THE "HOTSHOT" DEALER
Dealers are the prime brokers of the art market. They are market makers, pairing their firm of artists with the collectors who will be best served by the work. They gather a distinctive supply of works from artists themselves, or acquire works they believe are undervalued in the secondary market. They shape the legacy of the artists and the objects they sell. Most identify artist’s names, ideas and symbols, or some combination of these elements with their gallery’s character to differentiate themselves from competitors [1]. The art and its presentation form the consumer-relation portion of the brand and the gallery’s visible persona. A “hotshot” dealer encompasses the culture within the gallery as well as the client’s perceptions of the company. Dealers who create a distinctive brand have a competitive advantage. By virtue of their reputation, they are better poised to attract supply and their assert authority over their collectors. These “hotshot” dealers are a select few industry leaders who are well branded and leverage their position to control the art market for certain artists work.
Can “Hotshot” Dealers Influence Market Patterns and Taste?
It remains unclear how forceful dealers, even the “hotshot”, can be in the art world. Important galleries over the course of the past century, the Duveen Brothers, as well as the contemporary Gagosian and PaceWildenstein, have shaped the aesthetic favoritism of their clients by virtue of what they have offered for sale and how they have promoted it. The Duveen Brothers and others like them, show how a gallery can establish a cultural legacy. Gagosian and PaceWildenstein clarify how this power is evolving in the contemporary market. However, the long-term impact of their efforts has not yet settled.
Marc Glimcher, owner of the hotshot PaceWildenstein gallery, promotes the notion that art it is no ordinary commodity [2].Each piece has a relative value based on some distinguishable properties including, size, the artist, the condition and the relative importance of the piece [3]. Glimcher claims that there is also a premium that some collector may pay because of how profoundly they feel about a piece [4]. Art has no utilitarian feature. Its value only materializes when it is mated with an appropriate collector [5]. For this reason, dealers create value where it didn’t previously exist. Dealers differ from auction houses in that they often bring new, contemporary artists to the market, and brand them alongside venerable masters to promote a distinctive ‘gallery’ vision. Ann Freedman, the head of Knoedler Gallery wrote, “the crossroads where we, as dealers, stand provides an extraordinary perspective. We look in one direction towards the miracle of the creative process, and in the other, to the excitement of helping to build significant collections.”[6]
The Importance of Branding
While “traditional dealers” follow preordained market trends and sell genre artists, well branded and the most exceptional variety, “hotshot” dealers, exude a distinctive identity. Branding results in “brand equity”, the premium a collector is wiling to pay for a work over an analogous, unbranded alternative [7].
A brand can be established based on the management style as well as the public persona of a gallery’s owner. Hotshot gallerist Larry Gagosian is similar to Joseph Duveen on this count [8]. These men established the decisive management culture that drives the business. Their outrageous effect on the collectors and viewing public is miraculous. These gallerists decide what artworks will be in “style” as well as how that artwork is sold.
The Duveen Brothers were originally successful antique dealers in London. In the early 1880s, Joseph Duveen worked under his father, Joseph Joel at the Oxford Street shop [9]. Young Joseph’s aggressive and impatient personality led him to “always yearn… for greater things.”[10] From a young age, he was determined to branch out from the antiques business and make his way in the market for precious paintings and rare tapestries [11]. A century later, Larry Gagosian appeared – an ambitious young dealer, who specialized in selling posters and prints in Los Angles’ Westwood village [12]. Gagosian bludgeoned his way into the contemporary market by giving David Salle a show and hustling famed collectors Burton and Emily Tremaine to buy a painting by Brice Marden from him, instead of Marden’s dealer [13]. Both Duveen and Gagosian forged their gallery’s now iconic brands.
The Duveen’s brand was visible in the design of their salesroom at 720 Fifth Avenue. The building was constructed at the turn of the century as a replica of the Ministry of the Marine on the Place de la Concorde. The notable French architect René Sergent executed a scaled-down version of the iconic Parisian building [14]. The design differentiated the firm while alluding to their prosperity. The head of the Duveen’s Paris branch, Edward Fowles recognized the building’s role as a token of the Duveen brand, claiming “The building was a tremendous advertisement … [we were] the source of beautiful objects, and proud creators of a building whose very ambience would serve to please and elevate both the casual observer and the dedicated collector.” [15]
Contemporary dealers have different ways of signposting their brands. A brand is usually not discernable in the physical space as most adopt the “white-cube”. However, their geographical locations can be imperative. PaceWildenstein maintains three locations in Manhattan, two in Lower Manhattan and Chelsea and one tapping the Upper East Side market. Gagosian is more geographically dispersed with three galleries in Manhattan- one on Madison Avenue, two in Chelsea, as well as two in California, two in London, one in Athens, Paris, Rome, Geneva and Hong Kong. The geographical dispersion and large ground-floor spaces (in Pace’s case) allude to the gallery’s prominence. These galleries undertake a range of marketing efforts and sometimes loan works to museums [16]. Both dealers attend the major international art fairs, including Art Basel and Art Basel Miami Beach and have promoted their brand at these venues.
With the presence of global “hotshot” galleries, certain art genres are no longer popular only locally. By opening new salesrooms and traveling to Art Fairs and Biennials, dealers broaden collectors exposure to a breadth of contemporary works. Collectors are no longer limited by regional taste. Previously overlooked areas like Indian and Chinese art are popular on the global scene. PaceWildenstein, for example, represents Zhang Huan, a conceptual artist and Zhang Xiaogang, a figurative painter whose style is labeled “Cynical Realism.” [17] Moreover, British artists like Damien Hirst are popular in North America while Gagosian sells Jeff Koons’ sculptures in Athens. Art styles are no longer “great” unless they make it on the world-stage. The work that is not on the world stage is being crowded-out as the volume of art at international events skyrockets. Thus “hotshots” must consider the international market in their branding. The dealers must make it on the world stage before they can command hotshot prices.
The Gallery and The Artist
The focus on artists, often undertaken out of genuine concern, also remains an important business tactic. Galleries in the primary market must have an excellent reputation among artists to form relationships and assemble competitive stock. Galleries like PaceWildenstein and Knoedler bolster their reputation among artists and keep signed-artists engaged by fostering an innovative gallery repetoire. The artist Michael David elucidates the spiritual pleasure his relationship with Knoedler Gallery offered him. David explained he, “[as a young artist would] try to sneak a peak up that spiral staircase [at Knoedler, then] … go back to … [my] studio … and look through art books and magazines and cut out reproductions…similar to the show I’d just seen, and glue them in my journal….Walking up that staircase as a 29-year old painter, (I had just joined the gallery) I remember seeing de Kooning’s Park Rosenberg on one wall upstairs…To stand in from of the paintings I had cut out and put in my diary ten years earlier, with my own work on the next wall was more than I had dreamed of.”[18] Galleries like Knoedler and PaceWildenstein often have a healthy working relationship with artists.
The Hotshot’s Art in The Market
Contemporary dealers differentiate their works and place it a favorable context relative to other works on the market. According to Glimcher, “If we do our job correctly all of …[the artists] will be around in 10 years.”[19] They aspire to garner rare works like the Duveens, but few scour the market in the same involved manner. Galleries also strive to separate their goods from those of other dealers and brand them distinctively so they can charge a premium.
For example: PaceWildenstein showed David Hockney’s work in its New York galleries from October 29 until December 24, 2009. PaceWildenstein promoted the Yorkshire Woods show as being seminal; it remained the first exhibition of new work by the prolific artist in New York in 12 years. PaceWildenstein prefaced the catalogue for the sale with an essay by Lawrence Weschler, Director of the New York Institute of the Humanities at New York University [20]. The scholarship undertaken on the artist and the series, carefully promoted the works as monumental and of significant investment value.
PaceWildenstein also sought to differentiate the Yorkshire Woods series from Hockney’s earlier work in order to promote the exclusive nature of the gallery’s show. In a press release, PaceWildenstein promoted Weschler’s conclusion that the Yorkshire series represented, “the fiercest, most joyous… and most prolific bout of painting of ...[Hockney’s] career.” [21] The series is discussed in the context of his career in order to give collectors a sense of the relative importance of the “dazzlingly colorful renderings” of Yorkshire [22].
PaceWildenstein, through Weschler, conveys the artist’s creative purpose for the series, “[the] Yorkshire countryside was … teaching him time … it was as if, after over twenty years of myriad wanderings, he’d found a figurative (non-abstract) way clean past the monocular optical vise.”[23] The gallery provided some sophisticated insights into the artist’s creative process in an effort to help prospective buyers understand the work. PaceWildenstein also downplayed their interest in promoting the artist by employing a scholar to legitimate the collection’s merits on their behalf.
Winter Timer (2009) by David Hockney part of the Yorkshire Woods series at PaceWildenstein Woldgate Woods (2006) also part of theYorkshire Woods series at PaceWildenstein
Promoting Art Collecting
"Hotshots" guide collectors, particularly new collectors and demand loyalty in return. According to Larry Gagosian, “there are things about it [the market] that are hard to read …[but] if you’re dealing with a reputable gallery, I think you have to buy.”[24] Not only does Gagosian clarify that there of tiers of galleries, with the “hotshot” implicitly being most relevant, he suggests that good dealers, like himself, provide clients with laudable choices of artworks.
Gallerists also promote the act of “collecting” as being peculiarly prosigious. Glimcher rationalized the value of art in an interview, exclaiming, “when we trade with each other, we’re assuming that we, as a group, can determine the value of something that has no value ... [that is] the highest expression of human economics, in a sense … art is the most expensive thing in the world.”[25] Can he make wealthy collectors believe that they are part of something inexplicably important? The Los Angeles collector Eli Broad sees “a true collector [as one who] fall[s] in love with your art… its like [their]… children.” [26]
By aggrandizing art’s inutility and expense, Glimcher plays upon a natural human predilection for conspicuous consumption. Thorstein Veblen, in his seminal book Conspicuous Consumption, observed that any society that compares individuals to one another makes visible success and the esteem derived from it a priority [27]. According to the economist Robert Frank, individuals strive for success relative to members of their social circle [28]. Humans display their wealth with consumption patterns. This compels individuals to buy better versions of existing goods, things that previously did not exist or branded versions of goods that they have always bought [29]. Whether it is a neighbor buying a new car or paying $12 million for a stuffed shark, people spend their money in order to signpost their relative good fortune.
Larry Gagosian encourages collectors to buy, as opposed to enjoying art without owning it. Gagosian admits that clients may ask him, “How do I know I’ll like this in five years?” He replies truthfully, “you don’t know. It’s a process.”[30] Gagosian told an interviewer that, “the most important thing …[a collector] should do is to buy.” [31] However, he, like Glimcher, undercuts his commercial designs by speaking about the importance of the collecting process, raising it above the process of merely shopping. He advises collectors they, “have to get in there and start living with art and seeing how it changes …[their] thinking and perceptions.”[32] Mr. Gagosian encourages clients to satisfy to their whims, even it this means confusing a desire for conspicuous consumption and passion for possession with appreciation. Non-commercial acumen in the face of great profit is an important facet of Gagosian and Pace’s respective brands.
Controlling Supply & Demand
Some “hotshot dealers” are able to control the supply as well as the demand sides of their business. Once galleries have made a sale, they often demand a client’s allegiance. Sometimes a firm’s rules are issued in writing, other times they are implied or are exacted by nuanced manipulation. The Duveen Brothers assured their clients loyalty. Joseph Duveen’s assistant Bertrand Boggis fulfilled his clients tertiary needs, in order to make the firm a defining facet of their lives. Boggis even worked as a bootlegger for the firm’s clients during Prohibition [33].
The Duveen Brothers were one of the only galleries that sold museum-quality Old Masters in the United States and controlled the market for certain clients. They were also able to affect conditions of exchange and prices. Though radical price increases caused the loss of customers, the Duveen’s market power was high. Duveen left the collectors who wanted the finest paintings no desirable option but to buy from him. They could purchase works from the dealers who picked up his crumbs, or they could seek out paintings themselves.
Contemporary “hotshot dealers” often fence off living artists and control supply in certain segments of the market in the way the Duveen Brothers did; however, they are not quite as powerful. There are many leading galleries – Gagosian, PaceWildenstein, Gladstone, David Zwirner. Even if any one of them branded their gallery effectively, they face competition from other gallerists who can offer different, but still excellent works, not to mention the lure of the auction houses. For clients seeking conspicuous consumption, certain outposts are interchangeable. Claiming a work was bought “at Sotheby’s” is not much different than pointing-out a “Gagosian” or “Gladstone” hanging on their wall. All suggest the work is of some note and quite expensive. Though individual “hotshot” galleries have power if clients truly covet works that they sell exclusively.
Parties, Parties, Parties
The “hotshot” dealers also make the gallery integral to client’s social lives. Joseph Duveen provided his clients with introductions to British nobility on their trips to Europe. Gagosian and PaceWildenstein likewise host dazzling events and appear at art fairs around the globe. Gagosian has observed, implicitly among his own clients that, “[it has become] a great hobby for a lot of people to collect art” and by extension participate in the social-scene surrounding the practice [34]. To be listed amidst Gagosian’s “A-list roster of clients” is something collectors strive for [35].
Gagosian Gallery hosts a party in 2010 for The Art Fund, a British based charity.
Trends and Predictions
Larry Gagosian started showing Andy Warhol’s work in the 1980s and hung Warhol’s last exhibition in New York before his death. Gagosian still brandishes Warhol while selling his prints, books and even Warhol Skateboards in the Gagosian Retail Store below the gallery on Madison Avenue. Mr. Gagosian continues to contribute to the artist’s mythical status, and by extension his own, by issuing statements in important international publications, like The Economist magazine, to whom he said, “there is something incredibly cool about Andy.”[36] He might have just as well said, “there is something incredibly cool about Gagosian, because we sell Andy.”
Inside the Gagosian Retail Store located at 988 Madison Ave, New York I took this photo of two Andy Warhol skateboards at the Gagosian Retail Store in New York, June 2010.
What impels Larry Gagosian to claim, “[Warhol] feels like a living artist. He is incredibly present in our culture”?[37] Why is Warhol so iconic? Is his lingering presence the result of dealers like Gagosian himself, who have promoted Warhol to collectors, sold his work to museums and therein set the process of licensing trinkets and memorabilia, as well as reproductions and posters of his original silk-screen masterpieces in motion? Gerard Faggionato, a London dealer claims, “In future Warhol will be much more important than Picasso, … he is more relevant to the younger generation.”[38]
Dealers play an important role in the art market introducing trends and aesthetic predilections. Art dealers with impressive brands and group of represented artists, sometimes become so predominant that they can steer market trends. Ann Freedman wrote, “Knoedler is proud [of the path they broker that] … a painting takes from artist to gallery to collector, and ultimately, to museum” where it becomes aggrandized as a masterpiece and representative of culture [39].
The Duveen Brothers virtually controlled the artistic predilection of its collectors. The firm’s marketing was unrivaled by messages projected by other institutions or dealers. The Duveens also partnered with Bernard Berenson, a famed America scholar of Italian paintings, who assured the prestige of the firm’s stock and assured collectors that they were buying the best [40]. The Duveen’s encouraged collectors that the works that they sold were the finest in the world. They went so far as to claim in a catalogue that, “with the possible exception of Leonardo’s “Mona Lisa,” no picture in the world … received more … attention that Gainsborough’s Blue Boy”, which they had sold to H.E. Huntington [41]. Under Joseph Duveen’s tactful promotion, emerging collectors like Benjamin Altman bought four Rembrandts, a Vermeer and several sculptures for $500,000.
Duveen was not the only dealer to usher his taste into the cultural vanguard. Paul Durand-Ruel is similarly known for staging the group-exhibits that popularized (or at least promoted) the heretical “Impressionists” in nineteenth century Paris. Another example of a dealer steering market trends is Mr. Bischofberger, a dealer from Zurich, who placed Andy Warhol’s work in important European collections. He introduced the work to Philippe Niarchos, a shipping-heir, socialite and major collector [42]. Niarchos subsequently bolstered Warhol’s legacy by acquiring more of his art in the secondary market, paying $3.6 million for Red at Christie’s in 1994 and spending a record $71.7 million on Green Car Crash in 2007 [43]. Nonetheless, in connecting the artist and Niarchos, the dealer was integral in stimulating Warhol’s fame.
Warhol's Red Marilyn Monroe purchased by Niarchos in 1994. Green Car Crash purchased by Niarchos in 2007.
Similarly Larry Gagosian has attempted to initiate artists into the cultural vanguard while they are still living. In Gagosian's retail store one can find a set Hirst ‘Superstition Plates’ from an edition of 250 priced at $15,000 [44]. However, the long-term impact of such branded work is not yet unearthed.
The Duveen Brothers shaped their client’s collections. While the dealers like Gagosian may introduce clients to art, important buyers themselves often have strong convictions. The Duveens did not always deal with shrewd and informed buyers like Gagosian’s prestigious collectors Dakis Joannou and Eli Broad. By supplying collectors like Altman, J.P. Morgan as well as Huntington and Henry Clay Frick, who went on to donate their collections to the Metropolitan Museum of Art and found the Huntington and Frick Collections, respectively, Duveen helped define notions of beauty in America. Their influence has been lasting.
The Duveens were an important cultural power, likely more important than any gallery today. The Duveen-effect is a part of American history. It transferred European art and history to America. However, their importance has been distilled by other voices, particularly those of “hotshot” dealers who have brought new dialogues and art to the Duveen’s former sphere at the high end of the market. Dialogues between contemporary and older art will always exist. Gagosian and PaceWildenstein’s artists will enter institutions alongside Castelli’s Johns’ and Warhol. The Duveen’s influence was not traumatic or insurmountable and Gagosians will not be either.
Conclusion
Dealers are business people. They are the fundamental market makers, as they match their stable of artists with the collectors. In so doing, they promote certain ideas about the art and even form a gallery brand in order to sell the art. Galleries undertake a variety of selling-tactics to usher their art into important private collections; they seek notoriety and business for themselves. Art that has been well promoted by dealers, as well as scholars and other groups in the art world becomes important. With time, it often falls into the clutches of museums and public institutions where it shapes popular understandings of life and culture. The dealers are crucial to the cycle for discovering and promoting artists and in so doing they influence popular culture. They are checked to a certain extent by collectors and scholars who eventually validate or cast-off the works they advocate for.
[1] American Marketing Association’s definition of a brand from Giep, Franzen. _The Science and Art of Branding. London: M.E. Sharpe, 2009. Print. 3.
[2] Lindemann, Adam. Collecting contemporary. London: Taschen, 2006. Print. 79.
[3] Velthuis, Olav. Talking Prices: Symbolic Meanings of Prices on the Market for Contemporary Art. Princeton: Princeton UP, 2007. Print.
[4] Lindemann, 79.
[5] Lindemann, 79.
[6] Knoedler at 150. New York: Knoedler & Company, 1997. Print. 1.
[7] Don, Thompson. The $12 Million Stuffed Shark. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2008. Print. 12.
[8] Thompson, 24.
[9] Fowles, Edward. Memories of the Duveen Brothers. London: Times Books, 1976. Print. 7.
[10] Fowles, 8.
[11] Fowles, 8.
[12] Thompson, 34.
[13] Thompson, 35.
[14] Fowles, 75.
[15] Fowles, 75
[16] Thompson, 36.
[17] Vogel, Carol. "Amid Asian Art Boom, Manhattan Gallery to Open Branch in Beijing." The New York Times. 29 Apr. 2008. Web. <http://www.nytimes.com/2008/04/29/arts/design/29pace.html?_r=1>.
[18] Knoedler at 150. New York: Knoedler & Company, 1997. Print.1.
[19] Linderman,79.
[20] PaceWildenstein. Web. <http://www.pacewildenstein.com/Exhibitions/ViewExhibition.aspx?title=DavidHockney%3APaintings2006-2009&type=Exhbition&guid=1933bddf-d186-48c2-88e9-94c7e26dd44f/>.
[21] PaceWildenstein.
[22] PaceWildenstein.
[23] PaceWildenstein.
[24] Lindermann, 68.
[25] Lindermann, 78.
[26] Lindermann, 163.
[27] Veblen, Thorstein. Conspicuous Consumption. New York: Penguin Books, 2006. Print. 15.
[28] Frank, Robert. Luxury Fever. New York: The Free Press, 1999. Print. 15.
[29] Frank, 15.
[30] Lindermann, 68.
[31] Lindermann, 68
[32] Lindermann, 78.
[33] Simpson, Colin. Artful Partners: Secret Association of Bernard Berenson and Joseph Duveen. New York: HarperCollins, 1988. Print. 165.
[34] Lindermann, 67.
[35] Thompson, 35.
[36] “The Pop Master's Highs and Lows.” The Economist. 26 Nov. 2009. <http://www.economist.com/node/14941229>.
[37] "The Pop master's highs and lows."
[38] "The Pop master's highs and lows."
[39] Knoedler, 1.
[40] Simpson, Colin. Artful Partners: Secret Association of Bernard Berenson and Joseph Duveen. New York: HarperCollins, 1988. Print.
[41] The Blue Boy by Thomas Gainsborough exhibited at the galleries of Messrs. Duveen Brothers, New York. New York: Duveen Brothers, 1922. Print.
[42] "The Pop master's highs and lows."
[43] "The Pop master's highs and lows."
[44] "Gagosian Goes Retail." ARTINFO. Web. <http://www.artinfo.com/news/story/32676/gagosian-goes-retail/>.