$20 Million Art Collection Sold by Jankenpon

[Charles]

NYTimes: Rock, Paper, Payoff: Child's Play Wins Auction House an Art Sale

It may have been the most expensive game of rock, paper, scissors ever played.
Takashi Hashiyama, president of Maspro Denkoh Corporation, an electronics company based outside of Nagoya, Japan, could not decide whether Christie's or Sotheby's should sell the company's art collection, which is worth more than $20 million, at next week's auctions in New York.
He did not split the collection - which includes an important Cezanne landscape, an early Picasso street scene and a rare van Gogh view from the artist's Paris apartment - between the two houses, as sometimes happens. Nor did he decide to abandon the auction process and sell the paintings through a private dealer.
Instead, he resorted to an ancient method of decision-making that has been time-tested on playgrounds around the world: rock breaks scissors, scissors cuts paper, paper smothers rock.
In Japan, resorting to such games of chance is not unusual. "I sometimes use such methods when I cannot make a decision," Mr. Hashiyama said in a telephone interview. "As both companies were equally good and I just could not choose one, I asked them to please decide between themselves and suggested to use such methods as rock, paper, scissors." ...more...

[kotatsuneko]

excellent story Charles, cheers for posting that. ever since getting hooked on alex kidd, janken has been a great decision maker for me. man, these 2 guys down the arcade would play it to decide who would pay for the nights sesh, and this one geezer was like a psychic janken expert, i think i only saw him pay for 3 or 4 nights a month...

[vir-jin]

excellent story Charles, cheers for posting that. ever since getting hooked on alex kidd, janken has been a great decision maker for me. man, these 2 guys down the arcade would play it to decide who would pay for the nights sesh, and this one geezer was like a psychic janken expert, i think i only saw him pay for 3 or 4 nights a month...

This is a good joke!

I tell you another one: The new 500 yen coin was designed by a former geidai student. but he didn't hand in the cool design he really wanted the 500 yen coin to be, no he went to the finals and changed the design to a less cool design because he thought his good design was too crazy for the outer world and would never win. Now he won the competition with his uncool design and millions of Japanese see and use his uncool design daily. He is very sad about the fact. He is very unhappy with his design. He wishes he had lost the competition. He should have decided by junken, not with his elitist brain!
muhahahahaha!
I feel honoured by your signature Kots! It also sounds like a joke. Yes, I am a pathetic gaijin! :P

[Charles]

The jankenpon thing is interesting, but don't miss the other story here. What was Maspro Denko, a manufacturer of TV antennas and dishes, doing with a $20+ million corporate-owned art collection of Cezanne, Van Gogh, etc?

I wrote about this before. During the bubble, Japanese corporations bought "blue chip art" at premium prices. Then the bubble burst and many of them liquidated their holdings, sometimes selling for a fraction of what they paid. Prices on the world art market have STILL not recovered from that crash. Some more astute corporations ate their paper losses and held on to their collection until much later (like NOW) to see if prices would recover, hoping to liquidate at more favorable prices. That's what Maspro is doing. I wonder what they originally paid for those paintings? I bet it was a lot more than $20 million, I figure it could be as high as $50 million. Ooh I wish I could get an auction catalog..

[Mulboyne]

Some more astute corporations ate their paper losses

While of course the worst art market offender was a paper company. This is from a 1999 New York Times article about the unwinding of Japanese corporate art purchases:

"Dr. Gachet" and "Moulin de la Galette," the two most expensive paintings ever bought at auction, have not been traced. In the spring of 1990, Ryoei Saito, then president of Daishowa Paper Manufacturing Co., paid a total of $160.6 million for the two paintings. Soon afterward Saito sent shivers through the art world when he said he intended to take the paintings to his grave, literally.

In 1992, however, bad debts caught up with Daishowa and Saito. His creditors cut off his control of Daishowa and seized the paintings, which then disappeared into their warehouse.

The responsibility for selling the paintings fell to Fuji Bank, one of Daishowa's biggest creditors, and for five years, art dealers and collectors courted the bank. But Fuji held on to the paintings until 1997, when it sold "Moulin de la Galette" to an unidentified foreign buyer. Segi believes that it fetched roughly $52.1 million, or two-thirds of the $78.1 million Saito paid for it.

"Dr. Gachet" has also been sold by Fuji, art dealers said, but no one knows who bought it, or when or for how much, although dealers assume that it sold for less than the $82.5 million it cost Saito. One recent report on German television said the piece had been sold to an American investor for $43 million, but art experts are dubious.

Fuji Bank declined to comment, as did Sumitomo Bank, Mitsui Trust & Banking Co. and several other Japanese financial institutions whose names have been linked to art sales.

There is still a controversy over Yasuda Fire & Marine's purchase of Van Gogh's "Sunflowers". Some critics believed that they bought a fake. They could, of course, have sued Christies but Yasuda (now called Sompo) kept declining offers to authenticate their painting. This was of no small concern for Sompo. The painting had become a company icon - they even named their life insurance company "Himawari". In 2002, the Van Gogh museum brought three versions together and declared them all authentic. However, there has been no laboratory test of the Yasuda version which has left some critics unconvinced. Also, Yasuda donated $20 million to the museum which some believe compromises their independence in the matter. Here are two articles on the issue published before the 2002 statement:

http://www.vangoghgallery.com/misc/fakes/fakes5c.htm
http://www.vangoghgallery.com/misc/fakes/fakes5d.htm

[Charles]

There is still a controversy over Yasuda Fire & Marine's purchase of Van Gogh's "Sunflowers". Some critics believed that they bought a fake...Here are two articles on the issue published before the 2002 statement:

http://www.vangoghgallery.com/misc/fakes/fakes5c.htm
http://www.vangoghgallery.com/misc/fakes/fakes5d.htm

Good catch. I saw those articles in The Art Newspaper when they came out years ago, it's the only dead-tree publication I still subscribe to.

And of course there's also the legendary story of Van Gogh's "Irises" painting which now resides at the Getty Museum in LA.

This problem didn't just affect Japanese corporations. I remember back in the late 1980s, Occidental Petroleum shareholders sued the CEO, Armand Hammer, to force him to liquidate hundreds of millions of dollars of artwork he had purchased with Oxy Petro corporate funds. The shareholders successfully argued that to acquire such vast holdings (IIRC something like 5% of the company's fixed assets) of art was a misuse of corporate funds. When prices on blue-chip art were going up due to bubble inflationary pressures, art seemed like the most profitable investment you could make. But when the bubble burst, the holdings were less profitable, and shareholders wanted to liquidate the Oxy collection, get the money back, and distribute it as a dividend.
Of course this was a huge blow to Armand Hammer, who had been in a huge dispute with the University of Southern California, he had planned to donate his personal art collection (and enrich it with temporary loans from the Oxy collection) to USC if they would agree to let him build a museum on campus, with his name on it. USC said they'd take his collection but they'd display his works their existing museum and his name wouldn't be on it. So Hammer withdrew his offer and built his own museum right in the middle of Westwood. The centerpiece of the museum was Hammer's most prized artwork, Leonardo daVinci's "Leicestershire Codex," a set of pages from Leonardo's diaries, and one of the few Leonardo works in private hands. He even had the temerity to display the Leonardo work under the name "The Hammer Codex."
Well, the Oxy shareholder's revolt ended up in not only forcing the sale of the Oxy art collection, but also ended up forcing a vote to eject Hammer as CEO. Hammer ended up selling his personal art collection to raise funds to buy up shares to try to outvote the other shareholders. He sold the Leicestershire Codex, and ended up closing the museum and selling the building. But he still got voted out as CEO, and ended up a broken man (well, as broken as any billionaire can be).
Now here's the punchline: who bought Leonardo's Leicestershire Codex for $26 million? Take a guess...
..
..
..
Bill Gates.

[Charles]