Hey Ma, I was at the live auction of my own art

Report from last night's Yaddo National Benefit

Map of Yaddo, watercolor, from a series of lunch-hour paintings during my residency in 2019

He was an inch, perhaps two, over six feet, powerfully built, wearing a tartan suit and a carnival barker’s mustache. That was the auctioneer, Nicholas Lowry. He set the auction into motion by withdrawing a hundred-dollar note from his pocket and calling for bids. Intriguingly, invitingly, he started the bidding at an unjust one dollar.

The bids rose rapidly. When he was done, his hundred-dollar bill had gone for over four hundred dollars. Why did he start with his own hundred dollars, I asked him later. He said that he uses this method to get a sense of the room. If the highest bid had been only for, say, a hundred and twenty-five dollars, it would have told him something. At one auction, Lowry said, he had received a three thousand dollar bid for his hundred dollars.

The organizers of Yaddo’s national benefit gala had asked me if I would agree to make a watercolor painting of a home. See the announcement below. I had said yes without hesitation—I have benefitted immensely from my residencies at Yaddo—but not without some doubt, even fear. I had a little experience of live auctions. Would any one bid at all on my work? And would I manage to make it good? I hadn’t expected to be at the gala, so my anxieties had remained under the surface. Then, I received an invitation. And now I was holding my breath as the bidding began on my art. We’ll start at two thousand dollars, Lowry said.

Lowry had been asking the audience to spend money like drunken sailors. He also reminded them that their expenses were tax-deductible. Later, he would say that auctioneering was the world’s second oldest profession and that he was prepared to go lower on the bids. This deft maneuver wasn’t required, thank god, when it was time to auction my proposed painting. I saw friends and even strangers raising their hands and making bids—and soon, it was over. A friend had bid six thousand dollars. I was very glad that something I hadn’t even done yet had raised money for Yaddo!

After the auction, Lowry moved to the part of the proceedings that he called the asktion. Four Yaddo artists provided moving testimonies of what Yaddo had done for them. Gary Shteyngart, writer and horologist par excellence, fleeing Hasids who, he claims, want to pleasure him with their lulavs this time of the year, presented a mock account about how Yaddo had introduced him to vegetables, particularly carrots. Gary had come from Russia as an immigrant and been introduced to roast beef sandwiches in Queens—he called such sandwiches the bedrock of this country. But then he went to Yaddo and ate carrots and his whole world had changed. Lowry absorbed this message of gratitude and, during his asktion, he called for fifteen thousand dollar bids so that Yaddo could provide artists their required healthy organic vegetables.

Before the night was over, I got a chance to contribute to the asktion too. After having downed several cocktails and then, during dinner, a lot more wine, I heard Lowry declare that while Yaddo discourages alcholism, the Yaddo bar is open after quiet hours. Could we offer money that would keep Yaddo artists well hydrated? A sum was mentioned. As if I were picking up a cocktail glass to propose a toast, I saw myself quickly raising my paddle. Cheers and thanks for the night.