As fickle as what Wall Street calls "cat-&-dog stocks" are the hothouse prices of modernist paintings. Swank gallery connections, smartchart plugging, the humors of art critics and socialite fads too often puff them out of line with real values. Last week for the first time since 1927 works by such debatable modernists as Amédé Modigliani, Marie Laurencin, Pablo Picasso, Jules Pascin and Maurice Utrillo were opened to the rude winter blast of a public auction in Manhattan's Rains Auction Rooms. Before a hard-boiled dealer and socialite crowd, one of Modigliani's tuberculous women...
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