There are moments in history that close or open an era. Also in the art market. When a few weeks ago Juana de Aizpuru decided that she was ending her career as a gallery owner after five decades, she was ending a way of understanding this profession of a group of women gallery owners who dominated the market in Madrid for years. The same thing happened 50 years ago, when at an auction in New York, the sale of the Scull collection showed the way to a way of understanding contemporary collecting, one where works are acquired so that they end up in a million-dollar auction. With this they opened a new era of speculative practices that still persists. Let’s analyze it in detail, because we still suffer some consequences from these evils.
Robert C. Scull and his wife, Ethel, were New York taxi entrepreneurs and passionate art collectors. Specifically, abstract expressionism and pop art. They acquired works by great artists of the second half of the 20th century, such as Andy Warhol, Jasper Johns, Robert Rauschenberg and Frank Stella. And they did it when in the fifties and sixties they were practically unknown and their prices were ridiculous. They bought Johns or Rauschenberg for an average of $1,000 or $2,000, as reflected in the documentary The Mona Lisa Curse. Hence, The Scull’s sale, as the auction at Sotheby Parke-Bernet in October 1973 is known, with 50 of the best works from its collection, strong investments in marketing, a luxurious catalog and a glamorous party, established a new way of understanding the sale of a collection of contemporary art. The final result of the auction was spectacular: 2.2 million dollars. It is estimated that today it could be equivalent to 12 million!
The sale of the Jasper Johns Double white map alone reached $240,000 and sent a clear message to the American jet set that emerging art could be a great investment. An idea reserved until now for old masters. Consequence: the prices of these artists jumped to another dimension and opened a debate that still persists today, that of the royalties that artists should charge in this type of speculative resales. Reasons that lead us to affirm that the Scull auction opened the era of hypercommercialization of the art market, focused on the promotion and rapid sale of the most contemporary art.
