Brooke Lampley Illuminates the Business Side of Art

incoming chairperson of Fine Art at South Abees. And this is a little off the beaten path of hedge fund managers and economists and traders, um, but it's no less fascinating if you're at all interested in how artwork is determined to have a specific valuation, how we can tell the provenance and and whether or not something is real or not, what takes place at auctions, and what the future of modern art looks like. I suspect you will

find this to be a fascinating conversation. I wish I had it for another hour because I have hundreds of more questions I just didn't get to. But with no further ado, my conversation with Sothobes brook Lampley. My special guest today is Brooke Lampley. She is the incoming vice chairman of the Fine Art Department at Sothoby is a job she will begin in early her undergraduate at Harvard

and her master's at Yale were in art history. She did curetorial work at the National Gallery of Art before joining Christie's in two thousand and four, where she quickly became a rising star in the art market, getting named to Crane's forty under forty list. Eventually, she rose to the position of head of the Impressionist and Modern Art department at Christie's, where she oversaw the sale of more than a billion dollars in Impressionist and modern art. Brook Lampley,

Welcome to Bloomberg. Thank you. So now is as good a time as any to talk about what's going on in the art world. But I have to back up a little bit and get a little bit of background about you, um undergraduate at Harvard, your studying art history. Did you have any idea you wanted to pursue a career selling art? Annoyingly? I did know for a long time that I was interested in art. I was quite a bookish, kind of nerdy kid um and I came from an artistic family. My mother was a painter, my

aunts and architect. To my other aunt works in fashion. I didn't have any um, more conventional career models. I didn't have a lawyer or a doctor or a banker in my family. So when I discovered art history, it was the perfect fusion of my kind of academic um inclination with an artistic interest. And I loved it. UM.

I loved it in high school. UM. I went to college and I actually I did a joint concentration or major in literature and history of art because I didn't want to solely focus on history of art, because UM, I highly suspected that that was something that I was going to focus on in my life. So I enjoyed taking a lot of comparative literature classes as well as history of art classes. And I was pretty certain at the end that I was going to apply to art

history graduate school. So how do you go from art history to the big auction houses. That's an unusual transition. It wasn't intentional. I started out. I really believed that I wanted to be a curator. I was very academic and my interest I was reading Art Forum every week, reading like really theoretical, um out there stuff about art, and that's what I was really interested in. I was really interested in critical theory. UM. I thought that I was going to spend my life writing UM. Quite esoteric

observations on art that a very narrow audience might read. UM. But I went to graduate school really young UH, and I discovered there that I was young and I didn't have UM a lot of professional experience inform the career path that I was choosing. UM, and I started to get some cold feet about the fact that I was going to be there for potentially five years accomplishing my PhD before then having a real work experience. So I took a leave of absence to go work at the

National Gallery UH in a curatorial department. I was working in the department of Photographs UH, and I did that to confirm that I wanted to be a curator, and for better or for worse, it didn't work out that way. UM. It's quite It's a wonderful institution, and the department I was in was doing incredible work. At the time. UM Sarah Greeno had just made it an independent department, moved

it out of the administration of the Prince Department. They were having their they had recently endowed independent galleries within the museum, so they were having their first full UM schedule of exhibition programming. So UM three temporary exhibitions. In the year that I was there, it was full on, but it was also highly administrative UM. And I also it was the first time that I realized that museum work wasn't as free of commercial interest as I had

been given to think. So I felt that when I was in Academia UM there was a very ivory tower sort of division between UM, the academics and the museum world and the commercial art world. And I was reflectively very disdainful of the commercial art world. And so in order to get away from all of that commerciality in the museums, you end up at Christie's. How how did that happen? I decided to throw it open. I just decided, you know, it was time to see what the commercial

art world was all about. And I was attracted to the auction houses, particularly because UM it gives a more macro cosmic view of the market as opposed to going to a gallery where you might focus on a few artists in great depth. And but I looked at I was just applying to jobs generally at that point I wanted to move to New York and have a different job experience. So at Christie's you discover you have a talent for helping to identify and sell art. Tell us

about that a little bit. Well, Christie's, I really discovered that I loved business as much as I loved art, and that I loved the fast pace. I loved the competitive nature. UM, I loved the active discovery. UM. What you get at the auction houses that you don't get anywhere else is old fashioned connoisseurship. You're really seeing so

much material by an artist. UM. In my prior experience, at you know, my academic and museum experience, you were only looking at masterpieces and you never had any context for why something was a masterpiece because you weren't seeing the drudgery. You weren't seeing run wire sketches. You weren't seeing his smaller paintings or vignettes that were then cut down. You didn't really have the full scope. UM. Suddenly at Christie's, I had the full scope. I got to see so

much more, and it was really invigorating. I felt like I trained my eye and that was something that I hadn't truly done before. UM. It was a much deeper experience with the art, and UM it was thrilling to be working with people directly. UM. And talking to them about about art all along in a variety of capacity. Is whether I'm talking to a seller or a potential buyer, or appraising someone's collection. I just talk to people about art. You said something previously that I have to ask you about.

You said you learn to train your eye when looking at an appraising art. Explain that a little bit by looking over years at many many examples of artworks by particular artists. So I have a field that I focus on, and that's primarily European art from the latter half of the nineteenth century in the first half of the twentieth century. That's my favorite grouping. So it's hard not to be a favorite. It's mine too, um. But by looking at so many examples by these artists over and over again,

you really get a an instinctual sense of authenticity. That's what connoisseurship is. It's the It's what Malcolm Gladwell is talking about in Blink. It's looking at something and having a gut feeling. And you only get that by looking at a great range and multitude of examples by a particular artist. Ten thousand hours and hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of paintings later, when you first see something, is

it immediate? I know you By the way, we'll get to this in our appraisal discussion, the tools of what you use. And it's not just instinct, but after a certain period of time, is it instantly you could look at something and say that's good, that's not good, that's authentic, that's not How fast do you make that decision after

a decade of practice, Oh, it's instant. There of course exceptions um or you know, particularly excellent forgeries, or things that are troubling or juvenile lea by an artist that may not look exactly like what you expect from the artist, But by and large it's it's immediate. And then there are two wavelengths. It's not just the authenticity wavelength. Then there's also the um commercial appeal instinct that also becomes

a reflexive reaction. So so explain that every artist obviously subjective. I like this, I don't like that, I love this artist, I can't stand that artist. But what is the is the commercial appeal subjective? Or obviously we get auction numbers, so we know what the most recent price transaction was, but how subjective is the evaluation of what's the commercial appeal of this particular painting. It's highly subjective, and in as an expert we learn to dissect and quantify that

subjectivity to the degree possible. But it's also why, at least at the auction houses, we work in teams um and try to utilize a diversity of opinion to come to a conclusion about something. But generally, yes, I'm looking at something and I'm saying, Wow, this is sensual and romantic and has an incredibly luscious surface. And I'm looking

at example B, which is a very similar picture. Um, but it's not the same because the color is just not quite as rich and the surface is not quite as thickly painted, and that makes an enormous difference in price. So I read a statistic the other day that that really shocked me. A recent poll noted that about six of wealthy U s art owners claim they've never sold a piece from their collection, and about have never even had their holdings appraised. How consistent is that with your experiences?

That's somewhat unsurprising to me, in the sense that in my experience, there are many people who are very comfortable with the appraisal process, and there are some who are just skittish about it, who don't like the idea that somebody is going to know what they have UM and

I understand that. I don't think that. You know, we're in a world where people are concerned about privacy and the private security I would image and their data, and I think that's changing UM and people are becoming more accustomed to UM needing to share information in order to receive insurance and services. But primarily people get appraisals for insurance provider and that's the primary reason UM or if

they're receiving a loan, for example. UM And then in terms of selling, yes, many people collect art over their lifetime with no intention of selling it, either until they pass or their children determined that it will be sold, or until they gift it somewhere, So that can be that can be quite common. That certainly used to be I think, much more common than it is today. So let's let's talk about one of those collections that it appears where there hasn't been a sale over a long

long time, the collection of Peggy and David Rockefeller. Some people have estimated this is three quarters of a billion dollars or numbers close to that um and have called the upcoming sale of this the sale of the century. What are your thoughts on this Rockefeller collection and what do they actually have? They have some stunning works, specifically from the period that I focus on. UM, there are

going to be wonderful Monaise. There's an there's a sensuous Matisse Odalisk painting from the nineteen twenties that perhaps will reset the market for that artist. And when you say reset the market, Matisse is considered one of the grand masters of that era. I mean, how much further can Matisses be reset upwards? Or am I underestimating that he is widely recognized as one of the most important artists

of the twentieth century. But the market is driven by the examples that come to market, and that differs for every artist. So for example, for Picasso, there have been great Picasso's, truly great Picassos that have sold publicly at auction in private hands, yes, And as opposed to Matiste, where a lot of work is in museums or hasn't been sold for whatever reason. So there haven't been equally great examples by Matisse in my view, that have come to market in the last ten years, and every decade

the market is changing. So you set a record. For example, you know, a van Gogh that's sold in the eighties would sell for a completely different number today, and that would in a fact reset the artist market. So it's not just about completely fresh works, it's about the timing of those works arriving on the market. Thirty years is a long time. There's been a lot of appreciation in the stock market, that's been inflation. One would imagine that

these are selling for more. But when you say reset, I'm assuming, hey, this is more than just eight percent a year um, a little above inflation. This is a whole order of magnitude change. Is that? Is that what you're suggesting about the Matisse for example, Absolutely, I think it could double the existing record the artist. So we started talking about appraisals and you said earlier you get a sense of our work of art in a millisecond, and that's just a function of many, many years looking

at thousands of different paintings. But you don't just rely on instant tell us a little bit about the tools of the trade, and I recall you saying flashlight, camera, tape measure and UV light. What what can a UV light tell you, Um, outside of c S I, what's what can I tell you about a painting? A UV light typically reveals later stage painting, so that could in some instances even be the artist's own reworking of their

painting later on, which is still important to recognize. But generally speaking, it is a restoration to the painting, and people are of course very interested to understand to what degree the original artists work is preserved in the painting that they're looking at, or another hand has helped restore the image to what we believe it should be, and that would affect not so much the authenticity of the painting, but the final valuation is that is that a fair statement?

There's a range, but generally yes, it just refers to the condition of the work. So it is a factor on the value of the work, but not generally the authenticity. Though of course, if a work has been broadly repainted and there is very little evidence of the original hand, then um, one would argue that that's an authenticity issue. So let's let's talk about authenticity a little bit. You

you've discussed and we'll discuss provenance. You've referenced. Attribution is essential, so for a lot of paintings, we could literally trace from the artist painting it to the sale, and that chain of custody goes down right to today. What happens when you are confronted with what you think is a unauthentic original, but that providence is missing, that that custody chain is missing, and there could be decades where it

was privately held and nobody knows. So I have a great example for this, actually, and it was one of the most fun things that I've worked on in my career. I given that I went to Harvard, I was contacted by a Cambridge local a few years ago, I think this was two thousand seven, and they had a painting that they invited me to come see, and it was

a Lege still life from the nine twenties UM. It was fifty inches high, It was radiantly beautiful, and it clearly to me was consistent with the work by the

artist that I had seen from this period. This would be an unusual painting in some senses to copy, not because forgeries of Lege are unusual, because they're actually very common, but because of the scale of the work UM, and how beautifully painted it is, and how reductive the style is it's particularly difficult to forge minimalist paintings very well.

So I looked at it, and then I learned something even more important that the person who I was speaking to was a family descendant, direct descendant of the previous

UM Guggenheim director and MoMA curator, James Johnson Sweeney. So they have no provenance, They had no bill of sale for the work, and they had There is no authenticating body for the artists Lege, so the only resources that we have in the market are the catalog resume and provenance, and this work was not in the catalog resume, and one had to believe that this work would have been given or sold directly by the artist to the curator,

James Johnson Sweene. And that's why it was not featured in the book and also why it was you know, this had to be a proven implausible history. But one thing that was missing was Lege typically titled, numbered, and dated his works on the reverse of the canvas, and there was a backing on this painting, and that could

not be seen. And my team and I basically came to the conclusion that as long as this had the inscriptions on the reverse, that it would ring true, but if it didn't have the inscriptions on the reverse, it was implausible. And we brought it to New York and we reverse. We took the backing off the painting, and they're beautifully perfectly as we wanted to believe it would be.

Was exactly the style of signature and inscription and titling on the reverse that we have come to expect from Lege in this period, and we were able to solve the work. It was estimated at I believe three to five million dollars and sold for eight million, and it was stunning success. That's fantastic. So I'm a car guy and we call um the occasional find garage finds where there's some old Porsche Ferrari that's gathered us for thirty years. Literally the sun went off to Vietnam, didn't come back,

the parents couldn't sell the car. It's worth many times more than what was paid. Many years ago, not too long ago, I read about a garage find somewhere in the Midwest of a Jackson Pollock. Someone had called somebody in to authenticate like a three hundred dollar um sports piece of memorabilia, and in the pile in the garage at the bottom is this Jackson Pollock. At this point in the world, with the Internet and everything else, how realistic is it that great works of art are buried

in people's addicts or garages or what have you. It's still uncommon, as much as we'd all like to believe it will happen to us. But what needs to be understood is that we now live in the information age. So we assume that there is a clear archive of historical data associated with every artwork that is available to us, and it's just not true. Yes, if you're buying a contemporary artwork, that should be able to easily be traced

back to the dealer and the artist. And if you can't do that, well, then um, you should be out of luck, because that should be so easy, that information chain should be unbroken. But for as recently as the early twentieth century, the information chain is definitely broken for

so many artists. There are so many artists for whom we have incomplete archives, or the dealers didn't preserve um their journals and their invoices well enough for us have a complete picture of sales, and so for the dealers who did do that in the early twentieth century, it's a huge boon to the market. Or for example, the fact that Picassoum was quite logical and UM he codified a lot of his work, He numbered and dated almost everything.

He also cooperated in UH the publication of a fairly thorough book, a catalog resume of his very extensive production. These these are huge market tools. I remember when sixty Minutes had Picasso on and in the back of his property is a barn literally filled with hundreds of his work. I don't remember which UM correspondent was interviewing him, it might have been Leslie Stall and she says, aren't you concerned? You have thousands of these works worth millions of dollars,

anyone could steal them? That they're invaluable, and his aunt it was not until I signed them, and I always was very much amused by that. But how realistic is that someone steals a Picasso from his garage that's unsigned? Is there any value there? There are unsigned works UM, and for every artist, actually there are works that generally remained in the studio and we're unsigned, unfinished, unsigned, or unloved.

That's that's also for a subjective there is an opinion to that whether unsigned and unfinished are the same, and whether that is that is different for every artist. It's unstable. It's not a direct equation. But um, there is value. There's definitely value. It's just like anything. It's a factor on the value, and so everything is an exponent on the artwork itself. Makes sense. Let's tell a little bit about some of the auctions and things that are going

on in the world of art today. And we would be remiss if we did not discuss that giant da Vinci sale a few weeks ago. Tell us about that. Does four fifty million dollars make any sense for a da Vinci work that, let's be honest, not his best day in the studio. Here's how it makes sense. The market, the art market is definitively shaped right now by individuals who are aligned with institutions or creating institutions. The fusion of the institution and the individual is hugely powerful at

the top end of the market. So the way I see it, there could be no greater attraction for the louver of Abu Dhabi. There is no greater single object that they could add to their collection to make that institution makes sense, especially in its pendant relationship to the Louver in Paris than a painting by da Vinci. There are what twenty or less examples? There are fewer than twenty paintings that exist in the world, all of them in museums, and all of them just utter masterpieces. Is that?

Is that a fair statement? Or am I overstating it? I I wouldn't personally attest that they're all utter masterpieces because I haven't seen every single one of them. What are you doing? You travel so much, shouldn't you do like a da Vinci world tour? That I would think that I could actually quit my job and do a da Vinci world tour. Probably that should be the time

job between college and grad school. That's a in the hierarchy of works by da Vinci from the Last Supper, And I'm not a Mona Lisa fan, so that I don't put that at the top of the heap. It's kind of small, and there's a weird history of it being stolen, which is what made it so famous. But where does this current piece rank? And is it four d and fifty million dollars because it's a da Vinci and any da Vinci would have gone for that for this museum or there is. Is there an inherent value

that I'm completely missing. No, it's a notional value based on it being a da Vinci. It has almost nothing to do with the object itself. I really don't believe that the people who are pursuing this object cared deeply about how it looked or the condition of the work. Um I. And that's that's fine, that's their right. But the the value of this object is founded almost entirely in the fact that there is no other da Vinci painting that you can ever acquire, none of these other

sixteen or seventeen or coming up for sale. And there's such a premium in the market in the world for paintings over works on paper. If you could ever have something, it would be perhaps a pencil drawing, and and he did lots and lots of drawings, and people want paintings so much more. That makes sense. So let's talk about some of your favorite paintings. We mentioned the legare uh that that you sold. Let's talk about La Femme Dajare by Picasso, which is I think lovely work that went

for lots and lots of money. Tell us about that that was a stunning painting. It is a work that had previously been an auction in the Gan sale, so it was interesting that it was not the first time that it was ever appearing on the market. And what did it sell for, because I want to tee up the surprise ending three million dollars alright, so not an insubstantial amount of money, but twenty years less than twenty years later it went for how much eighty million dollars.

That's a lot of money, and that's a lot of appreciation. What changed in the not even twenty years to make that rise sixfold? First of all, there's just general inflation, because if you just do the math on the over that time, it would have multiplied significantly. But it's also the power of the painting is staggering. This is a work. This is unlike the painting we were previously talking about. This is a seminal painting. This is a fully realized, complex,

multi figure, rich abstraction. It is balancing um. It is walking the fine line and Picasso's work between abstraction and figuration perfectly. It's incredibly colorful, dense. It just really shows off both his is pain early prowess and his tight draftsmanship because it is a very architecturally designed, fractured painting. So it's just it's Picasso. It's the epitome of Picasso. And what you have in those intervening years is you no longer have a largely Western driven market for great

Western art. You have a global market for great Western art. You have people from every part of the world competing for the best Picaso. So that's Asia, especially China, South American, Brazil and of course the Middle East. Let's talk about another Picasso. I my French is not as good as it should be. Um, but Painter and Model is another UM. His English translation is another work that that you I believe helped bring to auction, and I am I correct

in that recollection. They are the only thing about that is the Painter and Model was a very popular series or a series that Picasso pursued for a period in the sixties. So there are a number of them. So how many of those did you help sell? I've worked on I've probably sold ten Painter and Model. Really, there's that many of them, alright, So we mentioned Picasso Legier, let's talk about the grain Stack by Monet, which everybody is seen there. They're fairly seminole um it's the Not

Dame series and the grain Stack series. Tell us about that. What was that sale like? That was a real highlight for me. I had seen that painting for many years. He's done a few of those, a number of studies and various versions, but there hadn't been one on the market for fifteen years. And in that time, in that intervening fifteen years, there had been a huge surge in prices for water lily paintings, and that had essentially moved

the market. The modern market or the contemporary market from Mona is all about the profundity and abstraction of the serial pictures, whereas the market for Mona twenty years ago was all about the classicism and clarity and beauty of the eighteen seventies Impressionist pictures. So the market for money has completely changed over twenty thirty years. And during this course of time, we have a fifteen year gap between

the last Haystack coming to market and this one. So we knew that there was an opportunity here, Um, we did not know exactly what the market tolerance or on the benchmark price would be for a haystack. And and tell us how that transaction worked out? So I believe the bidding opened at around fifty or fifty five million dollars. The work ultimately sold for eighty million dollars. I was on the phone with the direct underbidder and it was

a fight. It was a real duel till the end, and they were very disappointed because it was a staggeringly beautiful picture that not only really bridges this important period of art Impressionism, but also can be situated perfectly in a contemporary or modern collection. So let's talk about a few others that you've brought to market. Modigliani, Van Go Jacom Eddie tell us about an example of each and ps I don't mean to downgrade these artists in any way.

We could talk about any of the billions of dollars of artwork you helped sell, but for time's sake, I just want to reference these three together. Well there, Madigliani is remains one of the most fascinating artists to bring to market today because of the profound scarcity of his production. He died young, um and really at his at the peak of his artistic power, so you'll never know his His biography really fits into the mythology that people much like Van go as well. Um like to associate with

great artists and the tortured soul who dies young? Is that? Is that what we're yes? And you never perhaps got to see their fully realized greatness. We can only imagine how much we got to see Picasso live a full life and see what he how his art changed decade over a decade. And there's a great fascination in that. But there is an equally great fascination in the curtailed genius, in the genius that never came perhaps to complete fruition. Where would his art have gone? And with Madigliani, you

have beautiful, full portraits, stately portraits. We've sold arrange, we've sold great male portraits, and that exceeded our expectations because the market is so impoverished of Medigliani, and that people are truly thrilled or excited by any examples that come up and really will chase them. It's another scarcity issue. There's only so many of them, and if you want one,

you're going to pay up that. And then of course we sold in my time at Christie's the Marquis Medigliani, the best Mendigliani you're ever going to get a reclining female nude and what did that go for? A hundred and seventy three million? Not not too shabby. We have been speaking with Brook Lampley. She is the former head of Modern Art and Impressionists at Christie's, soon to be

the vice chair of Fine Arts at South Abs. If you enjoy this conversation, be sure and stick around for the podcast extras, where we keep the tape rolling and continue discussing all things aren't related. We love your comments, feedback, end suggestions right to us at m IB podcast at Bloomberg dot net. You can check out my daily column on Bloomberg dot com or follow me on Twitter at rich Halts. I'm Barry Rich Haults. You're listening to Masters

and Business on Bloomberg Radio. Welcome to the podcast, Brook, Thank you so much for doing this. I am fascinated by the topic and really want to delve into so many more questions. And I don't know whether to pick up with the Jacob Addie Vango and Brank Quc or let's let's let's talk about the question I would imagine is on a lot of people's minds is how investable is art? Because everything we've been talking about has been. Forget da Vinci, what do we say there was seventeen

sixteen paintings? When when? And then even if you go to as prolific as Picasso and to a lesser degree, money have been, there's still only a finite number of those works. And when we look at the modern worlds, and I don't mean modern painting, I mean twenty eighteen painting from artists that are working today and selling their works,

how investable are those works? Is it the sort of thing that we're gonna a century from now those are gonna be the next hundred million dollar paintings, or has the golden age of art production kind of come to an end and everything going forward is something different. It's

a funny thing, you know, Hindsight is always so. I think we look back at our view of the art market of eras past, and the works that we're still selling today is defined by a selection process that's already happened, and today we're faced with how we make that selection process in real time. Surely a great number of the

artists working today will be valuable in the future. But if I had a crystal ball to know exactly who those would be and who they wouldn't be then I would, you know, I would quit what I'm doing and just do that full time. Well, you still need the capital to go out and spend even even at five and ten thousand dollars a painting. So I'm doing that to

some degree myself. I'm interested in that, but I really believe I can't help but be wooed in the stories and the people I've met by the people who collected with their hearts just for the love of it, with a passion, and that passion stood the test of time. I think time and again you hear and see that people who really cared about what they were looking at and collected with a view to that level of quality.

Um that the market rewarded them, because at the end of the day, that's what we all care about, and that's also what drives the market, is the quality. So how much how much of that is the luck of the era? And let me rephrase that. So we mentioned earlier the Rockefeller collection from from David Rockefeller, that here's a person who inherits his fortune in the mid twentieth century, so he's got the preview is hundred years of works that we now know are worth hundreds of millions of dollars,

tens of millions of dollars um. But he's buying what he and his wife like. He's buying what's available. He's buying, um, what is actually up for sale, and a hundred years later,

fifty years later, it's it's an enormous collection. If we were to do the exact same thing today, somebody inherits a few billion dollars and they start buying what they like over the next fifty years, what are the odds that what they pick up over the next few decades are going to appreciate the way uh, the Impressionists, the early modernist Because when we look at the arc of history of painting, we're now in a totally different sort

of zone than what's developed over the past previous few centuries. But I think we still need to recognize that even when the Rockefellers were acquiring so it's interesting, it was a mix of his story, oracle and contemporary art. I think those prescient Picasso and Matisse choices that people made when these people were still actively producing works, um were incredibly wise and wonderful selections, but they were pretty much they were already established artists they were. This is like

buying a Richard Sarah. Okay, this isn't buying um you know, an artist down in Chelsea who is having their first gallery show. This is buying a very well regarded Jeff Coon's, someone who is has already been shown in museums and already has a commercial following and established collecting base. So I believe what the Rockefellers did. And there are many other examples, though not to the same degree. Us. Yes,

that will prove valuable time and again. If you were able to go out today and buy career, mid career examples by already established artists, and you saw that in fifty years. I do believe in that value. There's I there's no question in my mind. But I think the greater question is how you buy truly contemporary art and how how do you And for that I think, um, the people who have been most successful are people who

had some kind of governing philosophy or um metric. So whether that be I'm buying German photography from the nineteen eighties, I'm buying women artists of earlier historical periods. I'm buying um great Cuban art from the nineteen fifties, whatever it may be. UM, the people who really dedicate themselves to some sort of theme and they buy the virtue of collecting in that theme are already they are working in tandem with their collection. They're enhancing the value because they

are creating a story, a narrative. They're creating the category essentially for people to follow. So how does one determine this is a tricky question. So whether you're looking at contemporary art that's being painted today or finding a niche such as nineteen fifties Cuban or nineteen twenties UM German photography, how do you determine what is a realistic valuation when you're making a purchase, because there really isn't a whole

lot in the way of comparables. You're kind of figuring out some number, but it seems to be I don't want to say random, but really subjective and in a tremendously broad potential range, if that makes any sense. Oh, it's incredibly difficult, and this is why people love auction. Auction and the secondary market provides the security of um comparables of a market history and some parameters for pricing

that are based on historical data. But when you go to a gallery, there is no data, there is no context. It's just what they're pricing it at, and you have to make an evaluation that is really subjective about whether you think something is worth that value. Now, of course you're welcome to ask the dealer, and you should um what the pricing history has been for the artist, what you know previous shows they've had. UM, if they can give examples of other sales, that can bolster the information

that you have UM. But that market is essentially untested until someone tries to re sell their work. So a challenge the auction houses face very often is people artists used to contact me all the time wanting to sell their works directly through the auction house, and I'd say, I'm sorry, this is a bit of a chicken and an egg, but you we don't really sell anything that hasn't already been sold. We need there to be a track record that's the floor at the very least. So

let's talk a little bit about the auction process. I was surprised to read that a lot of these lots go off in a matter of seconds or barely minutes, because when we see something like that Da Vinci it was seven or eight minutes of bidding and it got frenetic and crazy. What is the typical auction process, like, how do you determine how what the starting prices and how long do the actual bidding process take. It's a

great question because it's hugely variable. So watching the Da Vinci sale, I think it was actually fifteen minutes of bidding and that's a really long time in the auction room. And I'm not sure what the record is, but it

may be up there. For a single lot, every lot is the auctioneer has a tremendous amount of discretion going into an auction, which is a live auction, which its state you know, for the purpose of this conversation, live auctions, the auctioneer will sit down and look at something called the auctioneer's book before the auction and think about where they would like to start the bidding on each lot, based not just on where the reserve prices, because most

lots offered at you know, Christie's or Sabbs, say, have reserves, which meaning if it doesn't at that price, it doesn't get sold. It's the confidential minimum below which the work will not be sold. But in addition to the reserve. The other information that they may be considering is how many phone bidders have signed up to been on the lot,

how many internetters are registered for that lot. If somebody's left an absentee bid, So, if you have a lot of competition on the lot, you would probably start higher and closer to the reserve. Then if you have nobody, you might start further away from the reserve and chandelier bid more give yourself more room. What does that mean?

Chandelier bid So the auctioneer in New York State can leally bid on behalf of the auction house, so essentially fake bid up until the reserve, so that if someone comes in and bids ten tho dollars but the reserve is eighteen thousand, the auctioneer will bid against them in an effort to entice them to bid up to eighteen. If it doesn't hit reserve, it doesn't get sold. So it's a harmless process and it perhaps moves a sale.

And it also protects the confidentiality of the reserve because what is less effective is to just say, okay, seventeen thousand, does anyone want to bid eighteen and everybody is just waiting and looking at each other to see if anyone will bid. That would discourage people from bidding, because they would wait and let the work not sell and then try to make a cheaper off after what is and does that happen? If something doesn't go for reserve, there's

the option. So again my frame of references automobiles, it's the same thing. The auctioneer says reserve has met or the auctioneer says says reserve is withdrawn. This is a car that's going to sell and lo and behold. Very often that runs the price up. What is the bidding process like, um in terms of increments? What is it like beyond the reserve? Once we know that a sale

is taking place. So the increments are fairly standardized, and they go in fives or ones, between one and two, twos, between two and three, zero to five, eight, ten, between three and five and then five above that, between five and ten um in all iterations, UM in hundreds and thousands and hundreds of thousands. But um the bidder can always request a smaller increment. They can always try to

break the bid and then break the bid. Meaning is that what we saw with the da Vinci going up in three million dollar lots when they could have gone up in one or two million dollar lots. Well, with the da Vinci was particularly unusual and very interesting. UM. But yes, essentially, the bidder can determine their own bid at the auctioneer's discretion, and then the auctioneer might try to control um. The bid increment is their greatest control

over the momentum of the auction. So the only reason they don't want the bid increment to break down is because they want UM. There's no reason if you have multiple bidders to work in very small into increments UM. But with the da Vinci, it was fascinating because the direct underbidder was always bidding two million dollars and the next bid, the eventual buyer, bid eight million dollars each time, and then eventually made like a thirty million dollar bid.

So they were kind of saying, dude, give it up, I'm taking this home and you can't here. They were communicating through their bid, and yet the underbidder continued to come along, thinking, so is that a little bit of poker? They're there, Hey, this guy is bluffing at eight million of pop. I'm going to stay in. I thought it was their own demonstration of determination. I thought it was

really interesting. I thought the direct underbidder was even more interesting than the um the buyer, because of their resilience and saying you won't move me. I was a little um depleted that they didn't win that battle at the end because and we don't know who the underbidder was. No one stepped forward and said you that was mad. No nobody has identified, so I guess at this time I can reveal I'm just kidding. So that that's kind

of fascinating. It sounds like there is this very specific set of rules and a very specific um dynamic to the bidding process. How does somebody who is you know, there's a lot of I hate the word newfaux reach, but there's a lot of new money. Let's say you're a bitcoin millionaire and you want to go buy some art because bitcoin can be lost, but the art at least you can ensure it. How does someone learn on some of these ten and twenty million dollars or more paintings?

How do you learn how to engage and behave at an auction? You talk to me, is that what I'm here for? So, so, if you're working for the auction house, who you know obviously is incentivized to maximize the price on behalf of the seller. How do you sist the buyer you're with a house, the real estate agent is usually the seller's agent. Unless you go out and get a buyer's agent, you're fighting, you know, fighting um or

negotiating with someone who isn't working on your behalf. If you're at the auction house and I say, hey, I really have a thing um for BRINCUSI and I want Brooke to help me, uh find one, how does that work with you and the auction house? If the auction house is representing the seller, it is tricky that we work on both sides. Um. My response that would be that the market is repetitive and cyclical, relationships are long. I'm not interested in a short term relationship with a client.

I'm not interested in over selling them on one object to the detriment of what our long term relationship would be. Because I have so much art to sell um more than four times a year. I have so much art to sell all the time, and we have so much on offer. The market is so voluminous, UM, so transaction heavy right now that it's really in my interests to help someone find the right thing and have them be happy.

Also because in my line of work, I work, as you mentioned, with both buyers and sellers, so every perspective, buyer is a future seller. So I want them to be happy with their purchase because if they're going to sell it someday, I want them to come back and talk to me. Um. But the other answer would be that there are lots of independent advisors in the art world who are full time, who are consultants, who UM would love to make themselves available to people to advise

them on transactions. And you know how to work with an auction house. Um. The only thing is, as with any industry you know, there, they take a commission and I take no commission. So you're working for the house and the house is taking their pound of flesh. But your your job is to just make everybody happy and look look for repeat business related to the auction. I have a couple of other questions I don't want to forget.

So something doesn't get sold and it doesn't meet the reserve or whatever, and it isn't sold then and there you're suggesting, Hey, these auction houses eventually become giant galleries with warehouses full of stuff to be sold. Even if it's not being sold at auction, it may be sold at some other non auction date. What do I have that right? So everything that happens after the auction is

variable and at the seller's discretion. The first thing that happens is, um, we will generally accept offers after sale, offers for things that didn't sell, not not like the day after. You're talking weeks or even months immediately after. Okay, maybe in the hours after you really three days to five days maybe after the auction. So but once a week goes by, that's it. It's done. It's probably it's probably too late. So I miss I miss purchasing something

at the last auction. But I'm you know, it's been on my mind for a few months, and I call up Brooke and say, hey, remember that monet that didn't sell? Um, I'm interested in pursuing that. How How what can we do? Can can you reach out to the seller? Do things like that happens all the time, really, and there is no limitation. I definitely can, and I will when it's appropriate, And then the auction house gets paid their normal pan of flesh. Anyway, if they facilitate the transaction, it would

be then classified as a private sale. We do non auction transactions as well. What's the balance typically is how much is auction and how much is non auction. I'm kind of curious about Well, it's changing all the time. I think the last statistics UM for Christie's in um, we're we're non auction, but I could I'm not sure

if I'm utterly correct about that. That sounds about Bullpark, right, but it's it's a growing sector of the business and there's because really, um, what everybody is realizing is that while we all know the gross auction revenues of the auction houses year on year, and there fluctuates, say between Christie's and Southeby's together, in the last ten years it's

been anywhere from ten to fifteen billion a year. But then there's a whole another potentially forty five billion dollars worth of art being sold every year that is outside of that, there's a lot more market to capture. Are you familiar with artsy So? Rich Barton is the person behind Expedia and Zillo and glass Door, and this new site he's developed he's co founded is below everything we see it at auction is a huge market of art that doesn't really have a way to be tracked and transacted.

Is that potentially the next larger wave of art sales? I think digital is I'm going to transform the art world. Transformed. That's that's a big word. I don't think it's necessarily outside of the auction houses. I think, um, it's already happening. There are increasingly digital auctions taking place or sales online at both Christie's and Southebys, as well as other auction houses,

as well as other online platforms. And yes, what I've seen is that there is a remarkable appetite to buy things online at much greater price points than I think people would fathom. Um, and we should know because I buy everything else in my life online. So Um, clearly we're all getting much more comfortable with buying online and that is now extending significantly into the luxury space. That

makes sense. Amazon is now twenty years old. So when we talked earlier about about providence and fraud, I read a crazy statistics somewhere had said that art theft and fraud and they didn't break it out is six billion dollars a year is that is that number remotely plausible? That seems like an insane Wow, that's that is significant. That's shocking to me. I wouldn't know. I am fortunate that we're not really directly involved. We do see people bring us four juries, but we don't because we try

to avoid them and refuse them and not price them. Um, we're not really quantifying that space as unthinkable as it is. Hypothetically, a non original slips through and gets auctioned off and then subsequently, as we've discovered recently with a handful of not auction houses but galleries, people have sold hundreds of

millions of dollars worth of stuff that's that's forgeries. Does the auction house stand behind the prominence of what they sell or is it simply they're facilitating a transaction and not making any sort of guarantee. Now there's a warranty. There's a five year warranty, and UM, I believe that's standard in the industry, which is that this is if this is sold as a picasso, it's a picasso. The warranty is specifically on the attribution of the work. It's

u pretty much, UM, not about anything else. It's not about the condition. It's not about um other specifics. I mean, surely if we said the work was fifty one by thirty inches and it turned out to be you know, two by three inches, UM, that would be included. But if nobody cares it's it is by the artist as as it's either by the artists or not, that's the issue. And it's a five year warranty. But beyond that, UM, there's significant reputational hazard. You know, they would be a

serious issue for either auction house. And has any of these come up in the past twenty years where something was sold discovered to be not who it was supposed to be by and the auction house made good. Absolutely. It happens UM and generally and hopefully not usually at the um you know da Vinci and Picasso fumtall jaire level. But it happens UM when there are changes in scholarship

or what we call in the industry expertise UM. There are authenticating bodies for a lot of these artists, particularly in the in my field an Impressionist and modern art UM in France the Duat morale Um. It is a legal right authentication on behalf of one of these artists is illegally appointed or given right in France. So, um, when these when this changes hands, when different scholars take over and perhaps change the view that was given ten years ago. Um, that can be an issue that is

brought back to an auction house. And I keep coming back to Jackson Pollock. I recall an issue with I remember a girlfriend or a mistress. It was a painting that was supposedly gifted to her or then was it by her? And is this a fifty painting or a fifty million dollar painting? How do these sorts of things get resolved or do they remain unresolved? And hey, you want to take a chance for fiftys maybe you're getting nothing, maybe you're getting a ten million dollar Pollock? Is it

that open ended? So all roads lead back to Da Vinci. The Da Vinci is a great example. The Da Vinci is a painting that in two thousand five I believe, was purchased at a very small regional auction house and after extensive research was re attributed to Da Vinci. It was not attributed to Da Vinci at that time when

it was purchased for I think ten thousand dollars. So what is most incredible in the story of this Da Vinci is that a work of this importance by such a famous artist would have been so recently rediscovered and reattributed to the artist. And the way that that happened was that there was an important an exhibition at the National Gallery of Art in London in I want to say UM. But in addition to scholarship that was done by the purchaser and just generally in the field UM.

Through this exhibition, a consensus was able to be established among leading scholars in the field UM and communicated to the world at large through this exhibition that this is now known as a Da Vinci Um. That's essential. It's that's where the commercial and the academic world's really converge. We do not rely on ourselves as a soul arbiter, because clearly we have a commercial incentive to sell. So we look to academics and we look to a scholarly

community to make these attributions. How often does do we see a major change in attribution like that where something literally goes for ten thousand dollars to half a billion dollars. I mean, that's a forget the price. How often do we discover a Da Vinci that we previously didn't think was a DaVinci. And I don't mean just with that artist, I mean any major artist from Picasso, Amoni to Rothcot

or whatever. Hardly Ever, what is much more common rather than adding works into the cannon, is that there are works that are excluded from the canon that could potentially be real. So you have any number of people who own medigliani is today um coming around clamoring saying I have all of this information, this is a real Medigliani UM.

And you have a bunch of experts in the art world or commercial experts saying I'm really sorry, I can't help you because there is no universally recognized expert in the field for Medigliani right now. There are some people competing for that um kind of status in position, and hopefully perhaps one day we will have someone who we all recognize, But right now there are a lot of people who own Igliani's who can't be helped. Those could be good value purchases, because they're not or could be

a waste of money unless you really like it. Let me get to some of my favorite questions. Tell us the most important thing people don't know about your background. I think it's the fact that I grew up in London from the time I was twelve until I went to college. No accent whatsoever. I would never have guessed I have no accent. So no Madonna was there for a weekend, then she ended up with a British accent bingo.

This is always what I say. So the reason I don't have an accent is because people would show up from like Austin and two days later have an accent and we'd say, who are you Madonna? That's funny. Tell tell us about some of your early mentors. I was really fortunate, as I mentioned before, to not have a family where I was expected to follow a conventional career path. I would say that my father was an early influence.

He is a sportscaster. He's had the pre viedge in his life to do something that he loves, and he really made me feel that it was possible to do something that I love as a career. That's a really interesting history. Tell us about who influenced your approach to working in the world of art and and the commercial side of it. A lot of people. I've worked with, so many great people. I really enjoyed working with Stephen Murphy,

the previous or recently previous CEO of Christie's. He was someone who was a really inspirational leader and created great opportunities for me at an important moment in my career. What are some of your favorite books, be they fiction, nonfiction, about art or anything else? And and by the way, this is everybody's favorite question. They listeners wanna learn about new books or books they may not be familiar with.

Why if I fear my answer won't be surprising enough, then I am a great lover of fiction, of great novels. I am you know the corrections? Um? Great? Like meaty? Right now? What am I reading? Uh? I'm reading The Knicks. If I could only remember, it's like a first time novelist, I think, Um any favorite art books? There are many to choose from the Life of Picasso's pretty good, John Richardson, you can't beat the Life of Picasso for being not

only informative, but saucy and gossipy and scintillating. Picasso's Life is richly entertaining. And give us one more fiction that you're reading? Oh I have if I could only Oh, I read a Little Life. Who didn't love that book? It's devastating a little life. All right, Let's talk about changes in the art market. What is different today than twenty years ago? And is this a good thing? So many things. It's so much more global as a marketplace, and that's definitely a good thing. It um it puts.

It changes the way that we appreciate art, and we're now seeing our exposing and publicizing great regional works almost to the same degree that we are great examples of the canon. Overall, I think that there was a much more Western perspective in the past. Tell us about a time you failed and what you learned from that. I was challenged by working at a museum in my early career, and it was a surprise to me at the time

because it wasn't that the work was hard. In fact, it was that I wanted to work harder, but there wasn't a place for it there at that moment, and it was I was really limited by the fact that I hadn't completed my PhD in terms of what type of work I was engaged to work on. And that was part of what motivated me to work in a more commercial, business minded environment because it felt more meritocratic. I wanted to work hard, and I wanted to work

somewhere where that was innately valued. You have a fun job, tell us what you do for fun outside of the office. I have two kids, so that's pretty full time in my non working time. Um, two kids under the age of five, two boys. Um, so I got a lot of exercise just hanging out with them. I also like to spin. What sort of advice would you give somebody who's a millennial or recent college grad if they came to you and said, Hey, I am interested in a career in the world of art. So I have a

conversation a lot. Uh, and I always look forward to it because I try to be more candid than I feel either people were with me or actually I think I just didn't ask enough. And um, it's usually you know what, This isn't any easier than any other field. You have to really love it. There's a scarcity of opportunity here. It's an oversubscribed career path. There are so many people coming out of school with art history degrees.

And if you do love it, then take any job that you can get and keep going and it will inform your next step. And our final question, what is it that you know about the world of art today that you wish you knew back in two thousand and four when you were first getting started. That's such an interesting one. I speak Mandarin, Oh really, I I was. I wanted to learn Japanese as a kid, um, and because I thought it was an interesting culture, and not

because I was so business minded. Um. But there's there are incredible opportunities in the art world right now in regional markets, especially Asia, particularly China. You were in London, did you want to spend more time in Asia? What what would you have done different if you had a perfect other than collecting certain works? What would you have changed in your career path had you known how the future would unfauld? No, I think I could do what I do, but also connect. Uh. It's very difficult to

connect authentically with collectors um without speaking their language. And that makes perfect sense, um, and I respect that. But if I want to really help collectors in any other part of the world, UM, I need to speak their language. That's quite interesting. We have been speaking with Brooke Lampley. She is the incoming chair of Fine Arts at Sothabes.

Thanks Brooke, thank you so much for doing this. If you enjoy this conversation, be sure and look up an inch or down an inch on Apple iTunes, SoundCloud, overcast uh or Bloomberg dot com wherever finer podcasts are sold, and you could see any of the other hundred and seventy or so such conversations that we've had. We love your comments, feedback and suggestions right to us at m IB podcast at Bloomberg dot net. I would be remiss if I did not thank my Cracks staff who helps

us put together this conversation. Asian Taylor Riggs is my booker. Producer Medina Partwana is our audio engineer. Michael Batnick is our head of research. I'm Barry Ridholtz. You're listening to Masters in Business on Bloomberg Radio.