Strip the Auctioneer at Christie's

With Strip the Auctioneer, Christian Jankowski landed a real coup, and surely not coincidentally at a time when another artist, in an unprecedented move, avoided the intermediary gallery trade and auctioned off his annual production directly. Is it really all about the elitist distribution strategies of the market, or rather about an organized sale by an artist and auctioneer at top prices? Christian Jankowski declares this spectacle and all its components to be a work of art. 'I must have used this hammer for, well, at least eight years - I would say some fifty to seventy sales. I started with a few lots in small sales, being the junior auctioneer, and then slowly but steadily I have grown into being one of the senior auctioneers. Several auction records were broken with this hammer, including the most important Dutch auction: a portrait of Mrs. M.J. de Lange by Jan Toorop, sold in 2005 to the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam for 818,400 euros. I sold thousands of lots with this hammer.' - Arno Verkade, Auctioneer. English and German text.