another new york times article
Andrew Page
CRITIC'S NOTEBOOK
Click Here for Glamour Drama and Michelangelo
By MICHAEL KIMMELMAN
Until a 43-year-old Dutch software executive and self-described neophyte
collector bid $135,805 last week for a painting on eBay, the online auction
company, skeptics assumed that no one would spend real money for art over
the Internet. Too risky. You can't see the work firsthand.
Besides, there's no theater to sitting by yourself in front of a computer
screen and clicking a mouse. And theater had become a big part of why people
spent crazy sums for dubious paintings: the theater of the salesrooms, which
helped to propel the auction house boom of recent decades.
Starting in the 1970's auction houses capitalized on it, as did the media.
Before then, old-money collectors worked often through private dealers,
quietly. But new fortunes sought headlines in the media age. Buyers with
freshly minted egos got swept up by the black-tie, pressure-cooker arena at
Christie's and Sotheby's -- by the television cameras, the prospects of
front-page articles and the associative luster of the contemporary art
world -- and they bid prices for Julian Schnabels, Sandro Chias and Enzo
Cucchis through the roof.
These tyros were not just speculating in cultural junk bonds. They were
paying for the satisfaction of being seen to buy art, something new. Owning
art had always been about acquiring status, and starting in the 19th century
it increasingly became a financial investment. But now the act of purchase,
publicly done, was a commodity.
Along comes Rob Keereweer of Nieuwkoop, the Netherlands. At the close of
online bidding last Monday, he had offered $135,805 for what appeared over
the Internet as an indistinct abstract painting, with the signature "R.D.
'52." As he tells it, the hook was that it might be by Richard Diebenkorn,
the California painter. A Diebenkorn from 1955 had sold for $1.8 million at
Sotheby's in 1998.
The painting on eBay went up for auction at 25 cents. The seller used the
Internet name "golfpoorly." He was from Berkeley, Calif., he said.
Diebenkorn lived in Berkeley.
In addition to a photograph of the painting (incorrectly oriented
vertically) he posted a story about having bought the picture at a garage
sale a long time ago. His wife had not let him keep it in their house, so he
was finally getting it out of the garage to please her. His son at one point
had put a hole in it with his plastic tricycle, and you could see the hole
in another close-up photograph, located so that the photograph conveniently
included the signature, about which "golfpoorly" said nothing.
He turned out to be Kenneth A. Walton, 32, single, a lawyer in Sacramento
and online seller under various names, who had made up wife, tricycle and
garage.
EBay voided the sale, not because he had lied (this is virtual reality,
after all), but because he had bid on the painting himself, a violation of
eBay rules.
Theater!
Farce, to be precise, although farce of a different kind than takes place in
the auction rooms. Mr. Walton seems to have borrowed a trick from the
auction houses: underselling his hand.
Every buyer wants to outsmart the marketplace. Vanity is a salesman's oldest
friend. Who wouldn't be proud of himself for discovering a valuable painting
that some guy with the poky handle of "golfpoorly" was offering for 25
cents? Call it reverse psychology.
Online auction fraud is rampant. No surprise. EBay, which guarantees none of
what it sells, tried to minimize the problem, saying fraud occurs in
one-tenth of 1 percent of its auctions, which works out to 50,000 scams
during the first three months of this year alone. Mr. Walton's made-up story
and shill bid -- never mind whether the picture turns out to be by
Diebenkorn -- makes this at least 50,001.
Sotheby's says that it uses its customary controls and guarantees on its
online sites. Better controls and guarantees are obviously needed, but
notwithstanding them, online buyers probably still won't be more cautious
after this debacle, maybe the reverse. A flush economy breeds innumerable
fools ready to squander new fortunes, trading in start-ups when they aren't
surfing for Michelangelos or at least Furbies on eBay.
Skeptics who had doubted that people would buy expensive art online, which
they couldn't see firsthand, hadn't factored in several things. People have
long bought art they haven't seen for themselves, based on reproductions in
auction catalogs, and there's no big difference between that and buying a
painting on the basis of a reproduction on eBay, except that at least
someone vetted the art for the catalogs before printing the pictures. The
Internet is a free-for-all.
The prospect that the Web is the world's biggest garage sale, still
unregulated, may make it more, not less, attractive to fortune hunters who
think that unrecognized treasures are to be found there, below the experts'
radar screen, uncontrolled.
This is the art world's version of the Wild West, after all. Smart money had
it that only prints and photographs -- produced in multiple copies,
therefore somewhat predictable -- would sell successfully on the Web.
Actually the condition of prints and photographs varies, so that experienced
collectors know they have to see them firsthand, too. But if Mr. Keereweer
is as he seems, online buyers are neither experienced nor prudent, just
aggressive.
And we shouldn't underestimate the straightforward appeal of the democracy
of the Web, attuned to a new age of prospective collectors. As the auction
houses catered to 80's-style tycoons, eager to make a splash, so the
Internet suits regular folks, even schleps, and the dot-com rich, less
ostentatious, more technologically oriented. The auction houses seem elitist
by comparison.
Finally there's glamour. Sure, computers are geeky, but they're also cutting
edge, and cutting edge is another term for avant-garde, which spells
glamour. The glamour of any vanguard, by association, causes frogs to think
they're princes. Blending art and technology makes a particularly potent
cocktail for rubes.
So who needs black-tie auctions and television cameras any longer? The
11-day unfolding sale of Mr. Walton's painting, accessible to anyone with a
computer, was drama on a public level at least equivalent to what Christie's
or Sotheby's can manage, weirdly captivating like a crash in slow motion.
As for Mr. Keereweer in the Netherlands, just before the auction closed last
Monday, he wrote to a reporter, by e-mail: "I myself would like to
concentrate on the auction right now. The final moment of the auction is in
the middle of the night for me, and I need time to explain to my wife why I
am bidding so much money on a painting that I have not seen in the flesh."
Assuming he actually has a wife, one suspects that the two of them had a
nice long chat.
Angie & Dave
through the media mud is going to take a toll and fast.
Angie
Andrew Page wrote in message ...
>May 15, 2000
>CRITIC'S NOTEBOOK
<clip>
MyOwnHero
about or listen to the good things. Like I told a member of this NG a few days
ago, when was the last time you saw somebody post the following? "Wow, I just
won an auction 3 days ago, paid by Paypal and already have my item! It's even
better than it looked in the picture! Not only that, but the seller gave me
immediate feedback, as I did him after I received the item." And yet, this has
happened to me many times now, both as a seller and a bidder. In fact, I have
had sellers ship to me BEFORE they received my payment. I could go on and
on......
Rhonda
Kredai
ran a segment in the 10 oclock news promoting ebay, how people
are turning their "tra$h into ca$h"
saw snips all day.. didn't catch it- I was sleeping.
"Angie & Dave" <I.am.avoi...@inetport.com> wrote in message
news:Pc_T4.30417$sf6.4...@news-west.usenetserver.com...
> eBay could really use some good publicity. The constant dragging of the
site
> through the media mud is going to take a toll and fast.
>
> Angie
>
>
>
> Andrew Page wrote in message ...
> >May 15, 2000
> >CRITIC'S NOTEBOOK
> <clip>
>
>
>
>
Howard and Kelly Lute
mailmover[REMOVE]@mindspring.com (mailmover) says...
>
> Did the $135K painting turn out to be a fake after all?
>
> Dan
>
As of now...no auction, its being examined by a specialist, we'll hear
the news when it comes. The guys a liar though, that's for SURE!
friend,
Lute
--
He: Electronics Instructor, Terrible Mechanic, Worse Plumber
She: Patient eBay: kell Rating: 597
Comfortable, Stylish, Natural Fiber Clothing
402 Marina Blvd. Suisun City, CA 94585
Lute's Pirate Radio Page: http://pw1.netcom.com/~optcamel/camel2.html
More Comfortable Stylish Clothing: http://www.optcamel.com/kellyscloset.jpg
Check Here Before you Buy ANYTHING: http://www.epinons.com
The Real James
Hey, I resemble that remark!
Richard Ward
the chance of it being real is pretty slim.
Richard Ward
Mike W.
wrote:
>Anyone want to take any wagers on what the final verdict is? I think
>the chance of it being real is pretty slim.
>
>Richard Ward
I wouldn't put a wager on that painting being authentic with 100-1
odds.
Angie & Dave
throw in extras just to get it out of my house. The buyers are thrilled.
Or, another example, if I have some damaged china pattern pieces, I'll throw
them in the box with the other "good" stuff, and I stick a little note
telling the people, suggesting they can use them under plants or whatever.
Or they can trash them. Everybody has been thrilled to get a little extra.
But you'll never hear those stories circulating.
Angie
MyOwnHero wrote in message <20000516010302...@ng-fv1.aol.com>...
Dan Cottler
<kre...@hotmail.com> wrote:
> well, local fox affiliate (29, Philadelpia * south jersey)
> ran a segment in the 10 oclock news promoting ebay, how people
> are turning their "tra$h into ca$h"
>
> saw snips all day.. didn't catch it- I was sleeping.
Last night's segment was decent. They listed a whole bunch of
things on eBay. Discussed some of the seller do's and don't. Even
included a brief "make sure you include a picture".
Typical news-media hype tho - it was billed as a "how to" segment.
But they didn't actually show how to. The whole thing was only
5mins. They tossed around terms like "reserve" and such without
explaining them. And many of the items they listed were for far too
much.
Tonite (tue) they're going to show the results.
FWIW,
- Dan.
--
- Psychoceramic Emeritus <mailto:dar...@usa.net>
- South Jersey, USA, Earth <http://hamsterdance.com/>
- My mind not only wanders, sometimes it leaves completely.
Rickjn
>>Anyone want to take any wagers on what the final verdict is? I think
>>the chance of it being real is pretty slim.
>>
>>Richard Ward
>
>I wouldn't put a wager on that painting being authentic with 100-1
>odds.
>
I think it's 50/50 it's real .............