Talk proliferates about the huge sum (£288,000) paid for Evgeni Chubarov's painting on Thursday. I was called yesterday by a well-known art reporter who wanted my comment on the "conspiracy theory": was the price artificially inflated in order to boost the value of Chubarov's oeuvre? I had no comment, except to point out that we have seen these spikes before, notably the £500,000+ paid for a work by Krasnopevtsev last year, and to suggest that they may be an artefact of an immature market, in which reputations and values are still being hammered out. However, there the comparison ends. Krasnopevtsev is dead, has an honoured place in Russian art history and museums etc., and is broadly collected. The million-dollar price paid for his work, however apparently excessive in the context of what had gone before, could be understood as an exceptional price for an exceptional piece (which it was). Chubarov on the other hand, is alive, relatively unknown, was not hitherto widely sought-after, and presumably has a studio full of work. The price paid for his painting doesn't seem capable of explanation in the same way.
The Chubarov case aside, it strikes me as naive to think one could manipulate the market significantly by bidding up prices at a Sotheby's auction: first, even if you are effectively bidding on a work you own, it's an expensive business (nearly 30% of the final price goes to Sotheby's); second, everyone is sceptical of inexplicable price-hikes of this order; third, a single sale does not a market make: what is needed is broad collector demand sustained over years, backed up by scholarship and museum-level support.
