Some of these auctions have precise themes: “The Tie in Photography”, or work from the collection of Uesugi Mochinori, a Japanese nobleman of the late Edo period. Others are all-encompassing, made up of so many different types of items — photos of mid-century car wrecks, a sketch attributed to Gustav Klimt — that sales are sort of chamber of wonders† In these cases, auction catalogs are plentiful finders, usually downloadable PDFs or online galleries that list a work’s provenance, dimensions, and condition, and sometimes include a descriptive backstory; sometimes they are stylishly printed and bound volumes. The catalogs are so desirable that old copies themselves are often auctioned off.
One of my favorites is the catalog accompanying Swann’s annual LGBTQ+ art, material culture and history sale, which features over 200 items of queer marginalia from the Civil War era to today. For example, here’s some tidbits about Mike Miksche (aka Steve Masters), a former Air Force flight captain who produced merry erotic art in the 1950s and 1960s: “He was commissioned by the Kinsey Institute to appear in films featuring sadomasochistic demonstrating sex occurs, primarily with tattoo artist and writer Samuel M. Steward.” Another lot contained greeting cards from Third World Gay Revolution, a cadre of radical queer activists from the 1970s.
To navigate this premium, I have to draw an aesthetic line in the sand: this is what I like and I’m willing to pay for it. Recently, I came close to bidding on Gregory Gorby’s 1992 piece “Club Miraflores,” a near-life-size sculpture of a dancer waving her breasts at a circle of lurking men below. My rational mind knows the sculpture is tacky and borderline offensive, but my reptilian brain loves its seedy fizz. There’s no arguing about taste at these auctions – only a price is paid for it.
The unusual, rigid conception of art I found in these auctions has changed the way I think about my own aesthetic judgment. Before meeting the auctions, I understood that it was sardonic and raw (I like Jean Dubuffet’s work, for example). From the privacy of my couch, I can enjoy art that I wouldn’t necessarily recommend in public. I’m thinking of a 2005 painting titled “Peter (Home Sweet Home)” depicting a man in a baggy T-shirt and shorts, bent over a blackboard with math formulas, his hand in his pants. It is an idiosyncratic portrait with the rudeness of new art. But the longer I look at it, the more nuanced it gets. The contrast between the academic seriousness of the background and the rudeness of the gesture is intriguing. In addition, there is the brutality of the composition: Peter’s cross is the visual and thematic centerpiece, a fact emphasized by the pixelated arrow on his shirt pointing south. I wasn’t the only one who was charmed by the riddles; the painting sold for $625.
Time and again, auctions offer opportunities to look better and think more generously. The inevitable question when browsing some of these things is, why would anyone want it? I want it, in part, because it’s so ugly or neglected. Now the work of someone like Marvin Francis, whose expressive sculptures of prisoners are made of toilet paper, seems to me as elegant as Rodin’s. The auctions are a reference to work that cannot be seen, to artists that are rarely exhibited and to forms – velvet paintings, snapshots, advertisements – usually destined for landfill. Admittedly, I am often amazed at what I find, but I am also inspired by these treasuries, in which any object can be a masterpiece waiting on its wall.
