Rooted At Last

By ROBERT HUGHES

Van Gogh's Irises, 1889, known to the trade as the Curse of the Outback, has found its permanent home in the Getty Museum in Malibu, Calif., which bought it for an undisclosed sum last week. Acquired at auction in November 1987 for $53.9 million by the Australian conglomerator and promoter Alan Bond, Irises was the most expensive work of art ever sold. Its price created an artificial euphoria that bulled the world art market and helped save it from the October ( '87 Wall Street crash. The name of the underbidder was never revealed, raising suggestions -- indignantly denied by the auctioneers -- that the price had been manipulated. The sale was financed with $27 million lent by Sotheby's: a margin-trading deal in line with the stock-exchange ethics of the Age of Milken. The deal came embarrassingly unstuck two years later when Bond, as his overgeared empire crumbled, proved unable to complete the payments.

Sotheby's, understandably terrified of the results if Irises had to be auctioned again, repossessed the painting and began seeking a private buyer for it at $65 million, saying that though Bond "owned" it, they "had control" of its whereabouts. (Some Australian museum officials now believe, though they have produced no evidence publicly, that the picture exhibited as Irises on a tour of Australian state galleries in 1989 was a new copy, protected from close inspection behind double glass.) Efforts to sell it at the high price failed. Since informed art-dealing sources concurred late last year that the right price for Irises would be around $35 million, it is unlikely that the Getty paid more than $40 million. But the actual price, to save everyone's face, seems bound to remain one of the mysteries of the American art industry. R.H.