Auction House Quotes

I did work at Christie's for a couple of weeks, getting ready for 'The Devil Wears Prada,' getting people coffee and doing whatever they needed around the office. It was amazing. I got to see some wonderful art, and everybody was really nice. It was great.

It's a great advantage to be able to play people off against each other, isn't it? You go to Christie's and get a quote on something. And then you go to Phillips' and you tell them what Christie's has given you. I like auctions for artists.

I started collecting in the late 1990s. My first purchase was from an auction, a scroll by Dong Qichang, from the early 16th century, the late Ming Dynasty.

I don't know much about auctions. I sometimes go to previews and see art sardined into ugly rooms. I've gawked at the gaudy prices, and gaped at well-clad crowds of happy white people conspicuously spending hundreds of millions of dollars.

My father used to run auctions. He's now a singer in the Canary Islands.

An auctioneer is a man who proclaims with a hammer that he has picked a pocket with his tongue.

Studying art history is actually one of the few ways of getting a good job in the arts sector. It's hard to be a museum curator without it, work in any senior position in an auction house or gallery, or become a serious art critic.

I think the reason I love 'Antiques Roadshow' is that it is sort of like the lottery. There's the chance a regular Joe could walk in with anything and come out close to a millionaire. There's the thrill of the find.

... an auction of the treasury.

Sultan Beyazid considered his father's art collection decadent and ordered it sold at auction.

Despite all the efforts of art dealers, the number of Rembrandts existing at a given time is limited; yet such paintings are commonly disposed of by auction.

Hermes bags are the only bags that auction houses accept. Given that it's already valuable to begin with, making it into an even special one of-a-kind piece by painting on it can only increase its value.