At the recent Basel Miami Fair, Switzerland's Galerie Gmurzynska was offering Pablo Picasso's "Fillette a Cheval" (Little girl on a horse) -executed in 1905/06- for $6 million.The picture is a grim reddish drawing of a man standing by a horse ridden by a young girl. It is not particularly appealing nor well drawn. It is only a Picasso, one among dozens of thousands.
The gallery did not sell the Picasso and it is well understandable. Who is the fool ready to spit out such a monstruous sum for the joy of hanging on his/her wall a painting that looks like the work of a average gifted artist in his first year at l'Ecole des Beaux Arts ?
"You don't understand, answer the critics and the art dealers, it is a Picasso". So what ? The whole thing is horrible, the reddish background loos like a primer, the small girl seems to come from a diet at Dachau and the man -who looks to be a Doppelgänger of Chaplin- is touching his chest as though he was checking for a possible heart attack !! Six millions bucks ? Please make me a serious offer at $600,000 and I might consider a purchase.
The press commented about the Miami Fair saying that art dealers were generally happy and satisfied. Wow the lie !!! The press is always lenient to the Art dealers and ready to propagandize their says with celerity and complacency. The reality is that prices are down, seriously down, rebates as well above expectations, negociations last for even with some aggressivity and good pieces of great quality went but not always at the best prices (for the dealers), in short the ones who made good deals were the visitors who had not yet lost all their wealth on the stock markets.
Conclusion, it is what we can call a buyers' market but the press never likes this idea : those morons prefer to stand with the dealers when it is a sellers' market and ignore the general needs of the public. Why ? It should be the contrary.
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