Appraiser Workshops: The Superdealers

5/09/2012

The Superdealers

Forbes has an interesting article online and in its May 21st print issue titled Larry Gagosian, Andy Warhol and the Rise of the Superdealer. The article links into the list of the 10 most powerful US art dealers I posted on several days ago (click HERE to read). The article mentions Leo Castelli as one of the first power galleriest in the US promoting contemporary art, representing such artists as Jsper Johns, Roy Lichtenstein, Claes Oldenburg, Robert Rauschenberg, Richard Serra and Frank Stella.

Forbes reports

Contemporary art didn’t always command such eyebrow-singeing prices. By some accounts that started in 1973, when taxi tycoon Robert Scull and his socialite wife, Ethel, divorced and sold 50 pieces to Parke-Bernet (now Sotheby’s) for $2.2 million—a sum then unheard of. Jasper Johns’ “Target” (1961) brought $125,000 and Warhol’s “Large Flower” (1964) $135,000. So startling were the amounts that Rauschenberg confronted Scull after the sale, shouting, “I’ve been working my ass off for you to make a profit!”

Gagosian and Castelli knew each other, played cards together and, at one point, owned a gallery together. (Gagosian also represents Edward Ruscha, Serra, Cy Twombly and Warhol, all once in Castelli’s stable.) Castelli introduced Gagosian to one of his wealthiest customers, billionaire S.I. Newhouse. While Castelli rarely played in the so-called secondary market (for work previously sold), Gagosian often did, putting his own and others’ money at risk. That tactic helped put him on the fast track to riches. Come 1988, Gagosian bid $17 million on behalf of Newhouse for Johns’ “False Start” (1959) at a Sotheby’s auction. “Everybody is stunned, and for me the price is unexplainable,” a dealer told The New York Times the next day.

Bidding up those prices were a new class of affluent Americans, Europeans and Asians, all chasing Western contemporary artists. More than 100 of the world’s 1,226 billionaires are collectors. Gagosian’s clients include Leon Black, Eli Broad and Steven A. Cohen. Today it’s a matter of celebrity clients competing to buy celebrity artists represented by celebrity dealers who are sometimes accused of poaching one another’s clients.

Source: Forbes Magazine