Doubleheader

Auctions are replacing theater openings as the first-nighters' delight. And to capitalize on the trend, Manhattan's Parke-Bernet Galleries last week staged a doubleheader, splitting sales of 130 modern art works with a $50-a-plate black-tie dinner. On hand were such luminaries as A. & P. Heir Huntington Hartford, Playwright Edward Albee, Architects Philip Johnson and Mies van der Rohe, Baron Heinrich von Thyssen, the Duchess of Leeds and all three Kennedy sisters. Nearly 3,000 potential buyers crammed four floors of the auction house with the spillover relegated to the limbo of nearby Finch College, where they followed the high-tension bidding and the hammerings-down on closed-circuit television.

Churchillian Lot. But before the hors d'oeuvres, business came first--which was apparently just what the audience wanted. They gasped when the first offering, an 8-in. by 61-in. pencil and crayon drawing by Pissarro, drew a walloping $2,300. From then on, there was no stopping them. Bids came in volleys as Chagall's La Madone du Village shot up to $82,500 (v. his previous all-time high of $77,500). Bonnard's opalescent bath peekaboo at his wife, La Glace Haute, went to the Carnegie Institute for $155,000 (v. $101,000). When Degas' Repetition de Ballet, a pastel and gouache painting considered the high point of the evening, came up on the block, it was greeted like a masterful pas de deux. The winning bidder, Dealer Stephen Hahn, did not even make a move until the price was $360-000, then calmly kept the pressure up until he had it for an unknown client at the record price of $410,000.

The moment for sentiment came with Lot 77, the debut on the block of that late, great Sunday painter Sir Winston Churchill. The painting, a pleasant 1938 canal scene that had been owned by Churchill's former son-in-law, British Comedian Vic Oliver, bravely bubbled up to $26,000. Its new proud possessor is Joyce Hall of Hallmark greeting cards, who intends to exhibit the oil at the New York World Fair.

Equally Reptilian. The postprandial sale was 43 modern works from the collection of Belgian Industrialist Philippe Dotrement. Adding a fillip to the occasion was the first appearance as auctioneer of Peter Wilson, the 6-ft. 4-in. chairman of Sotheby's of London, who last year bought out Manhattan's Parke-Bernet. Wilson suavely built up the prices with Etonian aplomb. "You have to act like a croupier in a casino," he had explained beforehand. "Not a flash. Not a flicker.

You must look equally reptilian." His fangs proved golden. An Arp marble brought $26,000, more than treble its previous high in a major auction house. Equally, two Calder mobiles went for $9,000 and $10,000 (v. $2,400). Miro fetched $57,500 (v. $30,000). Even a newcomer like Robert Rauschenberg garnered a record $15,000 for his 1956 Gloria. In all, the collection brought $510,000, making the total for the evening $2,855,000. "This is a record for a sale of modern art in the Western hemisphere," proudly announced Parke-Bernet. "It was a Roman orgy," groaned one exhausted bidder.

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