They Do Know Squat About Art

"It's important to try to keep a level head," says Harry Blain, a London-based dealer and gallery owner who last week bid on multimillion-dollar paintings on behalf of several clients. "Otherwise you'll get caught up in the emotion and forget about the value, which is what the auction houses would like to have happen. It's not accidental that the whole thing is set up to be so theatrical."

While the bidding escalates, a huge electronic tote board behind the auctioneer instantly translates the figures into yen, euros and other currencies, giving the whole affair a very James Bond international flavor. "Fair warning" is offered when the bidding slows to a halt and then Burg slams that rocklike thing in his hand against the lectern, adding a little tally -ho! flourish with his arm when he really gets excited.

Every piece has a reserve price, which eBay users know is a figure set by the owner of the art, below which he (or she) won't sell. So Christie's might start the bidding at, say, $1 million, but if the reserve is $1.3 million and the high bid is $1.1 million, the auctioneer says "passed," and the item stays with its owner. It's always a little awkward when things don't sell, so good auctioneers sort of mutter "passed," or they say it as they bang the gavel, so it's not all that obvious.

Last Wednesday, there were only a handful of passes. That was the night that big-ticket contemporary art went up for sale, including works by Roy Lichtenstein, Jasper Johns and Lucian Freud.

Total take for the evening, including commissions: $133.7 million.

Tom Friedman's pieces went up for auction the next day, during the Thursday afternoon session, along with roughly 100 other items. The estimates for these pieces are far lower -- some eventually go for as little as $15,000 -- but being bought and sold in the secondary art market at this level is a big deal, and at 40, Friedman is among the youngest. It turns out he's already been exhibited in the world's most prestigious galleries and contemporary art museums.

How did that happen?

"I guess it's a slow process," he says from his studio in Amherst.

If you're expecting a prankster or someone guffawing behind the back of his admirers, Friedman is a surprise. He's an earnest guy and although he recognizes that a lot of his art is funny, he isn't joking, nor is he playing for laughs. About his work, he's entirely candid and, frankly, the more he explains it, the more compelling it seems.

"I'll either have an idea that will lead me to a material, or I'll see a material that will lead me to an idea," he says. He tends to use stuff that you'd find around the house (glue, paper, Play-Doh), so that hey-I-could-do-that response is no accident. That squiggle aside, most of his work is obsessively composed. He once carved a self-portrait on an aspirin. (And it looks like him!) He made a perfect sphere out 1,500 pieces of bubble gum he chewed, which he then wedged into the corner of a wall. Another time he placed his pubic hairs on a bar of soap, arranging them in perfect circles, like the rings on a radar screen.

His rise to prominence happened fast. While he was at the University of Illinois getting a graduate degree in art, a teacher praised his work to a New York gallery owner known only as Hudson. Among the pieces Hudson saw during a visit to Chicago was a spiral made of laundry detergent.

"It seemed to me that he had an open-ended area of investigation and a finesse with materials, or a dialogue with materials and how to get them to work and to resonate," says Hudson. "I was really impressed also with his ability to edit his own work, and to present it in a professional but not fussy manner."