484. “A Fascinating, Sexy, Intellectually Compelling, Unregulated Global Market.”

Freakonomics Radio

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Society & Culture, Documentary

4.5 • 32.9K Ratings

🗓️ 2 December 2021

⏱️ 53 minutes

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Summary

The art market is so opaque and illiquid that it barely functions like a market at all. A handful of big names get all the headlines (and most of the dollars). Beneath the surface is a tangled web of dealers, curators, auction houses, speculators — and, of course, artists. In the first episode of a three-part series, we meet the key players and learn how an obscure, long-dead American painter suddenly became a superstar. (Part 1 of “The Hidden Side of the Art Market.”)

Transcript

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0:00.0	Good evening, ladies and gentlemen, and a very warm welcome to our 20th century evening
0:07.6	sail at Christie's.
0:09.3	Earlier this year, in the course of just one evening, Christie's auction house in New
0:13.4	York sold nearly half a billion dollars worth of artworks by Matisse, Picasso, Warhol,
0:20.2	and Alice Neal.
0:22.0	Lot number six, the Alice Neal, Dr. Fingers waiting room, the artist of which is having a retrospective
0:28.1	of that metropolitan museum rise we speak.
0:30.6	And for this only work, we should start here at 455,000 at 500,000.
0:36.4	550,000.
0:38.0	There is a good chance you have not heard of Alice Neal.
0:40.4	600.
0:41.4	That's 600,000.
0:42.4	At 650,000.
0:43.4	We're an absentee bit.
0:45.1	Neal was known for an intense and direct style of portraiture, but most of the people she
0:49.6	painted weren't famous or rich.
0:52.4	Also Neal didn't like to call her paintings portraits.
0:55.6	She called them pictures of people that are also history.
0:59.3	At 850,000.
1:01.3	900,000 dollars.
1:03.2	Here's Neal from an interview on Fresh Air in 1981 describing what she was going for
1:08.0	in a painting.
	...

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