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Sotheby’s made headlines last November with its Hong Kong sale of Maurizio Cattelan’s Comedian (a banana duct-taped to a wall) for $6.2 million – but that success merely masked an overall failure for the rest of the sale
rary works by artists such as Christopher Wool, Richard Prince and Jeff Koons. Its en- igmatic title stirred curiosity and marked an irreverent departure from sober institution- al language. Result: $134.6 million in sales. ‘Looking Forward to the Past’ (2015) was a cross-category sale that juxtaposed Modern masters with Contemporary artists. Themed like an exhibition, it challenged the tradi- tional segmentation of sales. Its title name suggested time travel or conceptual overlap across eras. Among its lots, Picasso’s Les Femmes d’Alger sold for $179.4 million – a world auction record for any artwork at the time. Total sales: $705.9 million.
T
hese auctions were more than about selling art. They were about storytell- ing, branding and making the auction
a theatrical happening. Gouzer says his app, where only vetted buyers can purchase works, is conceptually a continuation of the same idea. It takes that minimalism to an extreme with just one artwork, one moment and one decision. Gouzer says he is agnostic on what he will
sell. ‘We only care about quality. That’s my driving force. I would love to auction a
soccer player one day – the real ADHD market!’ I look forward to football players duct-taped to walls. We have been here before. Gouzer’s ap-
proach has echoes of the auction of the col- lection of the late banker Jakob Goldschmidt at Sotheby’s in London in 1958. ‘One of the most radical aspects of the sale was having only seven lots – an act of veneration that was the very opposite of the wholesale tradi- tion of auctioneering,’ writes James Stour- ton in his 2004 book Rogues and Scholars. ‘Attendees were asked to wear evening dress, unheard of for a London auction... The sale totalled £781,000, and at the end the audience stood up, cheered and clapped as if it were the climax of an opera.’ Now, in the summer of 2025, the owner of
Grande tête mince is probably holding his head in his hands (in every sense) and reflecting on the curious irony that the work itself – ruthlessly reduced, stripped of ornament, honed to its brutal essentials – is a metaphor for the very market that rejected it. In its lean, unflinching form, Grande tête mince reflects a moment when the art world is slashing ex- cess, rejecting the decorative and searching only for what is essential and vital.
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