Bargain Debasement?

In an ornate Paris hotel room, a trio of men, all but lost in a crowd of artists and their works, peered at canvases spread before them and then at one another. "You like?" boomed the tall one with the familiar face. "I like. We'll buy the lot," said the one in the short sports coat. The third man, in a dark suit, scribbled checks. The process took about an hour, cost $5,000, and added another 100 paintings, sketches and etchings to the stockpile of something called the Vincent Price Collection, Inc.

The familiar face was Price, veteran of more than 50 films and a collector for 30 years. The short sports coat was Harry Sundheim Jr., a Chicago businessman and also a collector. The dark suit was Lester Salkow, a Los Angeles theatrical agent who is Price's business manager. The three were buying original art for Sears, Roebuck, which will sell it to the public along with snow removers, Oxford cloth shirts, storm windows and mink coats.

Sears started selling original art (in stores, not by catalogue) last fall as part of its program of self-sophistication. The pictures sold so well that now Sears is in the art dodge big. The originator of the idea was George H. Struthers, vice president for merchandising, who enlisted his friend Sundheim, who in turn enlisted Price. "My whole life has been spent in trying to interest people in fine art," says Price, and after bulk buying all over the U.S., he moved across the Atlantic.

His buying spree in Paris left the Right Bank gasping across the Seine at the Left. In the austere Berggruen Galeries the trio waltzed in, snapped up 50 lithographs. Steaming into another gallery, they flabbergasted the owner by buying up, at 33% off, all the works of an unknown Sunday painter. Within hours after their arrival in Paris, word of their vacuum-cleaner technique spread around the town, and the work began coming to them in their hotel. "They've started bringing their mothers', wives', brothers' and ex-wives' paintings in now," said Price at one point. Their average rate of buying was 500 works a day.

No matter how discriminating a connoisseur might be, it is doubtful that he can buy so fast and still maintain the quality that Price genuinely wants. What was meant to be a basement bargain in art could easily become bargain debasement. But still, the public is buying. "In square old Pasadena," says Price, "3,000 people came to the Sears art show, and 180 paintings were sold in one night. They're not buying for investment; they're buying for pleasure." It's a pleasure for Sears too.

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