"I often wonder who these do-gooder reporters are purporting to protect. Is it those little old ladies who walk into the sales rooms raising their paddles to bid millions of dollars in total naïveté like blind fools?"

Adam Lindemann on that front-page NYT story on chandelier bidding and other concerns:

"The other phenomenon I find strange at the moment is the art world’s, and the media’s, obsession with the alleged manipulation of the auction market. Did you read that recent front-page article in The New York Times in which reporters Robin Pogrebin and Kevin Flynn broke the news that 'at major auctions the first bids announced for a piece are typically fictional—numbers pulled from the air by the auctioneer to jump-start bidding'? Haven’t we known this for years? Chandelier phone bids are just a little theater to make it all sound exciting; every auction veteran knows the real bidding doesn’t start until we approach the low estimate."