Simon de Pury - The Auctioneer: Adventures in the Art Trade

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To my children: Alban, Charles, Loyse, Balthasar, and Diane Delphine

Given my extremely short attention span, I have read only a very few books in my life. One of the few that I have read is Haute Curiosit , written by Maurice Rheims in 1975. The memoirs of this art-obsessed French auctioneer had a great impact on the young man I was when I read it. This is the kind of life I want to live! was my instant conclusion. I feel blessed for, so far, not having discovered what routine is and not having encountered any boredom in my life; at times, things have even become a little too exciting for my own taste. As one of the works by artist Jenny Holzer so aptly says: Protect me from what I want! This is the impact that the Rheims memoirs, way back, had on my own life that always made me wish to one day write my own book.

It is my old friend Stanley Buchthal who kept encouraging me to do it. It was equally he who suggested the title The Auctioneer for it. I am most grateful to him for having given me the key push to do it.

Having the patience to read a book is one thing, but having the discipline to put pen to paper is quite another. I was introduced to a lovely ghostwriter. After two sessions together she sent to me a sample chapter; reading it, I was bored by my own story. Shortly after that, by pure coincidence, Jeffrey Deitch (at the time director of the MoCA in Los Angeles) introduced me to Bill Stadiem. Bill, a successful writer of books and screenplays, had approached Jeffrey to write his memoirs, but Jeffrey then had other fish to fry and was unable to embark on such a vanity project. I am grateful to Jeffrey for the introduction.

Thus began lengthy Skype sessions between London and L.A. It felt like having a shrink, with me doing a lot of talking and Bill every now and then asking me pointed questions. Being Swiss and discrete by nature doesnt go well with writing a book. Bill kept asking me, Give me names, give me names!

When I eventually saw what all this talking had morphed into I recognized some of my stories, but certainly didnt recognize my voice. I rapidly realized that this was in fact an advantage and was impressed by how Bill had transformed some of my very approximate impressionistic brush strokes into very detailed and precise descriptions. Reading him I was definitely no longer bored by my own story! I am most grateful to him and thank him for his collaboration and for his patience.

The real engine behind everything I do is my love, curiosity, and passion for art. I feel privileged to be able to indulge in it professionally. If you love candies there is no better place to work than in a candy store!

At the end of the day everything we do in our lives is meaningless compared to the unconditional love our families represent for us. I am infinitely grateful to my wife, business partner, and mother of my youngest daughter, Michaela, for all of her totally amazing support. I am also immensely grateful to Isabel, the mother of my four adult children, for her really incredible support and for having been the only person besides Stanley to have read the manuscript for this book.

Only a fraction of the extraordinary stories I have lived on a near daily basis are in this book, and many key players in the art world and close collector friends could not be mentioned, maybe to their relief.

I want to thank my two invaluable colleagues, Harmony Hambly-Smith and Mark Ferkul, who have provided help at every stage.

My thanks go to our book agent, Dan Strone, who found in St. Martins the best house to publish this book.

Finally, my thanks to Jennifer Weis, my wonderful editor, and Sylvan Creekmore, Sally Richardson, and the whole team at St. Martins Press.

If anybody needed a rebound, it was I. Professionally, my plans to turn the auction-house duopoly that was Sothebys and Christies into a triumvirate that included myself had gone up in the terrible smoke and ash of 9/11. I couldnt have had a greater financial partner than the French luxury-goods tycoon Bernard Arnault, or a greater business partner than my former Sothebys colleague turned co-gallerist Daniella Luxembourg. Alas, both the real world and the often unreal art world had been upended in the fall of 2001 by al-Qaida and by the resultant financial terror that shook the confidence of even the most deep-pocketed and geopolitically indifferent collectors. Arnault had gone, and Daniella was going. An incurable optimist, I refused to believe that the ship everyone else said was sinking faster than the Titanic could not be righted and sailed gloriously into the sunset. O Captain! The art world groaned and collectively crossed the street to avoid me, to them a dead man walking, whether the thoroughfare was Madison Avenue, Bond Street, or the Ginza.

Romantically, things were just as disastrous. My wife, Isabel, and I had parted ways. For our decades of marriage I had viewed Isabel as the most intellectually brilliant of women. I next was involved with Louise Blouin MacBain, a female tycoon by whose entrepreneurial gifts I had been smitten. Her power and success, not to mention the Marie Antoinette splendor of her lifestyle, were aphrodisiacal. Her gilded aura surely played into the ambitions I had in wanting to challenge the giants Sothebys and Christies. But that love affair had gone the fiery way of the Twin Towers, and now I was adrift. I had always found solace, as well as inspiration, in art. Now, at low tide, I found it in an artist.

Anh Duong could surely be said to be the distaff trophy of the art world, and in falling for her, I may have been a victim of the same megalomania that had drawn me to the likes of Bernard Arnault and Louise MacBain. A similar siren call had lured Odysseus to near-disaster. The Greeks, as ever, had a word for it. Unfortunately, I didnt have anyone left on my putatively sinking ship, now christened Phillips de Pury, to tie me to the mast to prevent me from succumbing to whatever fatal attractions the world had in store. Please forgive my delusions of grandeur, which actually did have some foundation in reality. I had been blessed with a fabulous wife, four fabulous children, and a fabulous 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 Sothebys Europe. I couldnt help but think big; it was an occupational hazard. And now all the hazards were coming home to roost.

Luckily for me, Anh Duongs remarkable beauty and talent didnt add up to her being a femme fatale. Anh was a true exotic, half Spanish, half Vietnamese, born in Bordeaux, educated to become an architect in Paris at the cole des Beaux-Arts. Instead, she became a ballerina and then a top model, gracing Vogue covers and Yves Saint Laurent and Christian Lacroix runways. She eventually stole the heart of Julian Schnabel, away from his fashion-designer wife, Jacqueline. And now she was about to steal mine, away from nothing at this point but shell shock, loneliness, and the battle fatigue of the challenge of saving Phillips de Pury from its predicted oblivion.