Classic New York Magazine Art-Dealer Profiles [Collected: Throwback Edition]

I thought it might be nice to revisit some of New York's profiles of art dealers from the past 40 or so years since there are some remarkable ones hiding in Google Books' archive. They are rich with with romance and heartbreak, high drama and petty squabbles, like any great summer read, and they show the New York art world on its way to becoming what it is today, sometimes with uncanny prescience. Here are some of my favorites.


Mary Boone, New York, April 19, 1982. Photo by Larry Williams

"The New Queen of the Art Scene," by Anthony Haden-Guest, April 19, 1982:

"Salle is 29, and articulate, with a dark, Jesuitical face. He and Schnabel are close friends, but, as is usual between artists, theirs is not the simples of friendships. Last year, the two agreed to exchange artworks. Schnabel chose first. When David Salle visited Schnabel's studio, he found his own canvas—painted on by Julian Schnabel. 'We'll make art history,' Julian explained."

Larry Gagosian, in front of a painting by Mark Rothko, New York, September 2, 1991. Photo: James Hamilton

"Art à Gogo," by Andrew Decker, September 2, 1991:

"After graduation, he took odd jobs, including parking cars and working at the William Morris Agency. In the mid-seventies, he started selling posters on the sidewalks near UCLA. 'Real schlock,' he says, laughing. 'I'm being painfully honest. It was like a kitten playing with balls of yarn, or sea gulls flying over a foggy shore. I'm not responsible for it.'"

Klaus Kertess and an early Ralph Humphrey, New York, May 20, 1968. Photo: Herb Goro

"The Gallery of the Year," by Rosalind Constable, May 20, 1968:

"Critics are struggling to find a name for this branch of Minimalism. 'Urban Pastorale,' suggested one. 'Romantic Minimalism,' said another. 'Abstract Luminism,' said a third. Critics on the whole don't like it (yet), find it 'empty.' But critic Lucy Lippard is enthusiastic: 'As the eye of the beholder catches up with the eye of the creator,' she says firmly, 'empty,' like 'ugly,' will become an obsolete criterion."

Arne Glimcher, in front of a painting by Chuck Close, in New York, October 10, 1988. Photo: Louis Psihoyos

"The Art of the Dealer," by Edith Newhall, October 10, 1988:

"Even when Glimcher was in Africa last summer, dealers, artists, curators, and the rest were gossiping about his future. The rumor was that he had given up the art business and sold Pace to Charles Saatchi, the British advertising tycoon and contemporary-art collector. ('I hear that it was proposed but it was turned down,' says art critic Robert Hughes.)"

Ethell Scull, with Jasper Johns's Out the Window and Black Target. Photo: Jean Pagliuso

Ethel Scull is not an art dealer, I know, but this is a heartbreaker of a piece, and it feels like the right one to end on.

"Back on Top With the Mom of Pop Art," by John Duka, June 9, 1986:

"On May 14, the two sides convened at the warehouse. With Ethel were Raoul, Myrna, and a representative of Sotheby's. On Bob's side, Epstein and two purchasers attended. First choice in selecting a piece was to be decided by a coin toss. Felder produced a quarter, but Epstein wouldn't use it. After some shouting, a neutral quarter was found. Epstein called heads. It came up tails. Ethel had won again."

Dan Colen and Yoshitomo Nara Prepare for Fall

24th Street and 11th Avenue at 1:00 p.m. today. Photos: 16 Miles


Some of Dan Colen's skateboard-ramps-turned-sculptures were unloaded this afternoon outside of the 24th Street branch of Gagosian. (Alex Gartenfeld had the story on that last month in the New York Observer.) Those hoping to redeem themselves after not skateboarding in Deitch Projects' skateboard bowl during the winter of 2002-03 are out of luck: there will be no skateboarding allowed in the artist's solo show, which opens on September 10. For another reminder that the new season is almost here, head up to the Park Avenue Armory, where Yoshitomo Nara and his assistants are hard at work on pieces for the artist's blockbuster retrospective at the Asia Society Museum. Nara's temporary studio is open to the public today and tomorrow from 4 to 7 p.m. His show kicks off on September 9.

101 Cassette Labels, 74 Screams, a $150,000 Prize, etc. [Collected]

Tim Noble & Sue Webster, Toxic Schizophrenia (Hyper Version), 2008 at Denver MCA Photo: 16 Miles [more]

• "It's a great time to be alive." - Jeff Koons
• 101 Cassette Labels.
• Visit Storm King and Dia:Beacon, then drink beer.
• Sanford Biggers, Michael Rakowitz, or Ryan Trecartin will win $150,000 on October 22.
• And now, Athens (and Hong Kong). Can't Stop, Won't Stop.
• "Having a Coke with You"
• Half the Roerich paintings returned.
• Lindsay Pollock starts a blog.
• Paper Monument on WNYC [via The Old Gold].
• Another corporate art collection down [via Art Market Monitor].
• 74 screams, 1 art record.
• Coffee Toffee Mocha Crunch.

Art in the White House, Visits to Interesting Times and Places, etc. [Collected]

Richard Prince, Untitled (Original), 2008, at Gagosian Madison Avenue. Photo: 16 Miles

• ArtInfo asked some folks what art Obama should show in the White House. Edward Winkleman went with Edward Hopper. Doreen Remen suggested Barkley Hendricks. Andres Serrano recommended his own work. [via Winkleman]
• Cotter makes it clear that No Soul for Sale is a ball.
• Modern Art Notes stopped at Dia:Beacon on a Twitter-broadcasted tour of museums.
• Anaba noted that Thierry Goldberg Projects, at 5 Rivington, is in Richard Prince's old Spiritual America space. (Added to the Lost Art of New York Map.)
• Two Coats of Paint jumped into the Pollock & Krasner papers now online and emerged with quite a few gems.
• Matthew Barney and Elizabeth Peyton made some art in Greece involving an older slaughterhouse and paintings submerged in the sea. A massive dinner party followed. C-Monster reports.
• Old news: Gagosian is nearly doubling the size of his LA space with the help of Richard Meier. Is this the art equivalent of Warren Buffett pumping $5 billion into Goldman Sachs in September?

Picasso Videos, Donald Judd's Love for Whiskey (and Clogs), and Other Links [Compendium]

Ruben Ochoa, three the hard way, 2009. Photo: 16 Miles [more]

Massive Picasso coverage, new Warhol album covers, an epic Ernesto Neto installation, the news that Donald Judd collected fine whiskey, and the nicest day so far this year in New York.  There's a lot to get excited about this week:

• Great videos about Picasso: Mosqueteros, the show of the artist's late work at Gagosian, including interviews with biographer John Richardson and grandson Bernard Picasso.
• According to @theartmarket, there may have been 5,000 visitors to the Picasso show last weekend, following Roberta Smith's laudatory review in the Times.  
• More than 50 previously-forgotten Andy Warhol album covers, have been rediscovered.  (via Little Known Facts)
• Ernesto Neto will be taking over the Park Avenue Armory from May 14 to June 14, constructing an epic installation, curated by Tom Eccles.
• "Judd accrued enormous collections of things as varied as top-flight whiskey, ceramics, and Native American rugs, not to mention hundreds of pairs of artisanal Dutch clogs—all carefully catalogued and categorized."  A list of some of history's most famous debtors.  (via C-Monster)

Arte Povera is Everywhere (in Chelsea)

Mario Merz, Le case girano intorno a noi o noi giriamo intorno alle case?, 1992, at Gladstone Gallery.

Mario Merz has some huge works up at Gladstone Gallery. Michelangelo Pistoletto just finished his first show at Luhring Augustine. The recent, wonderful ZERO in New York show at Sperone Westwater had pieces by Piero Manzoni and Lucio Fontana, among others. All of the sudden, Arte Povera is everywhere. 

In less than two weeks, Gagosian will open a Manzoni retrospective on 24th Street.  It's tempting to draw the obvious analogies between the movement's original ethos and the current state of the economy, but these shows were, of course, planned well before the dip in the art market.  More to the point, most of the artists' recent work has also simply embraced the market's desire for massive, repetitious work.  Merz's igloos, for one, have become enormous.  For better or worse, there's not an impoverished thing in sight.

That said, even if Pistoletto is just repeating the painted mirrors he's been producing for years, I still think they're wonderful.  I can never resist the opportunity to stare at myself.

Side note: I didn't realize that Manzoni died at twenty-nine (thank you, Gagosian press release)!  A reminder that the art market has been championing the super-young for quite a while. 

Mario Merz, Untitled, 1998


Mario Merz, Fibonacci sequence, 2002, at Gladstone Gallery.


Michelangelo Pistoletto, Lavori in corso (Construction site), 2008, at Luhring Augustine.

[Top Ten of 2008] #10 - The Panza Collection at the Hirshhorn Museum

While Eli Broad celebrated the contents of his storage crates at LACMA (85% of which came from Gagosian, by Christopher Knight’s count), Count Giuseppe Panza di Biumo’s collection of clever, idiosyncratic conceptual, video and light works slipped into the Hirshhorn collection.  On Kawara Date Paintings, their boxes, and newspapers, sat down the hall from Doug Wheeler’s effervescent Eindhoven (1969), seminal Nauman videos and a handful of videos by the underrated Douglas Huebler.  The real game changer, though, was a perfect Irwin trinity: a glass column, a disc work, and a dot painting.

00-99=No1-2K-20K (1969-1970) by Hanne Darboven

[Detail of] Untitled (1970-1971) by Robert Irwin


October 24, 1971 (1971) by On Kawara


A Rubber Ball Thrown on the Sea, Cat. No. 146 (1970) by Lawrence Weiner