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."

1969 vs. 2011, Armory Show Beefsteak Dinner, Les Blank and Rauschenberg at MoMA, etc. [Collected]

Anya Kielar in "Incongruent Sum," curated by Astrid Honold, produced by Mathematics Collective, at 111 Leroy Street, New York, 2nd floor, June 29, 2011.

• "There is yet another group of young artists who do not consider it necessary that their work should exist in any concrete form. The idea is all-important, and may remain an idea, or be executed, according to the desire of the artist — or the buyer." – Rosalind Constable, "The New Art: Big Ideas for Sale," New York, March 10, 1969. This article has everything, including photographs of driveway and lawn art by Lawrence Weiner; collector Robert Scull, sans socks, posing next to Michael Heizer's Nevada Depression; dealer John Gibson staring down the camera in a natty outfit, a 26-year-old Seth Siegelaub, a 280-feet-fall sculpture by Christo (its price in 1969: $187,000), and more. [Google Books]

• "But Aaron and Barbara Levine, veteran collectors from Washington, D.C., were looking for rarefied work that was maybe more important than the showstoppers. And, as it happens, barely even there. ... [W]hen you buy a Weiner you don’t acquire the lettering itself, let alone the 3-D work it implies. You buy Weiner’s immaterial idea, as a certificate that lets you write his phrase in a room, or come up with the sculpture you think it describes." – Blake Gopnik, "Buying Art You Can't Take Home," Newsweek, June 27, 2011. [Newsweek]

• The Eldridge Street–based Artist's Institute has posted recordings of Michel Foucault's 1983 UC Berkeley lectures on parrhesia — fearless speech — on its web site. [TAI]

• New York Times restaurant critic Sam Sifton presents the finest diners and delis around the Metropolitan Museum of Art. [NYT]

• The menu for the beefsteak dinner held in honor of the Armory Show on March 8, 1913 — and more. [Art Works via Modern Art Notes]

• Lost Art of New York: "A year later, perhaps unsatisfied, Bollinger rented a loft overlooking the Hudson River in the Starrett-Lehigh Building to mount a huge exhibition that financially ruined him and ended his working relationship with Klaus Kertess and others." [Frieze]

• Les Blank's Werner Herzog Eats His Shoe (1979) is screening at the Museum of Modern Art on Wednesday, July 6, at 7 pm. [MoMA]

• Also at MoMA: Robert Rauschenberg's sprawling 1970 Currents piece. Greg Allen takes a close look. [Greg.org]

• Martin Bromirski visits the just-closed Alan Shields show at Greenberg Van Doren. [Anaba]

• An App-based Dérive: Jacob Gaboury, of queer Internet art collective CTRL+W33D, discusses "queering Grindr." [Elastic City]