"French 18th-century furniture was in serious trouble"!!!

Here’s the most needlessly dramatic sentence you’ll read today: “The curtain is slowly coming down on the lifestyle of the old Western world establishment, and the impact on the art market is spectacular.”

NO, NOT THE CURTAIN!!! COMING DOWN! On the old Western world establishment! Aaaaagh!

Anyway, there is something of a mini-debacle in auction-land? All of the old garbage from the Lyons Demesne, in County Kildare, which is itself for sale, built 1785, was sold, but not for very much money! And this sale is rendered in the most vicious phrasing imaginable! “The monumental portrait of Mrs. Thomas Edwards Freeman done around 1778 made a laughable £49,250. At Sotheby’s London sale of Oct. 24, 1999, the price had been £140,000.” LAUGHABLE. (This is, I should mention, an article from the New York Times (presumably the IHT), but really!) How does this account of the auction end? “The current disregard can only deepen as the willingness or ability to take in elaborate patterns in furniture and subtle nuances in pictures decreases in contemporary society.” Wow. HARSH STUFF.