Now that the eighties are over, and with them so many of their excesses, we can begin to put that curious and spiritually exhausting decade into a certain amount of perspective. One of its greatest excesses, of course, was the art market, which after a slow start embarked, around 1982, upon its greatest boom in twenty years. Although it hasn't yet burst, the bubble is wrinkling noticeably, a fact that only highlights the remarkable heights to which the market ascended during the last decade.
Two recent books tell us something, although by no means everything, about those not-so-distant palmy days when financial horizons seemed unlimited - for buyers, sellers, and for the David Salles and Julian Schnabels of the world. One, The Best of Everything: An Insider's Guide to Collecting - For Every Taste and Every Budget, is by John Marion "with," as the euphemism has it, Christopher Andersen (Simon and Schuster).
No doubt deliberately, the other bears the ominous title The Brothers, and is subtitled The Saatchi & Saatchi Story (Contemporary Books). Written by Ivan Fallon deputy editor of the London Sunday Times, it is an account of the rise and decline of Charles and Maurice Saatchi, two brothers in the ad business, one of whom formed a large collection of contemporary art.
In their own way, both books are puff pieces. Fallon begins by trying to write one of those unofficial "expose" books but winds up with a rather admiring portrait. He also shows he has no understanding of the way the art world operates. Marion's book - he is chairman of Sotheby's - is a simple statement of market confidence. As he has never been one to give interviews, his publication of an entire book about his profession shows how comfortable he feels with the way things are going. It's a breezy, no-need-to-be-afraid guide to the auction business.
In the 1980s the art market ascended to heights greater even than those it hit in the 1960s, until now the benchmark against which all art prices were measured. A kind of merry-go-round sprung up, formed by art dealers, critics, curators, collectors, and auction houses, each of them talking to the other, terrified of missing something, and so buying like lemmings.
Art dealing and, to a lesser extent, being an artist itself were as sure ways of earning money and fame (the two became inextricable) in the 1980s as working on Wall Street. New art dealers such as Mary Boone emerged, pushing new and unproven artists who they assured us were masters. Old-time dealers, such as Leo Castelli, were rescued from obscurity and flat earnings by these new dealers, with whom they went into partnership - temporarily, of course. It was a mutually satisfactory arrangement. Castelli got some of the gravy and a new lease on professional life. Mary Boone and her artists received the ultimate art world imprimatur - an exhibition at "Leo's."
An indication of what a financial sure bet art dealing had seemed to become - and of how the profession had changed - was revealed to me in 1983. I ran into someone who had recently left his job as buyer for a gourmet food-store chain, a position he had held for several years. When I asked what he planned to do next, he replied that he was going to go to Milan and be an art dealer "to make a lot of money." So much for the dealer who does it for love, I thought at the
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