Farther Afield |
Paris Dealers
February 20, 2009 | From the stalls of the bouquinistes along the Seine to the rarified galleries of Saint-Germain and the Madeleine and out to the puces (flea markets) at the Porte de Clignancourt in the north and the Porte de Vanves in the south, Paris brims with antiques. As with many things, from architecture to cooking, the French refined the trade into an art form and a ritual.
The sacrosanct relationship between dealer and client has special importance in a city in which buying an ordinary baguette is a complex act that is as social as it is commercial. The European sculpture dealer Patrice Bellanger defines it as "a profound cultural exchange" and "an intimate relationship born of shared interests, which is enriched over time." Despite the increase in Paris auction activity ensuing from the amended European Union regulations and François Pinault's purchase of Christie's in 1998, Bellanger conjectures, "Paris is the only city that has resisted public auctions." To fully depict Paris's antiques trade would require the pages of a book. The dealers described below, however, hint at its contours.
Farther Afield |
Whither Londongrad?
February 1, 2009 | The Victoria and Albert Museum in London celebrates Magnificence of the Tsars with a sumptuous display of men's ceremonial attire from the Russian imperial court on loan from the Moscow Kremlin Museums' collections. What could be more fitting in the British capital that is currently nicknamed Londongrad or Moscow-on-the Thames for its several hundred thousand Russian émigrés and its dominant role in the market for Russian objects and art? However, in the wake of the recent economic crisis, during which the Russian stock exchange plunged by more than 65 percent of its value since May, and huge portions of the November Russian sales in London failed to sell, one wonders if this exhibition constitutes a belated finale to the boon for things Russian? Or does it hint that the Russian presence in the art world cannot be snuffed out by one mere blip on the radar-even a seemingly cataclysmic one?
According to Lesley Miller, senior curator of textiles and fashion at the Victoria and Albert, the show originated with a proposal for an exchange made to them by the Kremlin back in 2005, not long after the Russian market had exploded. Experts concur that the Russian industrialist Victor Vekselberg's splashy purchase of Malcolm Forbes's entire Fabergé collection in February 2004, two months before its scheduled auction at Sotheby's in New York, marked this sea change. Renowned Fabergé expert Géza von Habsburg summarizes, "Prices rose slowly until the oligarchs made an appearance at the London auctions in November 2003; then, after the sale of the Forbes collection, they rose astronomically until the end of 2007."
Pickle Dish, American China Manufactory (Bonnin and Morris), Philadelphia, 1771-72. Soft-paste porcelain with lead glaze; height 4 3/16, width 4 1/2
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