Book review

Christies's Review of the Season 1982, edited by John Herbert
Phaidon/Christies, 1983

PETER WEBB

Each year, the great London auction houses publish lavish reviews of their previous season's highlights. They are made up of the best colour illustrations from their many specialist catalogues (with expanded notes), the prices realised—mind-boggling in so many instances—and, here and there, a longer description of a particular piece.

Christie's Review of the Season 1982 comprises 504 pages, of which 160-odd are devoted to old master and contemporary paintings, prints and drawings. The remainder deals with all the other art objects and collectors' pieces sold through the firm—it is the sheer variety of these that makes the book so interesting. For example: a polychrome seventeenth century Delft tile which sold for £5,984; an eighteenth century wooden stool from Tahiti which sold for £25,920; a black dress of imitation watered silk worn by Joan Sutherland in Don Giovanni at Glyndebourne in the 1960s which fetched £350 and a 1934 five-seater Packard £184,210.

Of special interest to readers of Art New Zealand is the section devoted to paintings, and comparisons between prices paid for the work of living artists as against masters of more long-standing reputation, is most interesting. An important Constable oil, Wooden Landscape outside the Park Pales of Old Hall, East Bergholt realised a record price for the artist of £324,000, but Salvador Dali's L'Enigme du Desir (1929) fetched 1453,600 and Frank Stella's Reichstag (1958) sold for £462,000.

As would be expected, the book is superbly produced and its release coincides with the commencement of Christmas buying. It would make a very handsome gift to be enjoyed by anyone who has a hankering after the finer things of life—balanced with a good sense of detachment.