The Auctioneer Quotes

“Heini woke me up in the middle of the night in Lugano in a drunken rage, railing that he and Tita had been given the worst seats in the house for the dinner, hard by an endlessly swinging kitchen door. He was going to quit the advisory board. He also wanted to never have any dealings with Sotheby for the rest of his life, plus the life of his foundation. In short, Sotheby’s was damned for all eternity. The corollary of that was that I must have nothing to do with them, either. There went my brilliant auction career.”
― Simon De Pury, The Auctioneer: Adventures in the Art Trade

“I later learned that his suits were made for him by Caraceni in Milan, who one day would become my tailor as well. At that point, years later, I finally felt like I belonged.”
― Simon De Pury, The Auctioneer: Adventures in the Art Trade

“Baron Hans Heinrich Agost Gábor Tasso Thysssen-Bornemisza was the full name. His peers, and there weren’t many, called him Heini.”
― Simon De Pury, The Auctioneer: Adventures in the Art Trade

“On the drive back to the airport, Wilson, reveling in our triumph with his guilty schoolboy grin, recounted the fable of the mountain walk of two contenders for a woman’s hand with the lady’s father. When the father slipped, one of the suitors leapt into the crevasse to save his life. They kept walking. Then the second suitor slipped, and the father leapt into the crevasse to save the suitor’s life. Who got the lady’s hand? The second man, the rescuee rather than the savior. The father, Wilson explained, had more invested in the man he saved than in the man who saved him. Likewise the Constable-Maxwells loved feeling superior to the man they had defeated in this high-stakes match. In time, their time, they consigned the Diatreta Cup to Wilson. There were, strange to say, no more croquet matches after the sale.”
― Simon De Pury, The Auctioneer: Adventures in the Art Trade

“Then there was a ninety-three-year-old heiress who could do nothing but rant about how her husband had run off with his twenty-seven-year-old Cuban nurse. Because the money was all hers, she wanted to sell for no other reason than to teach him a lesson. That was reason enough for Sotheby’s, though I found that my job was less being an art expert than being a social worker to the rich and famous.”
― Simon De Pury, The Auctioneer: Adventures in the Art Trade

“Agnelli, the Aga Khan, Rothschild, Flick, Sachs, Niarchos, Thurn und Taxis, Thyssen. The only movie star I met was David Niven, who lived nearby at Cap Ferrat. There were few Americans, except for Oscar and Lynn Wyatt of Houston, she the perennial best-dressed Sakowitz department store heiress. These were all names in the world’s gossip columns, mostly industrial-mercantile fortunes, some recent, some inherited, many playboys, all glamorous, and these were the names who came to our auctions in Monte Carlo.”
― Simon De Pury, The Auctioneer: Adventures in the Art Trade

“Despite the Marion Rembrandt record, there were two areas where Sotheby’s had a distinct advantage over Parke-Bernet. The first was the concept of the seller’s guarantee, which Americans somehow regarded as un-American, a kind of secret price fixing. Americans liked the idea that every bidder had a chance to make a great bargain. A floor, which Wilson would set to lure the work to him, struck the Yankee mind as artificial and killed how great the bargain might be. The other Sotheby’s advantage was its low sellers’ commissions. Its 10 percent was half of Parke-Bernet’s 20, which reflected its monopoly position in New York. The presence of Christie’s in London kept Sotheby’s honest, and its rates low.”
― Simon De Pury, The Auctioneer: Adventures in the Art Trade

“The most memorable of these was the Kronenhalle in Zurich, the most famous “art restaurant” in the world. The Kronenhalle is to Zurich what the Four Seasons is to New York, what Harry’s Bar is to Venice, what Brasserie Lipp is to Paris: a power venue, where you can see everyone you need to see. In the past you could have seen the two Alberts, Einstein and Schweitzer, Thomas Mann, James Joyce, and every captain of finance who ever visited Zurich, the city of gnomes.”
― Simon De Pury, The Auctioneer: Adventures in the Art Trade

“Beyeler asked me about my preferences. “Is your attraction to art physical or intellectual?” he pointedly asked me. “Purely physical,” I shot back without a second’s hesitation. I admitted, if my mother hadn’t already told him, that I was a dreadful student, and that my interest in art was anything but bookish. “Then you must never study art history, for all you will see are books and slides,” Beyeler said. “You must become a dealer!”
― Simon De Pury, The Auctioneer: Adventures in the Art Trade

“Then there were the Mugrabis, also Syrian Jews, who had emigrated to Bogotá, where they became fabric merchants and had built their collection by buying up huge lots of paintings whenever the art market crashed. They had the world’s largest trove of Warhols, over eight hundred strong, not to mention more than a hundred Basquiats, plus many important pieces by Damien Hirst, Jeff Koons, and Richard Prince. They owned giant warehouses in Geneva and in Newark. Saying hello to father Jose, and sons David and Alberto, I mused at how the art market seemed to be dominated by these men with Levantine roots. I guess they shared some kind of genius trading gene.”
― Simon De Pury, The Auctioneer: Adventures in the Art Trade

“In art, knowledge—of the art, and of the buyers—was power, and knowledge meant business. Ignorance could only be measured in misery and failure, never bliss.”
― Simon De Pury, The Auctioneer: Adventures in the Art Trade

“boss, Baron Hans Heinrich Thyssen-Bornemisza, who was a devoted Caraceni man and had sent me to Milan for my first fittings, after which I was totally hooked. The tailor of kings and the king of tailors, Caraceni had dressed the crowned heads of Italy and Greece, when they still wore crowns, as well as Gianni Agnelli, Cary Grant, Gary Cooper, and even couturiers like Yves Saint Laurent and Valentino.”
― Simon De Pury, The Auctioneer: Adventures in the Art Trade

“career, having held two of the plum jobs in art, first as the curator of the Thyssen-Bornemisza Collection, the greatest private assemblage in the world, only rivaled by that of the Queen of England, and then as chairman of the colossus that was Sotheby’s Europe. I couldn’t help but think big; it was an occupational hazard. And now all the hazards were coming home to roost.”
― Simon De Pury, The Auctioneer: Adventures in the Art Trade