Each fall and spring—the prime seasons for auctioning off your Basquiat—art lovers flock to auction houses to gawk at the gladiatorial showdown that is billionaires bidding on art. Refereeing this blood sport is an elite group of auctioneers who make the boring business of settling on a price feel like high drama, and few can rival the panache of Oliver Barker, the debonair 53-year-old principal auctioneer at Sotheby’s.
Barker ranks as one of the art industry’s most prominent and well-respected auctioneers. “Among the very greats living and working right now,” the art-world veteran Amy Cappellazzo told me. Some sellers insist on having him at the rostrum as a condition of turning over their goods to Sotheby’s, which, amid a broader art-sale slump, has been dogged by reports of financial troubles. Barker regularly headlines the most prestigious sales at the auction house, where he has sold everything from a self-shredding Banksy painting to David Bowie’s art collection—some $20 billion worth of art in all.
In an age when auctions are broadcast online to millions and diced up for instant replays on social media, Barker’s flair and aristocratic polish—tailored suits, slicked-back hair, chiseled chin—has attracted a cult following of dedicated “Barkerheads.” “I’ll say it have a bit of a crush on Oliver,” commented one of Barker’s Instagram followers. “Join the queue.😉” replied the official Sotheby’s account.
Barker, the son of an accountant and an advertising executive, grew up in London, making frequent visits to the Tate and winning boarding-school declamation competitions. He studied art history as an undergraduate but failed to break into the advertising business, as he’d hoped, and had what he calls a “eureka moment” when he discovered the marriage of art and business during a visit to Sotheby’s as a graduate student at the Courtauld Institute of Art.
At 21, Barker joined the auction house as an intern—“basically through nepotism”—and was quickly hired. At his first auction, in 2001, he was nearly slaughtered by wily dealers prowling for a bargain. “They can smell fear,” Barker says. He quickly refined his craft by scrutinizing videos of himself on the rostrum and studying how more seasoned auctioneers sold lots ranging from cattle to Rothkos.
Last May, Barker flew to New York to headline the grand finale of Sotheby’s spring auctions, an evening sale of modern art that included an Alexander Calder mobile nearly half the length of a subway car. Despite the genteel air, there is plenty that can go wrong at auctions—phone lines die, hyped lots fail to sell, protesters barge in, would-be buyers suddenly renege on bids—and like many of his peers, Barker is superstitious in the lead-up to a sale. He makes a point of following, as closely as possible, the exact same preparation routine and, around noon the day before the evening’s auction, began what he calls his “pre-match warm-up” with an invigorating massage from his regular masseur, Eli.
Next, Barker dressed in his go-to uniform: Hermès tie, Huntsman suit, and medical-grade compression socks, a secret weapon suggested by a brain surgeon who, like Barker, has to stay alert on his feet for hours. He then hustled back to Sotheby’s for one last prep session, jotting down reminders to mention if a painting was set to be shown by an important museum, or to expect telephone bidders on a particular piece.
After quickly memorizing where key collectors would be seated in the auction room, Barker withdrew for a series of breathing and stretching exercises he’d learned from a professional acting teacher whom Sotheby’s brought in years back to coach its staff. At just after seven p.m., he assumed his spot at Sotheby’s rectangular white rostrum, accompanied by a chipped, 20-year-old gavel he insists on using for good luck.
“Rationalizing the Irrational”
Above and beyond their fluency with numbers and the art market, the most skilled auctioneers understand how to wield language, movement, and tone to elicit desire and more bids, something that has become even more pressing as the industry confronts softer sales. “We’re trying to be, within the framework of the law, as engaging as one possibly can be in the most creative ways one possibly can be,” Barker says. “That’s where it starts to become an art form.” Auctioneers like to say that the best among them can add 20 to 50 percent to the value of the objects, though this is difficult to quantify.
Ten minutes into the evening sale, Barker had already sold nearly $15 million worth of art. His six-foot-four frame was in almost constant motion: one moment he careened backward as if stunned by a new bidder coming in on a lot, the next his arms flew out on either side of the rostrum as though he was trying to contain the intensity of incoming bids. “Auctioneering is really about entertainment,” says Barker, who stage-manages his appearance, down to the fountain pen he uses on the rostrum, to create a “sense of occasion.” His “balletic movements,” as he calls them, have become his trademark; Barkerheads are intimately familiar with his tendency to lean over the rostrum like a jungle cat set to pounce. “I see other auctioneers now trying to adopt them,” he says.
Barker occasionally encouraged his audience. A Sophie Taeuber-Arp work was “a wonderful object.” Sometimes he chided them: “What are we doing? You’ve had a long time to think about this.” He cajoled them—“Say three [million],” he said, flashing an encouraging smile—and he spontaneously called on people from the audience, creating the sense the sale might take a dramatic turn at any moment.
The best auctioneers know to adjust their patter depending on the crowd. Some audiences want to be mothered, others bullied; New Yorkers are speed demons, while buyers in Hong Kong prefer to take it slow. (According to a 1995 New York Times article, Christie’s would crank up the air conditioning in its salesroom to prevent people from getting “too comfortable.”)
Establishing authority and trust is key, and yet auctioneers freely admit to fudging bids to build excitement for a piece. An auctioneer may start the bidding well below the minimum price, or “reserve,” for which the object can sell, and will shout out fake bids—“Eight thousand, eight-five, nine thousand, who’s coming in? Ten thousand is bid. Eleven is next!”—until the number reaches either the reserve or an absentee bidder’s offered price. “It’s a way of setting the pace,” says Georgina Hilton, an auctioneer with Christie’s. “But also, it’s a great tool for me to be able to create the sense of ‘Everyone’s bidding on this!’”
There are only a handful of don’ts by which the top auctioneers must abide. Don’t say a bidder’s name. Don’t be overly familiar. Don’t use negative language. (This is not a tax bracket that reacts kindly to the word “no.”) Do have a British accent, which is nearly universal among the current cohort of top auctioneers, including Barker. “There are certain things you can’t teach,” says Brad Bentoff, who runs Sotheby’s auctioneer-training program.
Auctioneers liken their craft to acting, dancing, and conducting an orchestra, but watch enough auctions and you’ll see televangelism hits closer to the mark. There’s the showbiz sparkle, the gentle cajoling of viewers to open their wallets, the elaborate ritual designed to shore up belief among the faithful. “We’re entertainers, but we’re also conjurers,” Barker told me. “What I’m interested in is rationalizing the irrational.”
Nearly halfway through Sotheby’s evening sale, a point where the action usually lulls, Barker introduced a painting of ghostly, slightly deformed figures by the Surrealist artist Leonora Carrington—a piece that hadn’t appeared on the market in more than 30 years—and Barker’s already upbeat energy crescendoed. Feeding off the crowd’s intensity, he juggled a rapid-fire bidding war between five would-be buyers who steadily drove up the painting’s price to $28.5 million, far surpassing the artist’s previous sales record of $3.2 million.
More lots followed, and by the end of the night, Barker had, in less than two hours, succeeded in extracting more than $235 million from the ultra-wealthy. But he seemed most excited by the show he and the Carrington had delivered—the sort of performance Sotheby’s no doubt hopes to repeat at its New York sales later this month. He marveled later that he’d kept the audience entertained for a full 10 minutes of bidding. “Let’s be honest, nobody needs art in their lives,” he says. “But when you have moments like this, it’s a must-have.”
Bianca Bosker is the author of Get the Picture and Cork Dork. She’s a contributing writer for The Atlantic and has written for The New Yorker, The New York Times, and The Wall Street Journal
