What are the auction houses looking for?
Anything they can get. They’re desperate. They’re looking for the names that they know sell in good times and bad—the conservative things like Roy Lichtenstein and Alexander Calder. That stuff always sells if it’s good quality. How do they find that stuff? The auction houses are smart—they know where everything is. They’re on it. They’re always calling collectors and saying, ‘Hey, would you consider selling your Warhol Soup Can? This is gonna be an exceptional sale for Warhol material.’ They don’t do this anymore but a year ago, they’d say, ‘And we’ll guarantee you 10 million.” They don’t offer guarantees anymore, right? No. Unless there’s just no choice and it’s a slam dunk. They will again but not for now. Aren’t there people who see this moment as an opportunity to buy a bunch of great art for relatively low prices? Yeah, the contrarians. They’re thinking, ‘Hm, maybe it’s not a bad time to buy, now that the excess has been flushed out of the system.’ Who they are, I don’t know. But
