Money: the Art of the Matter

First the facts and, then, the two inevitable questions: This week the two most expensive paintings in history--Vincent van Gogh’s “Portrait of Dr. Gachet” and Pierre Auguste Renoir’s “At the Moulin de la Galette”--were sold at auction for $82.5 million and $78.1 million respectively to Japanese paper and real estate magnate Ryoei Saito. The Renoir, considered by some the finest painting the artist ever made, has been in American hands since 1929. The Van Gogh, though privately owned, has hung in New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art since 1984.

So, now to the first of the questions: Are those paintings really worth all that? After all, works by Paul Cezanne, a painter of greater art historical significance than Van Gogh, currently are valued at much less. Well, yes, but . . . As the critic Robert Hughes has observed, when art becomes a commodity--which it unfortunately is when it hits the auction block--it is one whose only index of value is the desire of individuals to own it. A particular desire raised to the level of fetish, which is a fairly accurate description of the Japanese fixation on Van Gogh and, to a somewhat lesser extent, on the Impressionists, is powerful indeed.

Mr. Saito obviously was aflame with such desire. As he told Japanese reporters in Tokyo Friday, “I borrowed the money from the bank, and I will continue to do it to buy good art when it becomes available.”

Others among his cash-rich countrymen obviously share his obsession. In fact, last year, Japan imported $1.87 billion worth of art. That’s a lot, even at today’s prices.

And so now to the other question: Are more of the masterpieces currently hanging in the United States likely to make their way to Japan? Yes, but that affirmative answer is alarming only if America persists in its neglect of its artistic patrimony. Just as brash, culturally ambitious Americans once scoured Europe for paintings and sculpture to carry home, so prosperous Japanese are doing much the same here now. In fairness, it has been a two-way trade. One of the finest collections of Japanese painting in the world currently occupies its own wing in the Los Angeles County Museum of Art.

What has changed is the American tax code, and our great public museums are losers because of it. Formerly paintings such as those sold this week might well have been donated to public collections by owners able to deduct their market value from their tax liability. Today, such donors only can deduct the amount they paid for the work. That virtually guarantees that such collectors will send their art to the auction block rather than to our museums. Restoring the full deduction would be the best sort of investment--one that will pay rich dividends for generations to come.