Under the Boom

A new force is loose in the art markets. It is the buccaneer investor, who does not know what he likes but knows a good investment when he sees one. The result: a boom in art sales that is unparalleled in living memory.

Most conspicuous sign of the times last week was an auction at Manhattan's Parke-Bernet Galleries. In just one hour. 29 middling-good impressionist and post-impressionist pictures were sold for a whopping $1,528,500. The auction was so crowded that 5,000 people were turned away, and half of the 2.000 ticket holders were forced to watch the bidding on closed-circuit television. The lot had been collected in a hurry over the past few years by Hotelman Arnold Kirkeby (Hampshire House, Beverly Wilshire. Saranac Inn, El Panama). He was selling them off faster yet. Top record-breaker of the evening: $152,000 for an early and not especially rewarding Picasso that cost just $45,000 three years ago, was bought by Kirkeby only last year for a whopping $185,000. His loss on that canvas was more than compensated by record-breaking prices for a golden clutch of modern favorites: Modigliani, Rouault. Bonnard. Vlaminck, Signac, Morisot. Pissaro and Segonzac. The whole thing had the fever of a poker game, with the blue chips in the hands of professional gamblers.

The new investor does not confine himself to French art; the established Americans also benefit. At the Midtown Gallery, Robert Vickrey's sober portraits of people and places sold so fast (at prices up to $2,500) that the gallery was begging him for more pictures. At the other end of the abstract-realist spectrum, all but three of I. Rice Pereira's cool and calm abstractions ($1,400-$2,300 ), on display at the Nordness Gallery, were sold.

Not all the dealers are pleased. At the Downtown Gallery. Edith Halpert reported that she had received a visit from a Midwestern businessman. He had a list of the artists in Halpert's distinguished stable. He wanted one of each. "Don't you want to look around a bit first and decide what appeals to you?" Mrs. Halpert asked. No. the man said, "this is just a matter of investment. I hear art prices are going up." Mrs. Halpert told him to go elsewhere.

Purists like Mrs. Halpert are understandably indignant over the invasion of the domain they have defended so jealously for so long. The new gamblers in the art market plunge only on established painters--those already on the big board, so to speak. The purists argue that pictures held like stocks in a bank vault do no one any good. They insist they would rather hold such pictures for the public--which is to say, for the museums--or, failing that, for private collectors who will at least cherish them.

Many a dedicated painter still freezes in a cold-water flat, still depends on the discriminating small collector who cares more about his instincts than his investments. But the flood of money into the art market is testament to the new status of art in the scale of values of U.S. culture. Even those unknown artists who do not benefit directly, or at once, can be grateful. As long as prices are posted over lunch counters, artists will go on taking an interest in the relation between the price of what they sell and the price of what they eat.

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