International News Digest
FRANCE’S “COLS ROUGES” UNDER INVESTIGATION
The French guild of auction warehouse clerks at the Paris auction house Hôtel Drouot, also known as the “cols rouges” (red collars) for the distinctive collars on their uniforms, are under investigation for robbery and other charges. It seems that some guild members have taken advantage of their proximity to artworks and other valuables. According to a report in Le Quotidien, French police discovered a Gustave Courbet painting, Marc Chagall prints, a Picasso drawing, diamonds, and other valuables while searching the residences of “cols rouges” in December 2009. While the investigation is under way, a Paris judge has banned the guild from working, a ban that breaks a 150-year-long tradition at Hôtel Drouot.
The Süddeutsche Zeitung’s Stefan Ulrich offers a brief history of the guild, which enjoys a monopoly and is rife with secret rituals. Also known as the “Savoyards,” the “cols rouges” date back to 1860, when the House of Savoy relinquished its French holdings to France and when the then-ruling King Napoleon III decreed that only men from Savoy were allowed to work as warehouse clerks for the Parisian auction houses. In 1920, the number of “cols rouges” was limited to 110. The members of the guild do not work under their names but under their number, which is stitched in gold thread on their collars. Members choose their own successors who inherit their numbers and even their names, such as Charles VII, Tita, and Vidocq, which date back to original members.
At Drouot, the guild has taken care of a wide range of tasks: emptying the homes of deceased collectors, transporting and storing auction goods, and presenting works that come under the hammer. The working day of a “col rouge” lasts fourteen hours while the working week stretches out to a full seven days. Salaries are shared equally among members who can earn $6,000–$6,500 per month. Last year alone, Drouot auctioned off 800,000 objects with a hammer value of $540 million—objects that were transported, stored, and exhibited by “cols rouges.”
With the investigation and the judicial ban on the guild, Drouot finds itself in a difficult position. Closed for renovations during the summer, the auction house plans to reopen on September 21 and faces a labor shortage. According to Le Quotidien, the house plans to terminate officially the “col rouge” guild’s monopoly in February 2011 and is currently looking for replacements at several transport and handling companies. It seems that some of the guild members plan to create two new companies and to apply for the positions.
INTERNET: MORE INFORMATION THAN MARKET?
Der Standard’s Olga Kronsteiner delivers a sobering report on the role of the Internet in the art market. While websites have become a must for any gallery, and many artists, the Internet has had mixed success for selling works. Thanks to web postings on art-market prices, buyers can be better informed, and thus better prepared to bargain, when it comes to acquiring a work. Kronsteiner, who looks back at the development of the art market in Austria, finds that the Internet’s spread of information has not always come with a rise in sales. In February 2000, the Internet emerged as a possible art market in Austria when the site www.onetwosold.at (OTS) emerged with an online auctions platform. One year and 50,000 users later, OTS acquired the traditional Dorotheum auction house, albeit with modest success.
The international forays, such as Sotheby’s online platform initiated in 2001, have had equally mixed success. One year and forty thousand users later, each spending approximately one-thousand dollars toward $40 million in sales, Sotheby’s made a strategic alliance with eBay, only to end the alliance a year and $50 million later. “Qualitatively, auctioning high-quality art in virtual auction rooms appeared as an impossibility, both in Austria and internationally,” writes Kronsteiner. OTS’s hopes for a rise in quality, and sales, with Dorotheum did not fully materialize. While eBay has attracted over two million users after six years of operating in Austria, OTS did not manage to surpass the 350,000 mark. In fall 2008, Dorotheum passed on its virtual auction house to the popular “ricardo” auction site.
“The Internet is currently only one of many options for acquiring an artwork,” writes Kronsteiner. “And it’s not even an option offered by all auction houses, which treat as a standard only digitalized auction catalogues, searches for objects, and newsletters.” Despite its early forays, Sotheby’s and its competitor Christie’s livestream some of their important auctions while offering online bidding. While Sotheby’s does not offer any details on the venture. Christie’s is more open about sharing its success: The online community makes up one-quarter of international bidders. Since the beginning of 2010, the income from online bidding has risen to $48.8 million, an increase of 63 percent since 2009.
PHOTOGRAPHY, FINE ART, AND POPULAR PRACTICE
What is the status of photography in the museum? Le Monde looked for a few answers from François Cheval, the head curator of the museum of photography Nicéphore-Niépce in Chalon-sur-Saône, France. Cheval, who curated a special exhibition for the Arles festival of photography, believes that museums focus too exclusively on artistic manifestations of the medium.
“In general, museums of photography are interested in a fragment of the history of photography: the part that concerns fine arts,” Cheval told Le Monde. “But two million photographs are produced every week in the world. Photography has become an anthropological gesture, a mark of the human species. We cannot sum up the history of photography in a history of forms.”
Cheval’s exhibition—“Chambre(s) claire(s): Note(s) sur la photographie” (Camera(s) lucida(s). Note(s) on photography), is aptly peppered with plurals to reflect the medium’s omnipresence. “I wanted to open the museum to the photographic,” said Cheval. “When someone goes to see an exhibition of painting, he’s not necessarily a painter. But everyone takes photographs. We must talk about this gap between the practices.”
Cheval takes a multifaceted approach to explore this gap. “What interests me is not only photography as an object but also the subject matter, the camera and for whom the images are made. It’s an equation with four unknowns. The museum (of photography Nicéphore-Niépce) at Chalon-sur-Saône is not a museum of fine arts, nor a repertoire of practices. And even less of a jewelry store with hundreds of cameras which no one knows how to use anymore. I try to put the spectators in the center, to treat them as intelligent. The exhibition itinerary revolves around larger themes: darkness and light, color. I make suggestions, but they are only suggestions, not a truth.”
While questioning the usual museum approach to photography, Cheval views the medium’s official history with some skepticism. “I don’t like the consensus that surrounds the history of photography,” said Cheval. “When I arrived at (the museum of photography Nicéphore-Niépce), people told me that Nicéphore Niépce was the genius, the inventor of photography. But the English believe that the genius is Henry Fox Talbot. Part of the history of photography was written in a revisionist manner by collectors who were dealers. Yet I don’t want a museum that legitimizes the choices of the market.”
“Chambre(s) claire(s), note(s) sur la photographie” continues at the Palais de l’Archevêché in Arles until September 14.