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for inventory. For consultants and dealers, buying in the room acts as an advertisement for their services.
    Lot 7 is one of three Ed Ruscha paintings for sale this evening. It “flies” for $680,000. Baer grumbles “Meltzer” and “Gagosian,” the buyer and underbidder. Gagosian represents Ruscha on the primary market and “protects” his artists at auction. If Ruscha were to go out of favor, Gagosian would probably buy key paintings and sit it out until the artist came back into fashion.
    Lot 8 is a Gursky photograph. It exceeds its high estimate but sells for well below the artist’s record. It is not one of his more celebrated works. Lot 9, Dan Flavin’s elegant Untitled Monument for Tatlin , sets a new record for the artist.
    In general, this auction is bearing witness to an incredibly strong market. “Every season we wait for the big correction,” says Jack Gold. “No boom lasts forever,” adds Juliette. It’s not a bubble until it bursts, say those in the business.
    I ask Josh Baer about the “endless bull market.” As he peers over the crowd, he replies nonchalantly, “Without auctions, the art world wouldn’t have the financial value it has. They give the illusion of liquidity.” He stops to jot down the starting bid of Lot 10, then continues. “A liquid market is the New York Stock Exchange. Someone will buy your IBM stock at a price. There is no law to say that someone will buy your Maurizio, but the auctions give a sense that most of the time, most things will sell. If people thought they couldn’t resell—or that if they died, their heirs couldn’t sell—many wouldn’t buy a thing.”
    Lot 10 is bought with a nod for a flat $800,000. Baer turns to me and adds, “We live in a climate where everyone expects prices to go in one direction only. But a lot of artists who are doing well now will be worth zero in ten years. You should look back at old auction catalogues. People have short memories.”
    Amy Cappellazzo is laughing with someone on the phone. The Christie’s staff are gearing up for the next two lots of “museum pieces”—Lot 11, a ready-made sculpture of three Hoovers, guaranteed to make a collector’s housekeeper laugh, by auction darling Jeff Koons, and Lot 12, a large-scale 1960s history painting by the king of postmodern art, Andy Warhol.
    The estimate-leaping and record-setting of the first ten lots partly relate to the way Christie’s has constructed the flow of the sale. People need to feel secure when they are spending extraordinary sums of money on luxury goods. As Cappellazzo explains, “We lay out a sale commercially. If we laid it out art-historically—chronologically or thematically—it would probably bomb. The first ten lots all have to go well. We tend to put things in there that will soar past the high estimate—young, hot, contemporary things that get the room going. At around Lot twelve or thirteen, we’d better be entering a serious price point.”
    The Koons “sells in the room” for $2,350,000.
    “Time for the big kahuna,” says Baer.
    “Lot twelve. The Andy Warhol. Mustard Race Riot …of 1963,” says Christopher Burge. Most works are not referred to by title. They are simply “The Gursky,” “The Flavin,” “The Nauman.” The time-wasting gesture toward the subject matter of the work is reserved only for the most expensive lots. Very slowly, Burge says, “And…eight…million…to start.” The bids are unhurried and come in increments of $500,000. A sober silence descends on the room. It takes about a minute to get to $12 million, and Burge threatens to sell: “Fair warning. Twelve million dollars.” In ten seconds, with three alternating finger waves worth half a million each, the price jumps to $13.5 million. There it stays. Burge manages to linger for a laid-back forty seconds, hoping to elicit another half-million with inviting eye contact, but it doesn’t happen. Whack goes his hammer. “Sold for thirteen million, five