{"id":892,"date":"2010-10-27T13:39:00","date_gmt":"2010-10-27T13:39:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/raulmourao.com\/blog\/?p=892"},"modified":"2010-10-27T13:39:00","modified_gmt":"2010-10-27T13:39:00","slug":"lunch-with-the-ft-larry-gagosian","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.archive.raulmourao.com\/blog\/?p=892","title":{"rendered":"Lunch with the FT: Larry Gagosian"},"content":{"rendered":"
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peguei l\u00e1 no site do Financial Times<\/a>.<\/p>\n

By Jackie Wullschlager
Published: October 22 2010 23:11 | Last updated: October 22 2010 23:11<\/span><\/p>\n
How do you get to be the world\u2019s most successful art dealer? The steely-eyed, silver-haired 65-year-old who steps discreetly into C London in Mayfair is not giving much away. \u201cI\u2019m a kinda lowbrow guy,\u201d Larry Gagosian says, acknowledging the greetings from tables full of international collectors in town for the Frieze art fair<\/a> as he slips into a corner seat beside me. \u201cI couldn\u2019t put it better than Woody Allen does, \u2018Just give me a good game and a good beer.\u2019 I\u2019m just like the next guy.\u201d<\/p>\n

In black trousers, open-necked shirt and checked jacket, he has certainly tried to look ordinary. Tanned and trim (when at home in New York, he works out in the pool at his Manhattan town house), Gagosian speaks softly, slowly, deliberately, as if to undercut his powerful image.<\/p>\n

But to say he is \u201cjust like the next guy\u201d is straining the truth. Gagosian is masterminding the careers of blue-chip names such as Jeff Koons<\/a>, Takashi Murakami<\/a> and Damien Hirst<\/a>. He owns nine (soon to be 10) galleries round the world. When we meet, he is fresh from an opening at one of his London galleries, Hirst\u2019s \u201cPoisons + Remedies\u201d in Davies Street, a Mayfair space that he says \u201chas been a gold mine\u201d. He is en route to a party at the other gallery, on Britannia Street near Kings Cross, to celebrate James Turrell, the American conceptualist and experimental sculptor of light and space who has just joined the Gagosian stable. When I congratulate him on his recent, museum-quality Picasso show in the same Britannia Street gallery, talk turns naturally to his pleasure in \u201cbuilding a nice Picasso collection\u201d. Collecting for himself, says Gagosian, is \u201ca perk\u201d of the job.<\/p>\n

C London, formerly known as Cipriani, is Gagosian\u2019s neighbour on Davies Street and a favourite haunt. Without bothering to open the menu, he asks for grilled swordfish \u2013 surely appropriate for a man known as the sharpest operator in the business. I opt for risotto alla primavera. A drink? \u201cNo, no, but please go ahead \u2013 knock yourself out! You want a vodka? Ha!\u201d He glances at the scribbles in my notebook: \u201cThen you won\u2019t be able to read your handwriting. Which could be a good thing.\u201d We settle on mineral water: sparkling for him, still for me. \u201cRestaurant behaviour is now so standardised, it\u2019s kinda annoying\u201d, he observes. \u201cWhen I first came to London it was a two-hour lunch and a bottle of wine; in New York\u2019s it\u2019s Diet Coke and back to the office in 20 minutes.\u201d He affects appreciation of the lunch crowd lingering around us but I sense that the New York model better suits this frenetically active man.<\/p>\n

In the past week, Gagosian has been in London for the giant Frieze contemporary art fair, then in Paris to receive the L\u00e9gion d\u2019Honneur \u2013 an award he studiously avoids mentioning throughout our lunch \u2013 and to inaugurate his ninth gallery, a swankily revamped h\u00f4tel particulier close to the Champs Elys\u00e9es. \u201cThere\u2019s room for a gallery like ours there, so we decided to take the plunge. And Paris is catching up with London \u2013 don\u2019t you think so?\u201d<\/p>\n

The charming sleight that my opinion matters conceals ruthless ambition and business acumen. Gagosian is establishing himself in the French capital ahead of Bernard Arnault\u2019s museum, the Louis Vuitton Foundation for Creation, designed byFrank Gehry, which will transform Paris as a contemporary art centre.<\/p>\n

The Paris gallery is part of an expanding empire establishing Gagosian as the art market\u2019s one truly global brand. By next weekend he will be back in New York to open an important Robert Rauschenberg show \u2013 he represents the artist\u2019s estate. Next month a Giacometti exhibition will launch his 10th gallery, in Geneva, and he shows Murakami in Rome. A Hong Kong gallery is scheduled for January.<\/p>\n

\u201cYeah, I like to travel, like anyone does,\u201d says Gagosian. \u201cI like to have a reason to visit each city \u2013 that\u2019s very satisfying. I go to Rome, I have a reason to be there, not just looking at the sights. Not that the sights aren\u2019t worth looking at but I\u2019m not the sort of person who goes somewhere just because it\u2019s there. I mean, it\u2019s great for people to do that but I don\u2019t do it.\u201d<\/p>\n

What he does is enact, in real street level spaces, the abstract idea of 21st-century global culture. \u201cNew York used to drive the art world but it\u2019s much more diverse, more global now. One sees wealth in many more different parts of the world, and the big change is electronic information \u2013 being able to show images anywhere. Yet you have to reinforce that with bricks and mortar apparently, this business is based on walking in a door and looking at things. Most major galleries have clients round the world; we\u2019ve built all these galleries. It\u2019s a particular approach, I\u2019m not sure it\u2019s necessary but it is fun. Once I started I couldn\u2019t stop.\u201d<\/p>\n

He was born in 1945 in Los Angeles, the elder of two siblings, to Armenian immigrant parents, a stockbroker and \u201ca homemaker\u201d, and \u201chad to leave LA to take the next step up \u2013 New York was the obvious place to go, so right off the bat I was moving \u2013 always moving.\u201d<\/p>\n

After an English degree at the University of California Los Angeles, \u201cI started selling posters on the sidewalk\u201d. He acquired them for $2, stuck them in aluminium frames and resold them at $15. \u201cI didn\u2019t think it would lead to anything. I didn\u2019t go to museums when I was a kid, it wasn\u2019t that sort of family. It was only when I started to get into the art world that I understood such a profession as art dealer existed.\u201d<\/p>\n

Our lunch arrives. My risotto is creamy, soothing and packed with asparagus. Gagosian\u2019s swordfish, is accompanied by boiled potatoes and a green salad. He approaches the dish methodically, with minimal interest, and continues: \u201cI wasn\u2019t particularly ambitious at college, I had no career path whatsoever. I started from scratch so it always felt like progress.\u201d Did he follow any models? \u201cI\u2019m not really a scholar but I read a couple of biographies of [Sir Joseph] Duveen \u2013 I find his style kinda inspiring. He was a risk-taker, not afraid to buy a very expensive work of art. He believed in the power of art \u2013 that\u2019s where the confidence has to be. Art\u2019s been around a long time: I can\u2019t screw it up too much!\u201d<\/p>\n

Duveen was a British art dealer who grew rich in the early 20th century by acting on one idea: that Europe had old art while America had new money. Gagosian opened his first gallery in Los Angeles in 1979 and similarly made a fortune taking the excitement of the east coast art scene \u2013 Richard Serra, Frank Stella, Eric Fischl \u2013 to west coast collectors newly rich from profits in entertainment, real estate and technology. He also acquired a reputation for turning collectors\u2019 houses into extensions of the Gagosian Gallery, brokering deals on the principle that anything is for sale if the price is right.<\/p>\n

An early triumph in the mid-1980s was cold-calling the collectors Burton and Emily Tremaine and persuading them to sell their Mondrian, \u201cVictory Boogie-Woogie\u201d, to Cond\u00e9 Nast publisher Si Newhouse for $12m. That sum sounds small beer compared to today\u2019s prices, which, Gagosian says, \u201cI would not have anticipated \u2013 I don\u2019t think anyone would.\u201d In 2006, he brokered another famous private sale, from entertainment mogul David Geffen to hedge fund billionaire Steven Cohen, of Willem de Kooning\u2019s \u201cWoman III\u201d for $137m \u2013 the second most expensive work of art ever sold.<\/p>\n

Gagosian has, he acknowledges, \u201ca natural feel for selling. Innate cleverness is part of my DNA. My judgment isn\u2019t always right but I tend to be able to size things up.\u201d He was also \u201cborn with a good eye \u2013 well, I think it is a good eye. I\u2019ve always been extremely visual, looked at things closely, been captivated. I don\u2019t want to say I have any special gift but if you haven\u2019t an eye, you won\u2019t be a dealer.\u201d<\/p>\n

Moving to New York in the 1980s, Gagosian caught the attention of Leo Castelli, then America\u2019s most influential gallerist, who \u201cbecame a very, very good friend. He took a liking to me, I think, because I could sell things for him. It annoyed a lot of people, which was part of the idea.\u201d Gagosian acquired the nickname \u201cGo go\u201d, while Peter Schjeldahl, an art critic for The New Yorker, has described him as being \u201clike a shark or a cat or some other perfectly designed biological mechanism\u201d.<\/p>\n

Why do people have these reactions to him? \u201cYou\u2019d have to ask them! But anyone is susceptible to pangs of envy and competition \u2013 it\u2019s what makes the world go round. As long as you behave well, there\u2019s nothing wrong with being aggressive.\u201d He has poached from other dealers \u2013 Murakami from Marianne Boesky, Franz West from David Zwirner \u2013 but \u201cnever from Leo, why would I? It would have been bad manners, and bad business.\u201d<\/p>\n

Our short lunch is interrupted by a waiter assuming we have finished, but \u201cI\u2019m not through with it yet\u201d, Gagosian says of the last shreds of his salad, as if it were a tricky installation. Since Castelli\u2019s death in 1999, he sums up, \u201cthe art world has become much more a business, for better or worse, through thick and thin \u2013 and even the lean times are not that lean!\u201d Has Gagosian effected this transformation? \u201cI haven\u2019t changed the way art\u2019s sold but I\u2019m the kind of person that likes to push and keep challenging myself. I haven\u2019t reinvented the wheel but by expanding it into a global business, that\u2019s a contribution. But the model of art dealing is pretty fixed.\u201d<\/p>\n

Never before, though, has a dealer swollen an artist\u2019s prices simply by anointing him into his stable. British painter Glenn Brown, for example, joined Gagosian in 2004 with a record price of \u00a346,000; now his top price is \u00a31.4m \u2013 a 30-fold rise, exceptional in just six years. \u201cTaking an artist at entry point and building that reputation \u2013 if you pick well \u2013 it\u2019s one of the neatest things you can do as a dealer,\u201d Gagosian says. And he has just, he mentions, had dinner in New York with the abstract painter Cecily Brown; he talks warmly of her new baby, and also of the fact that \u201cwhen she started, her big canvases were $8,000. Now they\u2019re \u2013 more expensive.\u201d (One fetched $1.1m at Sotheby\u2019s in May.)<\/p>\n

Is his Midas touch so infallible that things get dull? \u201cIf everything\u2019s blue-chip, it might make good business sense but it becomes kinda sterile. But you try to show the most interesting, innovative artists \u2013 that\u2019s your judgment, your taste \u2013 it\u2019s the most crucial decision a dealer has to make.\u201d<\/p>\n

Like other great dealers \u2013 Daniel-Henry Kahnweiler with Picasso or Castelli with Jasper Johns \u2013 Gagosian will be remembered for facilitating certain great careers: particularly Richard Serra, with whom he has worked since 1982 \u2013 \u201cI built my gallery in Chelsea with Richard in mind, to keep him excited and engaged, I bought the building because his work demanded it\u201d \u2013 and Cy Twombly. \u201cYeah, I push him. I\u2019m sure he sort of groaned when he heard I was opening in Paris,\u201d says Gagosian, who has launched each European venue, including Paris, with a Twombly show. \u201cOne of the greatest joys of my life has been working with Cy. It\u2019s an awesome career.\u201d<\/p>\n

Gagosian has no family and it is noticeable that his most shimmering shows this year \u2013 Picasso in London, Monet in New York \u2013 have been historical. \u201cI don\u2019t want a premature retrospective\u201d, he says, but he is displaying part of his own collection for the first time this autumn, in Abu Dhabi. He turns down dessert and tells me, \u201cI don\u2019t do coffee\u201d, but, as I request the bill, he asks, \u201cDo you do this sort of thing often? I don\u2019t.\u201d<\/p>\n

He rarely gives interviews and I have been wondering why he agreed to this one. Is it competitive drive? Hauser & Wirth, his nearest rival, has just opened spectacular premises in Savile Row<\/a> and Gagosian is aware that he \u201cneeds a bigger space, in the centre\u201d, to reaffirm his London presence. His final speech, though, delivered in a fluent rush, suggests something deeper: at 65, this fearsomely efficient selling machine is also concerned with the longer view, the legacy.<\/p>\n

\u201cT S Eliot said that every new piece of literature alters what\u2019s been written before, and you can adapt that to art,\u201d he says. \u201cTaste changes, time will tell. But you can\u2019t freak out about it and you can\u2019t be paralysed because you can\u2019t always hit the bull\u2019s-eye when it comes to art history. That shouldn\u2019t stop you taking your shot. Art dealers feel they have to obfuscate the mercantile part of their profession but let\u2019s not kid ourselves \u2013 it\u2019s a business. Artists have families and children and like anyone else they want to live decently \u2013 sometimes very decently. We use our best judgment but we just don\u2019t know: great art has lasting value, it doesn\u2019t go away. And, look, I could have been selling insurance \u2013 I mean no disrespect to that profession \u2013 but anyone doing what I do has to feel really fortunate. It\u2019s a wonderful world, the best.\u201d<\/div>\n<\/div>\n