Erotic sale fails to rise to the occasion
Last week’s sale of erotic art at Sotheby’s blew hot and cold in spite of the efforts of auctioneer Caroline Lang to entice extra bidding.
To a slow bidder on a homoerotic photograph by Robert Mapplethorpe she asked: “Are you trying to prolong the longing?”
Other bidders were asked to keep the “desire” going “for a bit longer”.
Around 25 per cent of the opening lots attracted no bids at all. Buyers paid above estimates for just 15 of the 88 lots. The climax of the sale was a quintuple estimate record of £137,500 paid by a British bidder in the room for a haunting nude, La Femme chauve-souris, painted circa 1890 by French artist Albert Pénot. But it was not enough to lift Sotheby’s total beyond £3.7 million, below both its pre-sale estimate and last year’s £5.3million for its inaugural erotic art sale. Perhaps the novelty factor had already worn off.