Giant ancient kitty // Van Gogh forcibly sold // Return of the bog bodies // And guess how much Christie’s made in 2022!

Hello, everybody. Welcome back to By Amara. This is a weekly news show where I discuss contemporary events in the art and history fields.

I'm your host and personal curator, Amara Andrew. The format for the show that I typically follow, that I typically don't follow, is one traditionally used by Western brides, something old, something new, something borrowed, and something blue. This week though, we are going to have three something olds and one something new.

So see, I'm veering off track as always. This week we're going to be talking about a giant, ancient kitty, the return of Nazi looted artworks, return of the bog bodies, and guess how much Christie's Auction House made last year. So, we have all that and more coming up on this episode of By Amara.

So, let's get to it.

So, first as always, I love to start with updates. I did take last week off, so I apologize I didn't announce that properly. I was distracted having Jeff in studio with me.

So, that threw me off a little bit. But I did take last week off. It was very lovely.

I was very excited to come back and keep doing my podcast. I guess I went for a quintessential art sort of look. I look like a beatnik today, I guess.

I just need my beret and coffee and Jack Kerouac. But yeah, so happy after the holidays. You have survived!

Yay! It's funny because the holiday season like we celebrate Christmas and it is actually my least favorite time of year. I do not like the holidays.

There's so many expectations from everybody and everything, and it's just it's never really like quite what you think it's going to be. It's not super fun. It's not blah, blah, blah.

So, I actually hate the holidays. They're super stressful, and I just do not enjoy them. I always like the after holiday feeling where it's like, now I feel like I can actually enjoy Christmas, which is really fucked up.

Like I should be able to enjoy it, but I just don't cuz it's just my psyche and a bunch of other things. I'm not going to get into it and bore you with it. But anyway, congratulations.

You have survived the holidays, so welcome to the other end of it. You have like 360-some days until you have to go through it again, so you can kind of relax a little bit and have fun. Also, this is the last episode of By Amara for 2022.

Woo! Confetti! Yay!

Yeah, so happy also last episode of 2022. I can't believe it's already that time of year. It's wild.

I can't believe it's already going to be 2023. It just doesn't feel right. I feel like I missed out on a couple years.

I know with like COVID and everything, everybody feels like that, but it's just weird trying to sort of go back to normal, I guess. I don't know. I'm having trouble with it.

I know a few other people that I know are as well. But also, this year's going to be really special because I turn 30. That is gross and weird, and I hate it.

Ew. In my mind, I'm not 30. In my mind, I'm like 19 still.

So, that's going to be very weird when that happens. It's going to happen quick, too, in March. So, it's like, "Oh my god.

Existential dread. I'm almost dead. Wha!" I'll probably cry.

It'll probably be a shit show, but we'll see. It'll It'll be fine. It'll all be fine.

I have a lot of dread about I think I have a lot of dread about big milestone things because it's just like it's a lot, and you expect certain things. I think it's the expectations and I don't know. Okay, I'm not going to evaluate myself.

That is it for this portion of the podcast. We're not going into my psychology. Maybe that'll be on my Patreon or something.

Oh, also, I have a Patreon. Fun fact, if you love the show and want to support it or whatever, I currently don't have sponsors, but I may have them in the new year. So, we'll see how that goes.

But for now, it's just me toolin' chuggin' along with Jeff as my support system. So, thank you! So yeah, so I have a Patreon.

If you want to go take a look at it, you can give me money for giving you entertainment, but anyway. It always feels so weird to plug. But anyway, so it's licked- linked.

I said I was doing well, and I'm not. But yeah, anyway, so it's linked in the description below, so you can check it out if you'd like and no pressure like at all. I just wanted to let you know it exists, so yeah, just do whatever makes you happy.

Anyway, let's move on with the show. So, I do have one update. In episode nine, I talked about one of the 13 first printing copies of the United States Constitution that was going to sale at auction.

I think it's Sotheby's. This auction was suddenly postponed, according to a representative of Sotheby's, which is really sketchy and super weird. And it was postponed just hours before the auction was about to happen.

It was stated by the spokesperson, I just bumped my nose, sorry. It was stated by the spokesperson that, quote, "The sale of the official edition of the constitution has been postponed following consultation with the consignor to provide interested institutional parties with additional time to pursue fundraising expenses efforts," Jesus Christ, "for a possible acquisition." So, I think essentially just that just means that somebody needed more money to be able to buy this, which it feels kind of weird that you'd be able to postpone an auction for somebody to buy something.

But I guess maybe they didn't have enough people that were interested in buying it or whatever. Like I have no idea. I've never worked in an auction house, so I don't know all the ins and outs and everything.

It's unclear when this is actually going to be sold in the future cuz they haven't even given like a future release date or anything like that. So, we'll kind of just see what happens. What's also interesting about this, though, is that there's a crypto fundraising group called ConstitutionDAO 2.

There was a first one where they tried to buy the copy of the constitution that I talked about in the episode like before, and then ConstitutionDAO 2, which is not affiliated, I don't think. It was like really confusing, but I don't think they're affiliated with each other. They were trying to attempt to buy this version of the US Constitution.

They made attempts. I don't think Sotheby's was super happy about that. Like it's all just very confusing and it could go on and on and on.

So, I'm just going to chop it there. So, if you wanted to purchase a copy of the US Constitution, I guess you have to wait and just see what happens. So, that is the only update I have for you.

So, let's just get to the rest of the show.

So, like I said, we have three something olds. Our first something old. What is cuter than a little kitty?

How about an ancient kitty that's about 33 ft in diameter. It's huge! It's massive!

So, a couple weeks ago, a group of 168 Nazca geoglyphs were identified in Peru's Nazca Desert. Just so you're aware, geoglyphs are like large landscape art kind of things. So, it could just be designs, motifs, like actual like figural kind of things or whatever.

These are typically made from stone, gravel, earth, or other sort of earth-related materials. This particular group, though, of geoglyphs that was just found date between 100 BCE and 300 BCE and included depictions of humans, camelids, which for side tangent, I had no idea that camelids was actually a word, but camelids encapsulates camels, alpacas, etc., all those kind of similar-looking things.

It's a great description. I'm an art historian. I'm not a zoologist.

I actually don't know. So, humans, camelids, birds, orcas, felines, and snakes. So, these geoglyphs were created by removing black stones from the earth's surface to expose the white sand beneath.

So, it was this like harsh, kind of dark and light contrast of sorts. This recent finding adds to the nearly 190 previously identified geoglyphs that were found in this area in Peru between 2004 and 2018. And scholars have posited a lot of different purposes to these geoglyphs, like whether they be to depict deities or served as like a form of irrigation, and they just happened to be really pretty as well, or that they're actually a calendar with astrological alignments.

So, the exact purpose of these geoglyphs remains completely unclear. It's not totally known yet. But hopefully, scholars will be able to figure it out.

That was just a really quick news story. I just thought they were the kitty was really cute. I loved it.

So, yeah, so I just wanted to share that. I thought it was really cool. I've seen people talk about these before, and I just thought it was really fascinating and that there are so many of them.

Like I just I think it's really awesome. I'm very curious to see what these actually mean, if there is even some purpose other than just like they look cool and they look pretty. Like that's totally fine.

So anyway, so very curious to see what happens. So, on to our next story.

This week, we are also going to be talking about Nazi-looted art. Three legal heirs of a man by the name of Paul von Mendelssohn-Bartholdy, and apologies for mispronunciation as always, these three heirs are suing a Japanese holding company. Apparently, Mendelssohn-Bartholdy, who was a German-Jewish banker, was forced to sell his art collection to avoid persecution by the Nazis.

Some of the artworks that were in his collection included pieces by Pablo Picasso, Claude Monet, and Auguste Renoir, and these were sold sometime within the mid-1930s. Another piece that was part of his collection, though, which is part of this whole legislative lawsuit sort of thing was Vincent van Gogh's 1888 painting, Sunflowers.

And so, like I said, that is the one that Mendelssohn-Bartholdy's heirs are trying to get back from this Japanese holding company called Sompo Holdings. So, Mendelssohn-Bartholdy's heirs filed this lawsuit December 13th, and they allege that Sompo Holdings ignored and was recklessly indifferent toward the painting's provenance when it was sold in the late 1980s at public auction.

In return though, Sompo Holdings, of course, is denying any and all allegations that are being brought forth. So, Sompo, actually, they acquired the piece in 1987 from a Christie's auction in London for $39.9 million. What's tricky, though, and why I'm bringing that up specifically, is because this piece was sold over a decade before the 1998 Washington Principles on Nazi-Confiscated Art declaration.

This declaration is huge in Nazi-looted artwork, like that whole arena and everything. That declaration focuses specifically on researching and finding and returning these artworks that were related to any sort of Nazi activity. It is a very challenging sort of prospect because the company, Sompo Holdings, did purchase it legally, and I fully understand that and I fully appreciate that, blah, blah, blah.

They may or may not have known the provenance, I'm not excusing that at all, but maybe they didn't know. And the fact that they spent $40 million on it, that isn't that isn't nothing. Like that is a huge chunk of change even if you do have a shit ton of money.

Like that is a large amount of money to then just be like, "Okay, well I'm just going to give this back to whomever." Now, I'm not saying that they should keep it. I actually just personally I would think that they should return it to the family in question. However, that is not I do not own the artwork.

I have never bought anything for $40 million. I couldn't even fathom doing that. So, it just it comes down to kind of a morality sort of question of, well what should I do?

Should I adhere to these ideas and adhere to this is something that this person was like forced to leave their art collection or sell it and get rid of it so then they weren't killed. At the end of the day, we'll see what Sompo Holdings says. But personally, I think that it should be returned to the family, but I don't know.

I'm not an expert in any of this. I'm just I'm just letting you know what is going on currently, that there's still pieces that were looted by Nazis or sold because of Nazi-related activity that are still being questioned or still trying to be returned to people. It's bananas.

I mean, it's what, almost 100 years after the fact? And yeah, we're very close to 100 years after the fact and we're still dealing with these things. Like make good decisions, I guess, is the point of this story, so.

Anyway, we will move on to our next something old.

Sorry, I sniffed in the middle of that, and I'm pretty sure you just heard it, so I apologize. My nose is like a little stuffy. It's winter time.

It makes my sinuses dry. Anywho, our next something old is about bog bodies. Bog bodies are not anything new in the history field.

They're really fascinating to study, and in case you aren't familiar with what the hell a bog body is, it is a human cadaver that has been mummified in a peat bog, and then it just looks like the person's just asleep. Like some of the most notable cases are the Tollund Man, who was found in 1950, and then the Elling Woman, who was found in 1938.

So, when people are building new buildings or excavating or whatever, they find these bodies in the ground, which is what happened with this story, which I'm I'm going to get to that in a minute. But essentially, they are like perfectly preserved, which is super fucking creepy. If you're like digging into the Earth and then you just see this face.

Well, by that time the archaeologists are in there, so they're doing it gently. That is so creepy. Could you imagine that?

You're just doo, doo, doo, doo, doo, and then it's like, " this person's like…" Well, not looking, cuz their eyes are closed, but "I'm face-to-face with this person who's thousands of years old." Anyway, so those are the two like kind of most notable cases of bog bodies that have been found. So, in October, actually, and this was just published recently, so otherwise I would have talked about it in October.

But in October, a new bog body was found. So archaeologists on a dig in Egedal, and apologies as always for mispronunciation. Archaeologists on a dig in Egedal in Denmark found the legs, pelvis, and jaw of a person who lived 5,000 years ago.

Evidence of Ritual Sacrifice in Egedal Skeleton

What?

So, like I had just talked about, the bodies of the Tollund Man and the Elling Woman, it was like you could see their face. Like specifically thinking of the Tollund Man, you can see every wrinkle in his face, you can see every detail in his face. Like he looks like he's just asleep and like just there, like a human.

But the fact that this body was not intact, it was just a skeleton and fragments of the skeleton is really interesting. Like I wonder what happened and what was different and what made that actually happen versus having the body be perfectly preserved. So, I'll just leave that to the archaeologists to figure out.

So, what's interesting also about this skeleton is that there were no signs of violence. So, like no knife marks, wounds, breaks, anything like that in the muscle or muscle in the bones that they found. So, it's believed that this skeleton was also part of ritual human sacrifice, which that is the current theory behind all these different bog bodies that have been found is that they were sent to this other world kind of like I'm just going off of what I remember from reading about them before.

But essentially, it was believed this is just what's been posited by scholars, that the bog or the marsh kind of area was seen as like where fairies and all these mythical creatures would hang out. So then you would sacrifice the body there because it was believed to be a portal to another world or something like that. I don't quite remember, but I'm just I'm I'm going off of what I think I remember.

So, people were sacrificed there, so they were like hanged and the bodies were perfectly taken care of. So, that's also how you can tell if someone was like a human sacrifice, is that the body was taken very well care of. So, that's also how this skeleton appears to be.

Also, like I mentioned previously, most remains are only found because of like construction or building or things like that. Like in England, it's just like rampant, like so many bodies are found every day. So, these remains also were only found because of a construction project to destroy the bog and make way for a housing development.

For now though, construction is paused in the area where the skeleton was found because the archaeologists were called in from a neighboring museum, I forget what it was called. So, they're digging in and making sure that they get all the all the good stuff out of the bog, and then the rest though of the housing development will just kind of be built, and then the last part will just be where this bog is.

But I feel like they're going to be waiting a really long time, cuz normally archaeology things archaeology digs take a really long time. So, I don't know, going to have to wait on that housing development.

Guess how much money Christie's made in 2022. You got your number? Actually, you might have gotten really close.

I don't know. You'll find out right now. So, Christie's auction house in total for 2022 made 8.4 billion with a B as in boy, 8.4 billion dollars.

I can't even fucking fathom that amount of money. I guess it's not a lot when you That sounds insane to say. I guess it's not a lot when you think about how much things cost, but that's still so much money that people spent on essentially just collectibles with varying degrees of worth.

Like it's such a subjective practice. The whole auction world is so subjective and it's so weird, cuz it's like, "Well, I think that this movie poster is worth $5 million, but you think it's worth $5." It's It's so fucking weird. But it's very smart.

It's just like luxury brands and everything, which is what Christie's shows themselves as. So, it's just very interesting. It's a really interesting weird little world.

But you might be asking yourself, "How did they get to the $8.4 billion?" I will tell you. So, I'm about to break things down a little bit with just a bunch of facts and figures, so get ready. It's really interesting.

First, I have to talk about the Paul G. Allen collection. I talked about this collection back in episode three, so like way back.

We're now on 15, can you believe it? The entire collection was slated to bring in about $1 billion. It actually brought in 1.6 billion.

So, already, that's like 1/8 almost 2/8. So, that is already almost 1/4 of the money just gone. Like, that's just taken care of from this one freaking collection!

That is bonkers! I just I can't get over it. That's just so much money.

But anyway, I will not get too hung up on that. So, in addition to the Paul G. Allen art collection selling for over $1.6 billion, there were also two huge artworks that were sold.

The first is Andy Warhol's Shot Sage Blue Marilyn, and that sold for a record-breaking $195 million. M as in Marilyn. And that became the most expensive work by a 20th-century artist to ever be sold at auction.

So, that sold $195 million. The other artwork that was sold that made a huge splash was Man Ray's Violon d'Ingres, which was one of my favorite photos. I love that photo.

I'm obsessed with it, so I was like, "Oh my god. I wish." But when I saw how much it sold for, never going to happen. So, that pho- or it might, I'm going to manifest that it could.

So, that photo sold for $12.4 million, and M as in Marilyn as well, making it the most expensive photograph ever sold, just period, full stop. I also have a few other interesting facts and figures, too, so I'm just going to rattle them off right now. So, just in general about how Christie's operated in 2022, I just think these are really interesting things to know, just because I'm always curious how the ins and outs of things work.

So, you have private sales and then you have auction sales. So, private sales for Christie's made up $1.2 billion of their revenue. So, just like behind the scenes kind of things, you can just buy it, and then it doesn't have to be a whole auction, you don't have to compete with people.

The remaining like $7 billion came from live and online auctions. So, clearly, auctions are still doing really well. Those were like the main bread and butter for Christie's.

So, another little tidbit, the 20th and 21st-century art category accounted for the bulk of earnings at $6.2 billion. So, most people wanted 20th and 21st-century art. I would like to see that broken down a little bit more, like, okay, well, what decades sold best or what centuries even sold best.

I would just be very Like, which of the two centuries sold best? I would just be really curious to see, okay, is it like 1950s on? Is it kind of like a post-war sort of thing, or is it contemporary art, just like right now, right now, what is going on?

I just think that's very interesting. I also think it could help us all learn something from it. Again, I'm not an economist, I've no fucking idea what you're going to learn from it, but I just think it's really cool to see where people place all this value.

And what's also interesting, too, is that about 40% of Christie's revenue came from the Americas, while 34% of sales came from Europe, the Middle East, and Africa, and then the Asia Pacific region made up the last 26%. So, we have the Americas at 40%, Europe, the Middle East, and Africa, 34%, and Asia Pacific region made up 26%.

Also, there were a lot of millennial buyers, too, which I thought was pretty cool because then I was like, "Oh, maybe it's like crypto people or influencers or something." I would love one day to be able to buy some sort of amazing piece of artwork. I almost had a chance to buy a Rembrandt when I was in undergrad, but then I was like, "Ugh, I cannot afford to buy that." I would just love to own something just that I really, truly love.

I think it would be amazing, not even thinking like an investment piece, but just something. I did see on Christie's website the other day that I could buy a George Grosz painting, which I would love. I love George Grosz's work, so I was like, "Ooh, that'd be kind of fun." It kind of wouldn't really go with our vibe though, unfortunately, so I'd have to figure out where to put that.

Maybe in the bedroom. But I'd obviously I would fucking make room for that. Like, I'll just fucking put it wherever.

We'll just fix the rest of the house so then I can have that painting. But anyway, so I just thought all those figures were really interesting, especially going into 2023 and everything, so blah, blah, blah. So, that will do it for this episode of By Amara.

Thank you so much for tuning in. I really appreciate you listening to me blab on and on and on about art and history and everything. Sorry, I almost just spit, sorry.

That was gross. Yeah, so just thanks so much for tuning in again. I have a Patreon in the description.

I almost forgot, so if you want to help out, cool. If not, no pressure at all. I love you anyway, and I love everybody.

So, no matter what. And yeah, so thanks for watching, listening, liking, subscribing, and I'm Amara Andrew. Never stop creating.

Oh, and Happy New Year! Okay, bye!