BEASTS OF BURDEN

Can an auction house successfully manage a living artist’s primary market? Perhaps not, on the evidence of the latest split between Christie's and Haunch of Venison, a contemporary art gallery it acquired in 2007.

As the article in The Economist reports, the rise in the value of work by living artists has put auction houses in a tricky position. When your job is to sell the previously owned work of the freshly dead or newly insolvent, you may lack the gifts to discern the work that will be important the first time around. Auction traders certainly don't busy themselves flattering artists in their studios—not when there are freshly widowed biddies to woo. As Damien Hirst said to the journalist of The Economist piece, "Auction houses have been around for a long time, but it seems like they are struggling to know exactly what their role should be.”