Gerald Reitlinger, in his 1963 book, “The Economics of Taste,” wrote that back in 1937, when 18th-century French furniture was all the rage with the ultrawealthy, a desk by Carlin sold for 8,000 pounds, or about $700,000 in today’s money. That same year, a Cubist still life by Picasso failed to sell at auction for £105, according to Reitlinger.
Here is more from Scott Reyburn at the NYT. Will Warhol prices be the big loser, as future generations lose interest in images of Elvis, Elizabeth Taylor, Mao? At the moment the less identifiable iconography of Basquiat seems to be holding up better, at least in the eyes of the market.
7-billion-year-old stardust found in Australia is among the oldest stuff on Earth
Some minerals in the Murchison meteorite are 2.5 billion years older than Earth itself.
Donald Trump can face a lawsuit in New York because his residency at the White House “is not permanent” and his tax returns would prove it, according to an advice columnist suing the president for denying he raped her two decades ago.
E. Jean Carroll, who filed a defamation suit against Trump in November, made the argument in a Monday court filing responding to the president’s request to have the case dismissed on the grounds that New York courts lack jurisdiction. Carroll’s lawyers said Trump hadn’t met the standard under New York law for formally changing his residence to Washington.
Carroll went public with her rape claim in a June magazine article, alleging Trump assaulted her in a dressing room in a Manhattan department store in the mid-1990s. Trump has repeatedly denied the allegation and called her a liar seeking to promote her career.
The filing raised the prospect Carroll would seek Trump’s taxes to prove New York was his primary home during the relevant time period. The president has aggressively fought against any effort, including by Congress, to gain access to his taxes.
Tractors manufactured in the late 1970s and 1980s are some of the hottest items in farm auctions across the Midwest these days — and it’s not because they’re antiques.Cost-conscious farmers are looking for bargains, and tractors from that era are well-built and totally functional, and aren’t as complicated or expensive to repair as more recent models that run on sophisticated software.“There’s an affinity factor if you grew up around these tractors, but it goes way beyond that,” Peterson said. “These things, they’re basically bulletproof. You can put 15,000 hours on it and if something breaks you can just replace it.”BigIron Auctions, a Nebraska-based dealer that auctioned 3,300 pieces of farm equipment online in two days last month, sold 27 John Deere 4440 tractors through 2019.The model, which Deere built between 1977 and 1982 at a factory in Waterloo, Iowa, was the most popular of the company’s “Iron Horse” series of tractors, which used stronger and heavier internal components to support engines with greater horsepower. The tractors featured big, safe cabins, advancing a design first seen in the 1960s that is now standard.A sale of one of those tractors in good condition with low hours of use — the tractors typically last for 12,000 to 15,000 hours — will start a bidding war today. A 1980 John Deere 4440 with 2,147 hours on it sold for $43,500 at a farm estate auction in Lake City in April. A 1979 John Deere 4640 with only 826 hours on it sold for $61,000 at an auction in Bingham Lake in August.
Maybe there is a great tractor stagnation or in some cases even retrogression? Here is more from Adam Belz, via Naju Mancheril.
Alex King (Buffalo), Daniel Star (Boston), and others on the best art of the past decade — at Aesthetics for Birds
Alex King (Buffalo), Daniel Star (Boston), and others on the best art of the past decade — at Aesthetics for Birds