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The Dumas painting is medium-sized and predominantly red. It appears to depict a woman looking expectantly out from under her bangs at the viewer. Her finger is phallic and coquettishly touches the lower of her gently open lips.
    Cappellazzo is refreshingly unpretentious. When I asked her, What kind of art does well at auction? her answer was uncannily appropriate to this lot. First, “people have a litmus test with color. Brown paintings don’t sell as well as blue or red paintings. A glum painting is not going to go as well as a painting that makes people feel happy.” Second, certain subject matters are more commercial than others: “A male nude doesn’t usually go over as well as a buxom female.” Third, painting tends to fare better than other media. “Collectors get confused and concerned about things that plug in. They shy away from art that looks complicated to install.” Finally, size makes a difference. “Anything larger than the standard dimension of a Park Avenue elevator generally cuts out a certain sector of the market.” Cappellazzo is keen to make clear that “these are just basic commercial benchmarks that have nothing to do with artistic merit.”
    So what’s the relationship between aesthetic value and economic value? I ask.
    “It’s not fully correlative. There are lots of wonderful artists who don’t have strong markets. What is the correlation between good looks and good fortune in life? It is that kind of discussion.
    It’s moot. It’s nihilistic.” Hmm. Both good looks and aesthetic value are in the eye of the beholder, but beholders are social animals that tend to (consciously and unconsciously) cluster into consensuses. Cappellazzo doesn’t apologize for the market. It is what it is. “I used to be a curator,” she says. “When I run into academics that I knew back then who ask what I’m doing now, I say, ‘I do the Lord’s work in the marketplace at Christie’s.’ It’s one of my personal jokes.”
    The bidding on Lot 5, a classic Gilbert and George from 1975, went up to $410,000, while the bidding for Lot 6, a Maurizio Cattelan sculpture from 2001, has started at $400,000. Gilbert and George may be Britain’s most important conceptual artists, but on this occasion they are no competition for the less prolific, hip-and-happening Italian. The catalogue is the auction house’s main marketing tool. It’s a full-color, glossy tome on which the images on the front and back covers are part of the negotiations meant to entice vendors to consign their art with Christie’s. This Cattelan work, a self-portrait in which he peers through a hole in the floor, not only graces the back cover of the catalogue but is also reproduced on the invitation-only ticket.
    The “Maurizio market” (it’s de rigueur to refer to living artists by their first name) is much debated. Cattelan is a cynical prankster who polarizes opinion. Some people think he is the Marcel Duchamp of the twenty-first century, others say he is the over-hyped Julian Schnabel of our time. It can initially be difficult to distinguish innovators from charlatans, because the former challenge extant versions of artistic authenticity in such a way that they can easily look like pretenders. The test is in the perceived depth and longevity of their “intervention” in art history. Some heavyweight collectors buy Cattelan’s work in such serious bulk that it leads others to complain that his market is manipulated. However, as one consultant puts it, “It’s not manipulation—it’s more unconditional support.”
    The bidding on the Cattelan is “fast and furious,” as the auction cliché goes, and the work sells for $1.8 million, twice Cattelan’s previous auction record. “William Acquavella,” mutters Baer as he scribbles in his catalogue. Acquavella is a wealthy second-generation dealer whose gallery is located in a plush townhouse on East Seventy-ninth Street—one of the few who can afford to buy at that price