So what if your budget doesn't embrace indulgences this year? A quick browse of Sothebys.com offers guilt-free escapism and plenty of fodder for high-brow art chat if you're ever obliged to hold up that end of a conversation. Russian art goes under the hammer in London this week, contemporary art in Milan, and Swiss art in Zurich. The Sotheby's website is a multimedia trove of trivia including plummy-voiced experts introducing video-vignettes about the lives of minor aristocrats like the late Sir David Scott, who developed an early enthusiasm for falconry and gardening before succumbing to a lifelong passion for Victorian paintings. Then there are the inexplicably odd whatnots such as, in the Milan sale, a "Dark Amaranth Frame Vehicle With Blue-Gray Triangle Tank," made in about 1971 by Gianni Piacentino. It looks like a dysfunctional wheelbarrow and is expected to fetch between $45,000 and $60,000. Have fun.
MARY ABBE
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