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Also auctioned at auction: Jackson Pollock's "Number 17, 1951"
Photo: Jason Szenes / epa
The white spot measures a little more than two by two meters.
More precisely, it is not a stain, but an oil painting, and more precisely it is not only white, but has a barely noticeable pink discoloration in the middle, like an eye spot.
"Do I hear two million?" Calls the auctioneer, twisting himself like a puppet, to the right, to the left, wherever the bidders are bidding.
The right hand with the hammer hovers tense in the air.
“Two million five hundred thousand?
Three million?"
An evening at Sotheby's on Manhattan's Upper East Side.
I'm in the back of the hall, where the unvisited people have to stand, and I'm glad I don't have an auction paddle in my hand that I could accidentally use to bid.
The offers fly back and forth, in the room, on the phone and via large monitors via live stream from London and Hong Kong.
After a few minutes the hammer falls: "7.4 million!" Beams the auctioneer.
»Paddle No.
933. "
$ 7.4 million for an eye spot.
(With fees, that swells even further, to $ 8.3 million)
My job sometimes leads me to watch the strangest milieus, from slums to the oval office.
Recently I found myself doing research in the orbit of the super-rich of New York City, the "Cathedral of Capitalism".
That's what the flawless broker in expensive Louboutin pumps called it who took me through a decommissioned bank palace on Wall Street that is being converted into twelve million dollar apartments.
A picture for $ 17.8 million
When I stumbled past cursing craftsmen through this luxury shell behind the US stock exchange, which one day will be home to Saudi tech billionaires, and also when I was standing in the auction room, where blank canvases changed hands with nonchalant nods, came over me I got a stupid feeling that, at my age, I thought I had left behind:
What did I do wrong?
Admittedly, the white picture - it bears the un-title »Untitled« - comes from Robert Irwin, one of the most famous modern artists.
A similar work by the US painter Agnes Martin, but this one with baby blue stripes, even fetched 17.8 million dollars on the same evening.
But that's not the point here.
The point is that some can easily shake such absurd prices off their sleeves.
When I shake, only fluff comes out.
Of course I'm fine.
Sometimes better, sometimes worse, but definitely financially stable after a few infantile phases in my life that brought me to the brink of ruin in my younger Sturm und Drang years.
Even if it took me past the midlife threshold, today I'm finally where I can say: I (mostly) can't complain.
One contract level above the day laborer
So why does it suddenly trigger me when strangers pay double-digit million sums for white squares and white penthouses without the blink of an eye?
I would never make it into this one percent stratosphere anyway, I don't even want to.
Or?
Money - or lack of it - used to rob me of a lot of sleep, and I'm certainly not alone in that.
As a student I was often broke, as a freelance journalist as well, even in my fatter transition years as a "generalist", a contract level above the day laborer.
Eventually my money worries took a back seat.
But recently the specter of the statutory retirement age has been rattling its chains louder and louder.
As an expat, I am already asking myself: Where does it age less poorly, here in the USA (without a social network) or in the old homeland of Germany (with a Riester pension)?
The value of a Sotheby's work of art would quickly resolve this dilemma.
In addition, I lack the gene that controls the rational use of finances.
I keep track of my budget, but something is always missing.
Schufa on steroids
In the United States, financial anxiety is part of everyday life.
When I was looking for my first rental apartment in Manhattan, a long time ago, I only received rebuffs because my credit score was wrong.
Credit what?
A "credit score" is the number with which three US financial agencies measure your creditworthiness, a Schufa on steroids.
The higher the number, the better.
But you only get this compulsory note if you have a US credit card with which you can spend money that you don't have.
But you can only get a credit card if you have a permanent address.
But you only get an address - in other words: apartment - if you have a satisfactory credit score.
Go back on go.
I don't remember how I escaped this Monopoly.
Soon, in keeping with my non-existent credit score, I had a tiny apartment in Chelsea with a window facing the courtyard, like Hitchcock's, only with no murder.
My "score" grew slowly, although at first I got it wrong about the credit card and stuck on debts and interest that took years to pay off.
US banks reward debt
But when I was finally out of debt and, for sure, canceled all but one credit card, my score fell again.
Ouch?
Because what is desired here, I found out, is that you definitely run into
a bit of
debt and then pay it on time.
But that is also a trap, because even the smallest default lowers the »score« again.
Americans love vicious circles.
This vicious circle has an inglorious background. In the past, white, male bankers made decisions about the creditworthiness of their customers; black and female applicants were often discriminated against. That is why the automatic, color, class and gender blind FICO Score has existed since 1974. But systemic racism continues to flow into this: only 44 percent of black households own real estate - but 74 percent of white households. To blame: imputed and fixed credit (un) worthiness.
The 99.9 percent white men and women at Sotheby's (I see a single black man) don't care about this vicious circle. Your "fortune" also consists of debts, six-, seven-, eight-figure debts. But for them they are not only rewarded by the banks, with more and more loans, but also by politics, with less and less taxes. Jeff Bezos, one of the richest men in the world, only paid an effective tax rate of 0.98 percent between 2014 and 2018, among other things because he went into debt. My US tax rate is 24 percent.
These practices are common, but so secret that ProPublica got the tax information for Bezos and other billionaires anonymously leaked like an intelligence report.
"We still don't know who it came from," the editor-in-chief told me the other day over a $ 5 latte in Brooklyn.
No investigative reporter should be interested in my manageable debts.
My "credit score" is 707, out of a possible 850 points.
This is considered "good", but not "very good" (740-799) or "exceptional" (800-850).
Maybe that will increase again on Black Friday.
The Tiffany bracelets are jingling
Would I be happier then? A look through the auction room makes me doubt. There are a lot of surgically mutated noses, lifted crow's feet and false hair to marvel at - both women and men. You look discreetly and demonstratively at the Patek Philippe watch, absently jingling the Tiffany bracelet. Nobody seems to be good enough, nothing is enough to mask the impression of endless ennuis. Most of them look grouchy, squinting at others who have even more. When does money make you happy, if at all?
The happiness criteria at Sotheby's are numbers and digits.
The more money flows, the happier the audience.
A couple of times it even breaks out in spontaneous applause.
For example, when a sculpture by the famous sculptor Alberto Giacometti went under the hammer.
"Le Nez" is the name of the nose, and it shows exactly that: a head with an enormous Pinocchio nose, hung in a rattle frame.
A little too creepy for my living room, but someone pays $ 78.4 million for it.
The new owner is later revealed to be a 30-year-old crypto billionaire from Singapore who makes his money with “Non-Fungible Token” (NFT), which is supposedly the latest digital gold rush that I don't get.
I'm really too old for that.
"Don't compare and despair," a friend likes to say, an old self-help rhyme.
After all, it could not only be better, but worse too.
Outside Sotheby's, homeless people are lying on the sidewalk.
Incidentally, all 65 works of art that are being foreclosed inside belonged to one of New York's most notorious real estate sharks.
It's the finale of a bad divorce - and a bittersweet moment for him: he loses his collection, but wins $ 340 million in one evening.
When I meet him for breakfast earlier, he notices my new wedding ring ($ 154.99).
"Your second love?" He asks.
I nod and he smiles: "For me too."
Happiness doesn't always depend on money.
