Hammer Time!

(Excerpt)

Already worth a staggering $30bn a year, growth in the global contemporary art market is accelerating rapidly. Johnny Davis shadows Sotheby's super-auctioneer Oliver Barker to find out how the industry is defying worldwide economic downturn, who's fuelling the boom & whether a bust is around the corner.

Sotheby's was wising up to contemporary art's potential. The previous decade (90s) had seen museums all over the world begin aggressive trawls to bolster their collections. In 1997, it tested the water with a contemporary-heavy New York sale for the Children's Heart Foundation. Pooling $15m, it toppled all expectations & confirmed contemporary's potential.
Sotheby's, along with the almost-as-venerable Christie's, hasn't looked back.

Next came a wave of young, moneyed collectors - often hedge-fund managers - hip to contemporary art's brash aesthetic, happy to push prices to staggering, scarcely believable levels.

At consecutive evening sales last year, Sotheby's, Christie's & Phillips de Pury sold a total of $837m worth of art in 24 hours, breaking more than 120 artists' records.

"Until about 1980," says David Nash, for many years Sotheby's director of impressionist & modern art worldwide, "if you bought a work of contemporary art by a major artist from a major gallery & tried to resell it immediately, you would get about half what you paid for it."

The market is now worth $30bn a year, the world's largest legal economy to go virtually unregulated. According to Ed Dolman, Christie's CEO, the Christie's-Sotheby's duopoly controls 70% of that market. (Others put the figure nearer to 90%.)

Talk of crash abounds. But even as some Western hedge-funders tighten their belts, a new wave of collectors has arrived from the Middle East, Russia & China.

"Nobody thinks these prices are sustainable," says Don Thompson, author of The $12 Million Stuffed Shark, a rollicking expose of the art world. "Can they keep going up 15% a year forever? Of course not. But the one thing I learned doing my book is just how much money there is out there. If you're a billionaire buying a picture, it really doesn't matter whether you spend $25m or $30m."

"We are the only publicly-listed auction house," Oliver Barker says. "Phillips de Pury & Christie's are both privately owned. Our principle objective is to get money for our shareholders."

Sotheby's was founded in 1744, Christie's in 1766. Rivalry between the two can be intense, a situation presumably not improved in 2000 when the houses were found guilty of running a price-fixing cartel & fined 260m pounds. While Sotheby's was ordered to pay an additional 70m pounds in criminal penalties & saw then chairman Alfred Taubman sent to prison for a year (a scandal that very nearly derailed the firm), Christie's escaped criminal charges by submitting evidence documenting its complicity.

Its a standing joke that an auction house's bread & butter is the three Ds: death, divorce & debt. "That paints us as real ambulance chasers," Barker smiles.

There are clients who couldn't care less about the art. They're buying it to "flip" - sell for a profit later. "There's a group of collectors who famously buy things so they can put them in a warehouse for six months. We have people come in all the time & say, "Look, I've got a million dollars to invest, what would you advise?"

People are still talking about the art market crash. But it hasn't happened. Barker, though, seems more cautious than before. "Since the financial crisis we've become a lot more obsevant as to what people's risk aversion is. It's too early to say. Unlike the stock market, where you can see what your shares are worth, the only way to see what a picture's really worth is at auction. That said, we've become a magnet for China & Russia & all these new world economies. There's no doubt that the recent success of our share price has been driven by that.
"The bottom line," he adds, "is there will always be a market for great art."

Hammer Time!
Johnny Davis
British GQ
Aug.08

Bring On the Crazy: Interview With Christian Bale

(Excerpt)

Christian Bale is an intensely private man. But when GQ's Jonathan Heaf sat down with the Welsh-born 34-yr-old in LA this spring, nothing was off limits:

JF- How do you prepare for a role? Do you have particular rituals?
CB-I never enjoy breaking down my methodology. Sometimes it starts with a voice or an accent, but not always.
The difference between a Werner Herzog shoot, A Terrence Malick shoot & a Chris Nolan shoot are vast, & so I've never had just one method that has worked for me consistently. I start from scratch with each movie; I wipe the slate & I certainly don't rely on some bag of acting tricks I've amassed over the years. Sometimes you get directors who love the rigorous research, while others simply say to you, "Hey, you'll be fine, just turn up on set & wing it." Sometimes you don't need to toil over the minutiae.

CB- For me, just because you finish filming & the sets are dismantled & you go home, it can be a difficult, long process to find your normal self again. Will some part of you be altered indefinitely? Sure. And that just comes down to a way of working. Not all actors have this problem. Look, if I could switch it on & off like a lamp, that would be phenomenal. But I can't, I have to dig my way out of it.

JF- The atmosphere on the set of Rescue Dawn was described by some crew members as "toxic".
CB- It depends who you talk to. Some people might have thought of it that way, but personally I loved it. If it was toxic, then I loved the toxicity, it didn't affect me in any way. I was laughing my ass off most of the time. We had half the crew quit at one point. One day we had these heavies with machine guns turn up, dragging people off to court & threatening crew members with jail time... In the middle of all this chaos we were trying to make this wonderful movie. Walking barefoot through the jungle for hours on end, people cutting themselves, covered in band aids or cuts held together with Sellotape - I had a terrific time.

CB- It was certainly apparent that he (my father) was battling on two fronts - his instincts & his responsibility. He was trying to do the stable, family-guy thing, but you could tell something was dying within. There was definitely a restlessness to him, which I share.
Not that it's anything I see as a negative, just a desire to search himself & the earth for something else.

JF- Wasn't it Viggo Mortensen who worked for a year preparing for the part of Sgt Elias Grodin in Platoon, only for Oliver Stone to then hand it to Willem Dafoe?
CB- It's a blow when that happens. So much in life, for me, is about having a sense of purpose &, when someone pulls that belief from under you, it can be just horrible. The problem comes when the mental rot sets in & you start thinking, "Well, maybe I shouldn't give that sort of commitment to a part again." Then you end up unhappy & mediocre. Although you don't get into acting if you can't deal with rejection, right?

JF- Is it true that after DiCaprio, Ewan McGregor was offered the part of Patrick Bateman & you phoned him up & told him in no uncertain terms not to take the part?
CB- Absolutely. I phoned a few people & let them know my commitment, let me tell you! I called them all & told them it was my role. Don't touch. Step away. Or if you're not going to step away, understand what you're up against.

JF- Another character somewhat unbalanced psychologically was the cop you played in Harsh Times. You were named as executive producer in the credits - what does that mean exactly?
CB- It doesn't mean shit. I'm still waiting for someone to tell me what a producer actually does. What is the difference between a great producer & an awful one?
Essentially, it was a phone call I made to David Ayer [director of Harsh Times] to say, "Let's just get it done, let's make it happen." He was then able to go to financiers & say, "Look, Christian is on board." It was something David & I had been talking about doing for years. I actually called him up when we were making the first Batman film & begged him to get it together. I needed it - 20 days of running around & shooting every day was a godsend after that long Batman shoot. Dave, being the generous character that he is, & in lieu of payment, gave me a nod on the crew credits. No idea what it means. I just thought it sounded good.

JF- And perhaps "Christian Bale,director" would sound even better one day?
CB- I'm not sure about my ability to converse, be patient, be interested in a lot of people at the same time - to handle a team, if you like. What I love about my job is being able to focus on one thing very intensely. I do love having conversations with directors, but you can come up with the most wonderful ideas when it's not your responsibility. No, no plans whatsoever to direct.

JF- What about acknowledgement from the industry - the Oscars, for example. Do you give a damn?
CB- Look, I'm human, & I guess I can't help but like it when someone says they like my work. If someone wanted to jump up & down & go, "You nailed that part. You. Are. Fucking. Fantastic," of course I'd be riding high on that. But before that happens, I'll just have a couple of drinks with my pals.

Bring On The Crazy: Interview with Christian Bale
Conducted by Jonathan Heaf
British GQ
Aug.08

Fear of Fake Breasts

(Excerpt)

Until a man has made love to a woman with fake breasts, he cannot really comprehend their true horror.

For no matter how good they look, the spell is broken the moment they are touched by human hands. The real things manage to be both firm & soft, they feel undeniably human, they move, they are alive.
In comparison, counterfeit breasts feel as though they have been stolen from the morgue.

They (fake breasts) are not there to be fondled, kissed or felt, they are there to be admired, discussed, lusted after & photographed.

Why aren't there armies of thinking women protesting about the grotesquely booming trade in bogus breasts? Why don't women's magazines stop slavishly printing pictures of pumped-up stars with their pathetic plastic tits sticking out?
Is it because to really & truly know how rotten fake breasts are, you have to be a heterosexual man?

I can understand a woman wanting breast augmentation if she has a genetic defect or if she has had a mastectomy. But the overwhelming majority of operations are done for vanity.

They all (the incisions) hurt like hell.
I have never met a woman who did not find breast enlargement the most painful experience of their life.
But this initial pain is likely to be just the start of her problems.
Those silicon shells can break, leak or slip.
Breast sensitivity often goes out the window. The pain she feels after the op can endure for years - perhaps forever. And breast implants can make the detection of cancer far harder.

But last year in America alone, nearly 400,000 women had breast-enlargement surgery.

And speaking from the male perspective - sex with a woman wearing replicant breasts is no fun. That's the murderous irony - there's this mirage of perfection, this pert promise of ultimate pleasure, & the vision fades the moment you reach out to touch it.
Fake breasts are the cock-tease from hell.

There is an old Zen puzzle. If you have a sword & you first replace the handle, & then replace the blade - is it still the same sword? A woman can have so much work done that she is no longer the same woman.

Don't do it, girls. It should not take a man to tell you: learn to love yourself. Love what God gave you, no matter how much or how double-A little. Little can be fun. Little can be lovely.

Fake breasts look bad, feel bad & will one day make you feel bad.
If a woman wants to keep her health, her man & her self-respect, then she should always keep them real.

Fear of Fake Breasts
Tony Parsons
British GQ
Aug.08

When it Comes to Courtesans it Pays to Be Cautious

(Excerpt)

According to sociologist Sudhir Venkatesh,there are clearly defined divisions within the world of paid-for sex. The price for tier-one girls ranges from 1,000-2,500 pounds per session. They might be any age and ethnicity. They should be clean, & most have a degree. They will be discreet but most work for escort agencies that are routinely under surveillance.

Tier-two whores cost up to 4,000 pnds a session. They tend to be white, well-educated & usually require a referral before they take on a new john. They have a small, exclusive clientele &, unlike tier-one workers, they do not rely on escort agencies, which means they keep all their money.

At tier three, prostitutes charge from 5,000 pnds per rendezvous. They may have only a handful of clients, & will charge them for rent, clothing etc. Habitually they'll set a private dick on new applicants to see if they measure up. Oddly, despite the hefty rates they charge, punters going to tier-three hookers often don't want sex. Up to 40% don't go beyond light petting.
Instead, super-rich men will set them up as a fake spouse. Latterday Masters of the Universe hire sophisticated skirt simply to converse intelligently, without edge, & be a good-looking distraction from real life.

Sex: Pros & Cons
Rebecca Newman
British GQ
Aug.08