July 1, 2014--Stradivari

How much might you be willing to pay for a fiddle? Not just a Suzuki but a genuine Stradivarius viola with a noble provenance?

And while you're at it, how much for a Norman Rockwell painting? One that graced the cover of the Saturday Evening Post 57 years ago?

The "Macdonald" viola was on the market recently but failed to get the minimum required bid--$45 million. A little over-priced since the last Strad viola to sell in 2011 went for only $15.9. But the owners (the heirs of Peter Schidlof, violist for the Amedeus Quartet) will keep trying. After all, there are only 10 surviving Stradivarius violas and that alone makes any of them extra valuable. But $45 million? I am thinking something more in the neighborhood of $35 million and it's yours.

$35 mil seems enough since the New York Times reported a few months ago about a test to see if blindfolded musicians, real musicians, could tell the difference in sound between Strads and more plebeian, but high-quality modern instruments.

Only 8 of the 21 violinists who tested both Strads, Guarneri, and contemporary fiddles could correctly identify the ones from the master violin craftsmen.

Claudia Fritz, an expert on acoustics, who helped organize the test, after the results, seeking an explanation why the experts did so poorly, said, "I don't think there is any secret, except in people's minds."

Which brings me to the Rockwell illustration, because that's what art snobs consider it--an illustration, not a painting. As a biographer put it, "Norman Rockwell was demonized by a generation of critics who not only saw him as an enemy of modern art, but of all art." He was thought of, she went on, "as a cornball and a square."

Square he may be but in May, his illustration/painting "The Rookie" went for $22.5 million, a little more than half of what they want for the viola. It depicts a rookie arriving in the Boston Red Sox locker room carrying a cardboard suitcase and appeared on the cover of the Saturday Evening Post in March 1957.

Back in December, Rockwell's "Saving Grace," which depicts a woman and young boy bowing their heads in prayer in a busy restaurant, went for an astonishing $46 million. To contextualize this, an Andy Warhol was hammered down at an auction not long ago for a cool $104.5 million.

Attempting to understand the skyrocketing value of Rockwell's work, many feel that his depiction of small-town America fits the post-9/11 era where many are looking for simple answers and pieties to help them get through the day.

The prices of Warhols, on the other hand, I find impossible to explain.