The Giant Bust Rocking the Art Market
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What was the significance of the auction week in New York?
Our colleague Kelly Crow covers the art market. And last week was a big one for her. It was auction week in New York.
Yeah, it's kind of the art world's version of the Super Bowl. The world's biggest auction houses roll out a series of sales that happen every night of the week. And for years, this has sort of served as a public reckoning moment to reassess price levels for hundreds of the world's most expensive artists.
Auction Week showcases the biggest art sales. It's a chance for art watchers like Kelly to see which artists are hot and what kind of eye-popping prices their work can command. And what was the hottest piece up for sale this auction week?
So heading into last week, all eyes were on this Alberto Giacometti sculpture, a bronze bust of the artist's younger brother, Diego. It kind of came in with the highest estimate of the week at around $70 million.
Why was Alberto Giacometti's sculpture so highly anticipated?
Collectors and curators consider the bust a masterpiece. And Kelly was in the room when it went up for sale at the auction house Sotheby's New York headquarters.
It's this soaring tall building built to sort of feel like a luxury shopping mall, if you will. There's escalators that run right up the middle with galleries ringing each floor. And so you kind of go up these series of escalators and... There's polite women greeting you at every floor. And everyone's in pinstripe suits and, you know, nice dresses. And you sort of make your way finally to this huge room that has, you can see it, around 600 or 700 people. And it was pretty packed. There it is. I'm sitting there watching it, and I actually pulled out my phone and started Instagram-living. Hey, guys, I'm here outside of these. And here we go.
What happened next was unlike anything Kelly's seen at an auction for decades.
Oh, my goodness. The collective gasp that came out of these 600 mouths in the room was so audible that it was really startling.
Welcome to The Journal, our show about money, business, and power. I'm Annie Minoff. It's Monday, May 19th. Coming up on the show, an auction night shocker and what it says about the art market right now.
What happened during the auction for Large Thin Head?
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The Giacometti bust that went up for auction last week is called Grand Tête Mance, or Large Thin Head. It's a bronze sculpture about two feet high of a man's head and shoulders, and it's called Large Thin Head for a reason.
So what you're seeing is it kind of depends on where you're standing. Like from the side, you're going to see a pretty gnarly, knobby portrait of a guy with spiky hair and big ears and his mouth is sort of slightly opened and he has a collar and it's just really his head and shoulders in a bust. What's interesting is if you stand in front of it, it becomes kind of knife edge.
The creator of the piece is Alberto Giacometti, a Swiss-Italian sculptor whose work reflects the horrors of World War II. He sculpted Large Thin Head in the post-war period in 1954.
Art really did change irrevocably after World War II. You just couldn't make pretty things. I mean, you see it in painting, too, all these Jackson Pollock abstracts. Like, the whole world just sort of exploded, and the artists are trying to figure out, how do we come back to art and make it matter differently? And so he sort of is known for creating these haunting figures
Giacometti is one of the most important sculptors of the 20th century, and collectors pay big money for his work. Other casts of the bust have sold for over $50 million, and another Giacometti masterpiece, Pointing Man, sold for over $140 million about a decade ago. All of which is to say, when this particular bust came up for auction, it was an event, and Sotheby's pulled out all the stops.
I feel like when I look at the bust de Diego, I'm feeling human. There's something which is like he's nearly touching my soul.
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Chapters
8 chapters
1
What was the significance of the auction week in New York?
0:05–1:11
2
Why was Alberto Giacometti's sculpture so highly anticipated?
1:11–2:59
3
What happened during the auction for Large Thin Head?
2:59–5:58
4
How does the art market react to high-profile auctions?
5:58–8:40
5
Why is the concept of a guarantor important in art auctions?
8:40–10:57
6
What were the reactions of the audience during the auction?
10:57–13:20
7
What does the bust reveal about the current art market?
13:20
8
What were the implications of not having a bidder at the auction?
12:23–17:22