The Auctioneer: Adventures in the Art Trade by Simon de Pury

281 Pages·2017·2.85 MB·English

by  de Pury

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About the Authors
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To my children: Alban, Charles, Loyse, Balthasar, and Diane Delphine
A
CKNOWLEDGMENTS
Given my extremely short attention span, I have read only a very few books in
my life. One of the few that I have read is Haute Curiosité, written by Maurice
Rheims in 1975. The memoirs of this art-obsessed French auctioneer had a great
impact on the young man I was when I read it. “This is the kind of life I want to
live!” was my instant conclusion. I feel blessed for, so far, not having discovered
what routine is and not having encountered any boredom in my life; at times,
things have even become a little too exciting for my own taste. As one of the
works by artist Jenny Holzer so aptly says: “Protect me from what I want”! This
is the impact that the Rheims memoirs, way back, had on my own life that
always made me wish to one day write my own book.
It is my old friend Stanley Buchthal who kept encouraging me to do it. It was
equally he who suggested the title The Auctioneer for it. I am most grateful to
him for having given me the key push to do it.
Having the patience to read a book is one thing, but having the discipline to
put pen to paper is quite another. I was introduced to a lovely “ghostwriter.”
After two sessions together she sent to me a sample chapter; reading it, I was
bored by my own story. Shortly after that, by pure coincidence, Jeffrey Deitch
(at the time director of the MoCA in Los Angeles) introduced me to Bill
Stadiem. Bill, a successful writer of books and screenplays, had approached
Jeffrey to write his memoirs, but Jeffrey then had other fish to fry and was
unable to embark on such a vanity project. I am grateful to Jeffrey for the
introduction.
Thus began lengthy Skype sessions between London and L.A. It felt like
having a shrink, with me doing a lot of talking and Bill every now and then
asking me pointed questions. Being Swiss and discrete by nature doesn’t go well
with writing a book. Bill kept asking me, “Give me names, give me names!”
When I eventually saw what all this talking had morphed into I recognized
some of my stories, but certainly didn’t recognize my “voice.” I rapidly realized
that this was in fact an advantage and was impressed by how Bill had
transformed some of my very approximate “impressionistic brush strokes” into
very detailed and precise descriptions. Reading him I was definitely no longer
bored by my own story! I am most grateful to him and thank him for his
collaboration and for his patience.
The real engine behind everything I do is my love, curiosity, and passion for
art. I feel privileged to be able to indulge in it professionally. If you love candies
there is no better place to work than in a candy store!
At the end of the day everything we do in our lives is meaningless compared
to the unconditional love our families represent for us. I am infinitely grateful to
my wife, business partner, and mother of my youngest daughter, Michaela, for
all of her totally amazing support. I am also immensely grateful to Isabel, the
mother of my four adult children, for her really incredible support and for having
been the only person besides Stanley to have read the manuscript for this book.
Only a fraction of the extraordinary stories I have lived on a near daily basis
are in this book, and many key players in the art world and close collector
friends could not be mentioned, maybe to their relief.
I want to thank my two invaluable colleagues, Harmony Hambly-Smith and
Mark Ferkul, who have provided help at every stage.
My thanks go to our book agent, Dan Strone, who found in St. Martin’s the
best house to publish this book.
Finally, my thanks to Jennifer Weis, my wonderful editor, and Sylvan
Creekmore, Sally Richardson, and the whole team at St. Martin’s Press.
1
M N P
Y UDE ORTRAIT
If anybody needed a rebound, it was I. Professionally, my plans to turn the
auction-house duopoly that was Sotheby’s and Christie’s into a triumvirate that
included myself had gone up in the terrible smoke and ash of 9/11. I couldn’t
have had a greater financial partner than the French luxury-goods tycoon
Bernard Arnault, or a greater business partner than my former Sotheby’s
colleague turned co-gallerist Daniella Luxembourg. Alas, both the real world
and the often unreal art world had been upended in the fall of 2001 by al-Qaida
and by the resultant financial terror that shook the confidence of even the most
deep-pocketed and geopolitically indifferent collectors. Arnault had gone, and
Daniella was going. An incurable optimist, I refused to believe that the ship
everyone else said was sinking faster than the Titanic could not be righted and
sailed gloriously into the sunset. O Captain! The art world groaned and
collectively crossed the street to avoid me, to them a dead man walking, whether
the thoroughfare was Madison Avenue, Bond Street, or the Ginza.
Romantically, things were just as disastrous. My wife, Isabel, and I had
parted ways. For our decades of marriage I had viewed Isabel as the most
intellectually brilliant of women. I next was involved with Louise Blouin
MacBain, a female tycoon by whose entrepreneurial gifts I had been smitten.
Her power and success, not to mention the Marie Antoinette splendor of her
lifestyle, were aphrodisiacal. Her gilded aura surely played into the ambitions I
had in wanting to challenge the giants Sotheby’s and Christie’s. But that love
affair had gone the fiery way of the Twin Towers, and now I was adrift. I had
always found solace, as well as inspiration, in art. Now, at low tide, I found it in
an artist.
Anh Duong could surely be said to be the distaff trophy of the art world, and
in falling for her, I may have been a victim of the same megalomania that had
drawn me to the likes of Bernard Arnault and Louise MacBain. A similar siren
call had lured Odysseus to near-disaster. The Greeks, as ever, had a word for it.
Unfortunately, I didn’t have anyone left on my putatively sinking ship, now
christened Phillips de Pury, to tie me to the mast to prevent me from succumbing
to whatever fatal attractions the world had in store. Please forgive my delusions
of grandeur, which actually did have some foundation in reality. I had been
blessed with a fabulous wife, four fabulous children, and a fabulous career,
having held two of the plum jobs in art, first as the curator of the Thyssen-
Bornemisza Collection, the greatest private assemblage in the world, only
rivaled by that of the Queen of England, and then as chairman of the colossus
that was Sotheby’s Europe. I couldn’t help but think big; it was an occupational
hazard. And now all the hazards were coming home to roost.
Luckily for me, Anh Duong’s remarkable beauty and talent didn’t add up to
her being a femme fatale. Anh was a true exotic, half Spanish, half Vietnamese,
born in Bordeaux, educated to become an architect in Paris at the École des
Beaux-Arts. Instead, she became a ballerina and then a top model, gracing
Vogue covers and Yves Saint Laurent and Christian Lacroix runways. She
eventually stole the heart of Julian Schnabel, away from his fashion-designer
wife, Jacqueline. And now she was about to steal mine, away from nothing at
this point but shell shock, loneliness, and the battle fatigue of the challenge of
saving Phillips de Pury from its predicted oblivion.
What surely excited me the most about Anh Duong wasn’t that she was a top
model, but rather that she was an intriguing artist. She had been encouraged by
Schnabel, who became famous for his huge paintings set on broken fragments of
ceramic plates. Many consider that Schnabel has one of the biggest egos of any