The Auctioneer

February 29, 2016
In this eye-opening memoir, de Pury, a distinguished auctioneer and art dealer, provides a lively account of his flashy career and today’s soaring art market, revealing a jet-setting
, powerful, and private club of elites who buy, sell, and collect the world’s most expensive art. De Pury fondly remembers his childhood home in the Swiss city of Basel, where art flows “in the veins of its citizens” and where he became hooked on art at a young age. He describes his formative first trip to American art museums, his frustrations as a failed artist and student, and his struggle to find a career within the art world. De Pury also details his slow climb to the top at Sotheby’s, aided by larger-than-life mentors such as Peter Wilson, previous chairman of Sotheby’s and a closeted gay man rumored to be both a KGB agent and the inspiration for Ian Fleming’s James Bond. Though the narrative is often witty (the author’s brief interaction with Arnold Schwarzenegger is highly amusing), the writing is weirdly exaggerated and unfunny at times, such as when de Pury compares himself to Stalin’s victims when describing the Russian Mercury Group’s takeover of his auction house, or when he calls himself a “drug orphan” after his father, a lawyer for a pharmaceutical company, was promoted and transferred to Tokyo. These quibbles aside, the book provides an interesting glimpse into a world of artists, collectors, and dealers in which “the call of the gavel was the call of the wild.” Color photos.

March 15, 2016
Renowned auctioneer de Pury presents a memoir full of gossip, anecdotes, and tales of the very, very rich. The author always had a physical, rather than intellectual, approach to art. Pure joy was just seeing and being around great art. De Pury, who is assisted by co-author Stadiem (Jet Set: The People, The Planes, The Glamour and the Romance in Aviation's Glory Years, 2014, etc.), makes no secret of the fact that he has always been an ambitious snob and elitist, required assets for an auctioneer to those with large, expensive collections to sell. His first job was with art dealer and "total genius" Ernst Beyeler, a hometown friend of his mother in Basel, Switzerland. In 1971, Beyeler created Art Basel, and he laid out a five-year plan for the boy who still thought he wanted to be an artist. He showed him that buying and selling can be just as rewarding. The author moved on to Sotheby's and met Peter Cecil Wilson, "the seemingly mythical chairman" and auctioneer extraordinaire. In Wilson, de Pury discovered the techniques to copy in hopes of being as great as his role model. Occasionally, the book is a true ego trip, with the author recalling his record-breaking sales as "the gallery swooned" or "the crowd breathed a collective 'wow.' " De Pury engages in unabashed name-dropping and delivers plenty of juicy tidbits about some of the world's 1 percent. However, this is also the story of a man wholly dedicated to his profession, a jet-setter before the jet age. He served as curator for one of the world's greatest art collectors, Baron Heini Thyssen, and was also the owner of the acclaimed auction house Phillips. At times, the narrative reads like a gossip rag for the fabulously wealthy, but it's an enjoyable book that lets us live vicariously in the haut monde.

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