Just nine years in, the auction of the century: Yves Saint Laurent's collection is snapped up, including a $28 million armchair. Mark Beech is agog.
There will probably be a chapter on Yves Saint Laurent’s armchair when the book is written about conspicuous consumption. The chapter will recount how, in the depths of the 2009 recession, his leather chair sold for 21.9 million euros. Yes, that’s $28 million.
Not that it’s just any old chair. This is the “dragons” armchair made by the French designer Eileen Gray between 1917 and 1919. It was cosseted in state in Saint Laurent’s palatial rue de Babylone sitting room, dripping with ostentation and surrounded by Picasso, Cezanne, Matisse and Munch works.
As the auction ended, the chair stuck in the memory more than the marble torsos, silver goblets and other glittering prizes that Saint Laurent collected.
TV stations went crazy about “the sale of the century.” A little premature, just nine years in, yet the chair was a symbol of success and fin-de-siecle excess: a kingly throne in the court of Saint Laurent.
As the hammer came down and lot 276 sold at Paris’s Grand Palais on February 24, there was a stunned silence, followed by applause and gasps from the 1,500-strong crowd of dealers and collectors. There it was in the catalogue: “Gray (1878-1976), Fauteuil aux dragons, estimate: 2 million euros to 3 million euros.” And here it was selling for about 10 times more.
The question that came up at once was what sort of person paid so much. Frantic dashing around by reporters led to suggestions that it was snapped up by a man with an American accent who immediately left the room; then that he was acting as a cover for a woman who was really doing the bidding.
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Journalists later found it was bought by Paris-based art dealer Cheska Vallois, who fought off another bidder in price increases of 500,000 euros a bid. She sold the chair once before and it passed to Saint Laurent and his partner Pierre Bergé in the early 1970s via another collector.
Gericault portrait
Earlier, a Gericault portrait was bought by French dealers Galerie Tarica, which had sold the item to Saint Laurent and Berge in 1984. A French gentleman’s agreement to buy works back at auction seemed a little too improbable to explain the sale, which defied economic gravity — even allowing for some premium coming from the Saint Laurent provenance.
For billionaires, art dealers and some of Vallois’s clients, $28 million may be small change. But for many of us, just think what you can do with that. Maybe buy a private island, a Learjet and have enough change left over for Michelin three-star meals for life. Or if you are feeling philanthropic, there are plenty of charities groaning under the weight of the credit crisis who would find this a nice sum to tide them over until better days.
Leaving aside the hospitals that could be built or theatres that could be saved, you could fill your shopping cart with a Hirst and a Rembrandt engraving; or a small Henry Moore and a medieval manuscript.
Gold or baked beans
And there are always other investment opportunities: $28 million is enough to start a hedge fund. Of course the fund might be smaller tomorrow, so perhaps gold bars would be a better option. Depending on how many you buy, keep the rest of the cash for a house (or a $5 tent) and food (or $1 tins of baked beans).
At a time of economic restraint and belt-tightening, the price might seem insane. It appears excessive even to some in the art world, coming as it does at a time of falling demand and slumping prices in international auctions. Christie’s International and its rival Sotheby’s have both cut jobs.
Still, critics should remember that a different reality can prevail in the art market to other parts of the economy. Extreme wealth and emotion can push up prices to levels that might seem obscene elsewhere, yet they have an air of complete economic sense in the salerooms.
Pricey cabinet
Depending on how you work the dollar conversion, the chair isn’t the most expensive piece of furniture ever sold at auction. That distinction belongs to an 18th-century Florentine “Badminton” cabinet, sold at Christie’s London in December 2004. That went for £19 million ($36.7 million at the time, or $27 million now).
Anyway, the price is totally of a piece with some of the other big sales of our time such as Damien Hirst’s 111.5 million pound “Beautiful Inside My Head Forever” sale last September, which set records even as it coincided with the collapse of Lehman Brothers.
There were a few dealers left scratching their heads, noting that while the chair’s brown leather looked supremely comfortable, its wooden carved arms could cut into the legs of the sitter. Some remembered the Ron Arad steel sofa that sold for £90,500 in London last April, with its sellers strongly advising the buyer not to sit on it, especially with rivets in jeans, because it may get scratched.
Special sittings
“Sitting on these pieces tends to be reserved for special occasions,” said Ben Williams, a design specialist at Phillips de Pury, which sold the couch. “They’re usually just looked at as a sculptural element in the room.”
So there we are: a $28 million chair which might not even be used. Perhaps there is one solution. Let’s all club together, make an offer, cut off the dragon arm rests and make a really comfortable tub chair. For those who see it all as economics of the madhouse, this surely sounds eminently reasonable.
With reporting by Scott Reyburn in Paris
