FIRST COMES THE DOCTOR; THEN THE PRIEST; THEN THE undertaker; and finally, Sotheby's. When you come down to it, auctioneering is a lugubrious trade. It thrives on death, divorce and debt, and the pink, deferential Brit in the now empty Park Avenue living room is to upper-class America what buzzards once were to luckless prospectors in Arizona. When the famous die, the salesmen perk up--but the trouble is that the really good art and antiques do not necessarily belong to the really famous. Ergo, find a way of using their fame to endorse their possessions, and turn the sale into a...
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