Will
Waspe (st,
A down-turn in their London fine art auction business of 25 per cent during the last quarter has caused Sotheby's to recoup a small percentage of their losses by reducing their London staff by twenty-eight. This closely followed a report that Sotheby's had secured a foothold in Monaco, where fiscal disturbances to the market are unlikely to be anything like as damaging as those threatened here. Could these events be a symptom of developments to come? Has the erosion of London's international status as the centre of the world's art market already begun?
The omens appear not altogether propitious for the involvement of the British Rail Pensions Fund with Sotheby's in a joint art investment company boasting the name of 'Parthenon'. A Radio 4 comment by the official in charge of investment planning at the Legal and General Insurance Company seems relevant: ``I would have thought there were very serious questions to be raised at the present time about investing in pictures — it's a very fashionprone market." He added that, in order to keep up with the inflation rate, "You cannot at the moment find any investment which will produce a yield of anything like 20 or 25 per cent — not even an Old Master, unless you happen to be trustees of the BR pension fund".
Presumably the pension fund trustees reckon on a long-term investment. But the foregoing of 10 per cent interest over ten years would mean that the price originally paid would have to be doubled on sale if a loss were not to be incurred. This could well prove to be a pretty tall order, in view of the weaknesses in the art market which are now becoming apparent.
Unshaken
The customers innocently queuing in the rain to see Earthquake at the Empire, Leicester Square, last Sunday had a glum surprise when they eventually got inside the cinema to find a notice announcing that, at this performance, the 'Sensurrouncl' effect was not working. Since the machine-made illusion of actually 'feeling' the earthquake is the only reason for seeing the picture (indeed the only reason why it was made), their disgruntlement was understandable.
Showbiz realities
Though the premature closure of the Twiggy pantomime, Cinderella, at the London Casino, has been attributed to rising costs, this is not an explanation that holds much water. The major costs of a show like this one are incurred before it opens, and it is hard to think that such as remain could not have been calculated, even in the present inflationary situation, by such a shrewd money-man as Sir Bernard Delfont. It seems far likelier that the London public has simply decided that pantomime's day is done. Hence the Palladium's decision to depart from the tradition this year: no sign of closure there, rising costs or not.
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