well it has been said. This is an on that which records the aspirations of an emerg- it in the first place. Work of lasting importance is
age of pseudo-philosophies and pseudo-sciences. ing proletariat, to cull a phrase from `with-it' ex- not concerned with trivialities.
The artist, unaccustomed to the rigours of critical ponents of the dismal science. Optical illusions, Differences of opinion as to the ultimate value of
analysis, is often misled, and, as Max Friedlander once the amusement of children, and to be found works of art, financial and otherwise, are inevit-
once remarked, a true artist is not concerned with illustrating text-books of applied psychology, are able, although the limits once set to such dis-
philosophies. not art, whatever else they may be. The artist's agreements have now largely disappeared. The
If the painter's vision is worthy of respect, skill as concern ought not to be with this kind of trivia, and inclusion of an artist's work in these pages means
a craftsman is still essential to record it. The charla- if art truly mirrors the spirit of man, such work is that, in my opinion, it has some permanent value,
tan and the congenitally unskilful may devise surely a crudely-distorting mirror. although not necessarily at the price quoted. This
techniques which require little or no manual skill, Although the activities of a few who try to pro- is an entirely personal judgement, but my remarks
but, as a work of art, the product is all too often voke sensational publicity have had an undue share may be helpful to the reader who wants to know
arrant nonsense, even though it may have an evan- of attention in the popular press, the century has the principles on which I base my selections.

Recent New York prices from Parke-Bernet Galleries
Pierre Albert Marquet Hilaire Germain Edgar Degas Claude Monet
Docks a Hambourg c. 1909 Trois danseuses debout près d'un portant £14,800 ( $40,000) Nympheas
£7,140 ( $21,000)
£41,320 ( $112,500)
25 1/2 x 31 3/4 in. Signed. From Mme Pierre Albert 27 1/2 x 22 in. With atelier stamp. Pastel. Executed about 39 1/2 x 79 1/2 in. Stamped signature, and the stamped
Marquet. Similar price-levels were registered 1900. From first sale, Paris 1918. authentication of M. Monet.
at Versailles recently. Les Peupliers
£33,200 ( $95,000)
Raoul Dufy Signed, dated '91. From Durand-Ruel. Exhibited
Marc Chagall Les Regates c. 1920-2 £6,700 ( $17,500) Venice Biennale, 1932 and 1938.
£22,600 ( $82,000)
La Madone du Village 254 x 311 in. Signed.
40 x 39 in. Signed, dated 1938-42. Nicholas de Staël
£15,500 ( $42,500)
La Barque a Saint Jean Paul Gaugin Volume de Choses
£16,200 ( $45,000)
30 1/2 x 22 1/4 in. Mixed media with gouache. Signed. La Baignade decant le port de Pont-Aven £22,900 ( $62,500) 72 1/2 x 39 in. Signed. On plywood panel. Painted in
Painted 1949 at Saint-Jean Cap Ferrat. From the 311 x 23+ in. Signed. Dated '86. Collection Ambrose 1949. Acquired from the artist.
collection of Emil Georg Bade, Zurich. Vollard and Mme de Galea, Paris.
Jacques Villon
Maurice de Vlaminck Henri Matisse Portrait de `Rrose Selavy' (Marcel Duchamp)
£3,260 ( $11,000)
£22,400 ( $62,000)
Bouquet de Fleurs Gorges du Loup £8,600 ( $23,000)
22 x 18+ in. Signed. Cradled panel. 181 x 22 in. Signed. 1922-3. 31 3/4 x 23 3/4 in. Signed, dated '53, and signed, titled and
£7,140 ( $21,000)
Effet de Neige dated on the reverse.
21 1/4 x 25 1/2 in. Signed. Accompanied by a certificate Pierre Bonnard
from M. André Pacitti dated Paris, March 24, 1964. La Glace Haute £55,100 ( $155,000)
More characteristic than the painting above 49 x 32+ in. About 1914. Acquired from the artist.
mentioned. Formerly in the Juviler Collection and sold (1961) for
£36,200 ( $101,000). Illustrated in the Studio
Edouard Vuillard International in colour February 1966. A remarkable
Les Fleurs au Salon revaluation.
£8,260 ( $25,000)
244 x 181 in. Academy board, mounted on canvas.
Exposition Vuillard, Kunsthalle, Basel. No. 199. Vincent Van Gogh
£11,700 ( $32,500)
À la Fenêtre Les Déchargeurs (Coal-barges on the Rhone)
13 3/4 x 11 3/4 in. Initialled. On board. From the £85,200 ( $240,000)
collection of the artist's mother. Painted in Arles, August 1888. From Cassirer, Berlin.