The Art of the Art Deal

up in New York. His first writing job was as the sports editor of the Santa Fe Reporter in New Mexico. He made one dollars a week, but it led to a job at Time Magazine, then Two Avenues, and finally Vanity Fair, where he has published over feature stories. Shnayerson writes books too. He's collaborated with Harry Belafonte, written a portrait of Andrew Cuomo and Unpacked General Motors and the Electric Car. For his latest book, Boom, Schneyerson interviewed more

than two hundred art dealers. Whenever he writes a book, and Boom is his seventh, he becomes lost in the world of his subject. One reason that I undertook those books was to immerse myself in the different worlds. I mean, I found Albany a fascinating world and very in its own way, sort of exotic one. How soles about that?

This is the Cuomo biography? You know it's Yes, It's often said that when your drive from New York to Albany, let's say you're a representative of some kind, by the time you get halfway there, you know you're you're within the this realm that is completely apart from Manhattan, and you know there's a kind of pervasive corruption in um in Albany. It's so pervasive that there's everyone acknowledges it. Basically, there's no there's virtually no rules or very modest ones

on campaign contributions. You can give anything through beyond cynicism. That, yeah, let's beyond cynicism. I found that fascinating. Did I learn more about Cuomo because of the Cuomo's a very complicated, dark guy who's sort of haunted by his father, UM Harry Belafonte, It occurred to me as someone who was always haunted by his father. UM. Now with with Andrew Cuomo, who I don't know well, I've met him many times, and of course, like anybody who participates on any level,

especially a level that can involve check writing. Uh, you you have Cuomo lieutenants reaching out to you. But um, he's a guy who was always kind of uh fascinated somewhat by that relationship with his father because he's so much more of a retail politician than his dad. You know. But and and their mother was this wonderful woe. She was this dynamic and daughter, Matilda Cuomo was always how's your mom and how's your mom's breast cancer? Thinger? She she knew that game inside and out and she did

it sincerely. She was a very warm woman. And Como would be standing there at Cuomo Senior and it was like he had a hair shirt on. He just couldn't wait for everybody to get the hell away from him and he can go home. Well, it's very perceptive. I mean, he was seen as written as being this avuncular, warm, empathetic, you know, true democrat. Um. In fact, he was a very tough father on on Andrew. Um. Um. You know, maybe one thing to be gleaned here is that almost

everybody's got a father problem, this dynamic between fathers and sons. Um. What was Belafonte's luck in terms of because because when I met him, he was a pretty no nonsense guy. To tough guys, beget tough sons or can What was what was Belafonte's relationship with his father? Like they grew up partly in Jamaica. His father was a sailor UM in some sort of marine, in a military marine situation.

He um when he came home, he was um. He was really abusive to his son, I mean physical, physical violence. I remember Harry describing a moment when his father, Uh, well, he had done something. Harry had done something wrong, and his father said, we're going to take care of this. And he made Harry fill the bathtub with absolutely scalding water and then he told him to come out of the bathtub and put his foot in, and just as he was about to put his foot in, the father

sort of pushed him away. And that wasn't the only time he did something like that. At one one time, I remember Harry saying that his father took a a lit cigarette and put it to his leg um. So that was pretty extreme UM and I think it made Harry a very tough character. Indeed, UM very tough. But at the same time. When I met him, Yeah, he did not suffer fools. When I met him, he really really seemed like somebody who he had a chip on his shoulder. Can I tell you a little story because

it's just one of the great stories from that book. Um. Uh, I hope it's okay if we venture a little bit away from from art um. Uh. So, Harry had served in the military in the Army. Um, of course, in a black regiment outside of Chicago. If you were black, you were in a black regiment. Um. There was no integration. And he came back. He didn't know what to do,

so he worked as a janitor in Harlem. Uh. And one day one of his uh customers, not customers, the people in the building said, Harry, could you help fix my broiler or something? So he fixed the broiler and she said, well, I want to pay you by giving you these two theater tickets, and uh, it's for free. It's something called the you know, the America, The American Negro Theater was I think the name. So Harry had never seen a play and he went down alone to

see this play and he was absolutely gobsmacked. It involved is there contemporary involved black soldiers? Coming back from the war trying to readjust so he goes up to the founders afterwards, the directors of this theory, sis, I want to help, only do anything I can, and they say, really, okay, well, if you want to move the props around, come on back.

So he comes back. He starts moving the props around, and he's below that area of the of the stage, you know, whatever you call it where the orchestra's pit is or whatever, is moving things around, and this very surly guy uh is moving them around too, and and Harry find says, you're not talking much. Is that because you were just in jail? And the guy freaks out. He says, why would you think that, um? And Harry says, you know, just because that's sort of like I had

a sense when people are in jail have been. He says, well, I can't talk about that, uh. And he says, well, what's your name? And he says, Sydney Partier. And this is how Harry and Sydney Potier met and it was the beginning of their like seventy year friendship which continues to this day. Were there white artists, writers, thinkers that he trusted that he thought really cared about the movement, you know, um, something that he respected I offhand, UM,

I don't have that recollection. What I have is actually the opposite sort of recollection, which is a a white guy whom he trusted explicitly because the guy was his therapist.

And actually the guy's last name was Kennedy. I've forgotten his first name wasn't anything to do with the Kennedy family, and um uh, as it turned out, the guy was a spy for the FBI, and um, Janeer Hoover was using Yeah, and and so you know, imagine the sense of betrayal you feel if you're Harry Bellafonte and your own therapist has been reporting on you to Jaeder Hoover, Um, a white therapist. Just to clarify, So, I don't know. I think I think trying. I thought my opinion of

Hoover couldn't go down maybe lower. Um, I have to say I think that that he came to trust me and we had a very very strong friendship, which continues. I'm wondering as I hop over to the world of art and your current book, Boom, did writing this book lead you to look at art differently than you had before? Yeah, I think it did. I mean, I'm quick to say on page one of this book that I am not an art critic. Uh, neither before nor after that, you

know that. That's no. I never collected friends that were galorous or art artists. I had a few, to be honest. I I first got into this story because some of the art stories, if some of the stories I did for any Fair, were about contemporary art. Yes, you know, the whole Older Gallery, which and Freedom, which which we have discussed, and uh, you know I found those stories fascinating. Um.

That was the first thing. I also was intrigued always by Larry Gagosian, Um, you know, the the top dog of the whole contemporary art dealer world, and I wanted to write about him, and I would always be told forget it. It took me a while to realize that, of course, I would never get to write about it goes In because he was a sacred cow. Because Si new House, the head of you know, the head of the company was Conny had bought a lot of art

and was buying more. I mean you know, uh, go goes Ian had sat in an auction room with Um, with Si new House, and they had been a work up to seventeen million dollars, So of course I wasn't gonna be allowed to write by It was fine. Uh, time passed, I thought, you know, this subject is too big. I've been I've been thinking, I'm going to write about the whole contemporary art world and how it got this way from the late fourteas until now, and it's going

to involve collectors and curators and dealers and artists. Yes, but I, um, but I just was. I had just taken on too much. So how was I going to reduce it? Well, I finally occurred to be the answer was to Winnow it down to the dealers, because you know, there's no art without artists, but there's actually no art without dealers either, and they had been kind of at the center of this story from the beginning, and they were a very interesting group of people. So that's how

I got going. You know, I when I've met you know, there's something about him it's so exciting and so kind of because because he has an energy to him, like you want to believe, there's a rakishness to him. To me. Um, the only person that could play in a movie about him is Daddy would be John Garfield's a is a tough, tenacious quality, and you want to believe that began his queer. But like hijacking a truck, someone said, listen, kid, A bunch of people like he just is a toughness to him.

There's a kind of a there's a kind of a veneered him. He's really kind of a tough guy and warm. You know, so many things come to mind as you as you speak like I mean, one thing is just to the point about his charm. It's fascinating. If he wants something from you and I hear this again and again, then he's the most charming guy in the world. Um, and he loves I mean, there are these billionaires who are his clients. You know, he's he's what they call

collector centric versus artists centric. You know, he's realized a long time ago that if you can get Ron Perlman or whoever else Steve Cohen to be at your table and come to your parties, and then by the art you're gonna be Not long ago, I was in the restaurant Sedimentzo, and I overheard this little snippet of conversation Asian.

I guess it was around the holidays, and uh, this heavyset guy, older guy leaned towards someone at the next table and said, going down to uh st Bart's for Christmas, and the and the other guy said, oh, you know you're gonna you're gonna see Larry. Yeah, I'm gonna gonna see Larry. And and where are you gonna stay? And the other guys, oh, we just always stay with Larry.

We stay with Larry. And what that meant was that this guy has bought a lot of art from Larry and that's why he gets invited, not because of his charm, which he probably thought he had anyway, So you know, go Gozian's charm is uh. It turns on and off at as as need be. Uh. He's also described as someone who can be um very you know, just turn a cold shoulder on you, just look right through you, um, depending on if you you know, are necessary to him

or not. When you look at this line from Kesstelli, we'll say that's the line, even though there were other people that you write about as well. And the abdex world as you call it, um this line from Castelli onto Coos and these people who are making a market, these people who have convinced other people. Um, would you say that that who was are the equivalent? Because if I read the book correctly, what you're saying is that that that these men and some women they got rich

people to to turn this into a currency. So who do you think it is? It's Castellian? Who else? Well? So to go back, you know, to the beginning of Gogs and I find it just fascinating, Um, that he grew up in the way he did in an Armenian community in Fresno, California. You know his parents, I think we're they were Americans, but his grandparents on both sides had were immigrants from Russia. And you know, this is very at odds with the template, if you will, for

contemporary art dealers. Contemporary art dealers tend to be, you know, to started as rich fops. Their parents have art on the walls, their parents know the dealer, who will give the kid a job. I mean, this is how these things tend to come up. So when you get a guy like a goes In who didn't even know what art was growing up, never a piece of art on

his apartment. And the father we talked about, the father actually was an accountant, did Okay, but you know, as as Larry later said, there was he never heard of anybody who had two cars. He never heard of anyone who went to the country for the weekend. I mean, he was just amazed to hear that when he finally got into the art business, and so, you know, to hear that and then to get that wonderful story, I

mean it's just so classic. You know, he he gets out of USC, he doesn't know what he's gonna do. He is actually gets a job at the William Morris Male Room, the classics starting job, except that he hates working for people like Mike Ovits, and he just he's either fired or he quits whatever. He's out of there. And then he spends a few years just working like for a record store, a grocery store. You know, doesn't have any ambition at all, which is quite bizarre when

you think of how ambitious he really is. And then at a certain point he gets a job that has him working as a parking lot manager. Okay, so he's in his parking lot, he looks down the street and there's a guy taking framed prints out of the trunk of his car and selling them. As it turns out and Larry's kind of fascinated it. And so he looks into this and he finds out where these posters are made,

and he gets his own posters. And you know, it's the thing about him, he didn't he didn't look at the guys selling posters and think, well, maybe I'll try to sell something else. He was very pragmatic. If the posters sold, he would do posters. And he later said, you know, if the guy had been selling widgets, he'd probably be selling widgets now, right. So, uh so he started he got to pop up story. Didn't he go

get a store? Yes, exactly right. He's he starts doing this on the street, just like the other guy trunk of his car. And then because he is framing these things, it occurs to him maybe he should have a little framing store, and so he does that. Uh, and then he gets a little more ambitious and he has a little gallery. So he's framing and he's trying to sell the work. But he realizes that he's nowhere out there. And I mean it's in Westwood, l A. It's it's

not a bad community. There's some wealthy people in the movie business. But uh, he knows he has to come to New York and try to ingratiate himself, and that leads him to come in and to actually meet uh Castelli and and that's where the whole art world sort

of begins turning into an art market. One day, he's in his l A gallery and uh, he's looking through a art magazine and they're these very cool abstract photographs by guy named Ralph Gibson um who just parenthetically I happen to know because he would do the photo shots for Avenue magazine. So I would go to his too, Ralph's studio, and we would choose these really cool shots

and they would go on the cover of the magazine. Uh. At any rate, Ralph gets a call from Gozian, who says, you don't know me, but I like your photos and I'd like to have a show of them here in California. And there's a pause on the line, and Ralph says, but I'm in New York and and he goes says, oh, I'm sorry, I got I thought you were in l A. Uh And well, but how about if I take the pictures anyway? And and and Gibson says, well, if you want to fly here and introduce yourself. Then you know

we could talk about that. So Gozian flies out he um Uh. He arrives on his own and he meets Gibson. They're both actually very handsome, charming gods. I mean, they really are charismatic the world. Yeah. Yeah, and they liked each other a lot. And so Gibson says, hey, before you go back, you gotta meet my my agent, my dealer, you know, Leo Castelli and Uh. As soon as Castelli go Goesi and met it was you know, an spark, a spark and and and you wouldn't have expected that

because they're so different. He's an Italian born kid. Uh. The mother's maiden name. Yeah, it took the mother's maiden name because he was Jewish and the war was looming. Uh. He learns five languages. He's a very debonair guy, comes to New York, eventually starts this gallery, as you said, on the street, becomes the sort of reigning king of pop art um and is very generous in his dealings,

both with artists and with other dealers. He's actually the one who pioneers this idea of splitting deals with far flung dealers because instead of trying to make their money as much as they can in their own shops. Why not share the connections and and then everyone will eventually do well. And so this a network was a new concept and totally not what Gogozian would have done. This was very much Castelle. And you know, Gogozian, uh was charismatic,

but he was also a very aggressive guy. Why he hadn't showed that before, I don't know, but now he was very aggressive and uh he started uh selling paintings much as he had the frame posters and in l A. He just was sort of a guy who would uh buttonhole you on the street and say, I know you're a dealer, you might be interested in this guy's work and uh. And they said that, They said that Ralph Lauren used to self ties to people table side. Lauren would like walk up to people and show them like

his collection of ties. Funny. Well, that's that's basically I mean. And and that's the way Gogozian was regarded as a totally bumptious kind of you know, o riviste or whatever. And uh. And there was one person who didn't agree with that take, and that was Castelli. Would people tell you who knew Castelli, that he was really very astute about art, that he knew good art, or was he the same? Was all about markets? Was the first? Well

that's a good question. Um. You know people are always talking about an I does this guy have an eye? Does he have a good critical eye? Can he really recognize which is the good painting which is not the good painting? And it was it was assumed by everybody that Leo Castelli had a great eye. But those who are real cognizanti in this world would tell you that it was actually his wife, Alana Sana Bend who had

the great eye. Um. But you know, uh, you talked to a really really smart critic like Robert Store, who was the head of the Yale Art School, and he would say it was Alana all the way. And and Costelli was just writing on on her. You know that's not a very good analogy, but was writing on her judgment, her judgment. Robert Store, the the the great authority I've just quoted here, would be just as quick to sort

of disparage go goes In as he was to disparaged Castelle. Um. He would say that no, no go goes In, It's just a retailed guy. That was his. He's just a retailed guy. Um. But you know, uh, I don't think that's fair. I I remember I said not long ago that I am not an art expert, I'm not an art critic. But I will say that every virtually every artwork, every artist that goes in has represented that I'm going to see. I've just felt excited and drawn to that art.

And and and people who really are in this business are actually very respectful of Larry's eye. He's really got it. And you want, when you walk into his gallery, it's not just the art, but it's the frames. Back to the frames. But now there you know, it's no simple frames in in l a out of the trunk. It's beautiful frames, and it's beautiful floors, and it's and it's it's actually you know, very attractive people to you know, uh you in. I mean, it's all really done perfectly.

And uh. And of course he's also the one who had I don't know if the eye is the right way putting it, but the the sense the prescience to start expanding, uh, not only to another gallery in New York. And there were a few who had two galleries in New York, but to um to the rest of the world. So I don't even know what the count is, whether it's seventeen galleries or nineteen. It's somewhere between seventeen and nineteen.

We'll have to see how it settles. But um, you know, this was a guy who who made his first move in that regard in about two thousand when he went to London. Um. There's a cute little story. I could it just takes a minute because it's charming. Larry had no thought of going to London. Uh. He was settled in New York. UM. But he had someone who worked from a lovely woman named Molly Dent Brocklehurst. There's a name for you. And she was, as you might expect,

a very blue blood person. She was from. She was English and she worked for Larry in his New York Um gallery and the one that the flagship across from the Carlisle Hotel. And one of her artists that she handled for him was Damien Hurst. And Damien Hurst. Uh, you know, we could talk for hours about Damian Hurst. Uh, but the fact is hugely successful and the kind of art that artists that that goes in liked best, the kind who could churn out a stuff, you know, like

in a production line. Um. And so Molly was very important to go goes In because she was the go between with Damien Hurst. And one day she said to Larry, I'm sorry, I've got to leave you because my father has just died. There's a castle in the family and I have to go tend to the castle. Um And Larry took a beat and he said, well, why don't you just open a Go goes In office in London and then you can tend to your castle and Damien Hurst is there anyway, and you can sell some art.

And so that's exactly what happened. That that happened to be just the time that the Russian oligarchs were starting to come over, and so there was this whole new you know, vein of big money um and and Larry, Larry didn't know that was going to happen. It just it just happened out of serendipitous A lot of luck

involved with it. There is a lot of luck. Now you touched on Mary Boone, so I have on my own history with so I'm told I just want to ask, you know, in the way that people build these careers because because part of that experience for me, I looked at it was kind of inexplicable, you know when I when I went through what I went through, which was, you know, very specifically, to purchase a painting by a painter in a certain year, and let's say that it

was two thousand ten or two thousand eleven, and I pay a five figure some for that painting, and then I say, I want you to go find me this other painting that's an older painting that might be worth twice as much as that are more, and you then sell me that painting. I think, selling me that painting, But what we find out is it's a copy you had made of that painting, and yet you charge me

the amount of money. This was kind of the undoing of the whole thing for her when you represent that you charge me a hundred and ninety thousand dollars when I just bought the other one from you two weeks ago for eighty five thousand dollars. Why would I pay you a hundred ninety thousand for the one when I just paid you eighty five for the one? That was frustrating.

There was a lot of things that made it difficult for her to escape um responsibility, and and and and when she settled with me means it's all on public record. She she writes me a check for a million dollars to go away. And my point is is that that we all sat there the the the statute of limitations had passed in terms of the criminal and we get ready to do a civil trial and we're gonna we're

gonna go after a lot of emails of her. And they settled the case very quickly at that point, because you realize she didn't wake up one day and decided to do this to me that day. We wondered whether there was something and I'm wondering for someone who had a career like hers, it was so you know important, I mean, she represented people. She must Someone said to me, you know, she'll just turn around and take a busk

yet out of the bin. That she hasn't selled to cover her her losses, you know, to her in this litigation, What do you think happened with someone like her? Why? Well, here's what occurs to me to say. I mean, I've interviewed Mary. I interviewed her a good long time for the book. And then as the book was getting ready to be published. Of course she was. Um Uh. She was sentenced and for tax invasion, nail for tax evasion. And so I went to interview her again. Um and

that actually became an article in Town Country. UM. So I spent quite a bit of time with her, um interviewed after the sentencing. Yes, yes, yes, spent a little time in her gallery. UM. I think she was still sort of trying to shape the narrative there and and thought I could do this, and and maybe she thought Town Country was a pretty sympathetic audience, which I suppose it's fair to say it is. Um. But I had, well, first of all, I had liked her. You know that

she's she's easy to like. She uh, she's charming, she's sort of she's she's sexy. Felin is a great word for it. And um uh. And certainly in those early days she showed uh enormous uh cleverness in how she built her business. By the way, Gogzian was the one who discovered David Sally. Um Mary Boonett had a chance. She looked at his work early on, but she'd rejected it. She wasn't bold enough and that instance to think that that would work for her. But Gogozian went to see

Sally's work and uh, and he took a chance. He had rented aloft on the fifth floor overlooking for twenty West Broadway, which for twenty West Broadway was the big artist cooperative. Leo Castelli the king of the realm. And so when go goes Ian rented a loft space on the fifth floor literally looking down at the Kingdom, it was kind of almost creepy, you know. It was like he was looking down to what he was going to conquer one days. Yes, he really was. And so he

had this show for for David Sally. It did very well. He sold quite a number of paintings. Mary Boone came across the street from her new little um gallery IF at four twenty and she ended up taking Sally because you know, it goes in At that point it was just a guy from California. He didn't really know he wasn't a dealer. He had to admit he was not yet a dealer um and that's actually what drove him to be kind of a different dealer. Instead of representing

an artist's primary work. In other words, you find an artist, you discover him. He paints the painting. You take it and you sell it to a collector. That's primary. That's the primary market. If the art has been sold once, then it doesn't matter how it sold the second time. Might be an auction, might be a private deal, whatever that then it's a secondary market. So Larry was always most interested in the secondary market because there was more money in it. It was usually a fifty fifty situation.

And uh, because there was just more art to buy and sell. He would he would go to someone's house for dinner. He would see work on the walls. He would remember that who were businessmen. Yeah, meaning when you're dealing with artists their artists. Yeah, And when I'm taking the paintings that somebody who is the owner wants to sell, everybody who realizes it's commerce and and and you know, I mean he did discover Boskia very early on. I wasn't the first, but the second, I would say, in

fairness to Larry um and um. And he uh did enormously well with Boskia. But even so that again was a primary artist. Uh. The work was selling for a few thousand dollars in the early eighties, whereas only a few years later in the eighties, UH Gogozian was representing UM people like Sign New House and and and probably getting half of a seventeen million dollar sales. So secondary work was really where the big money was, and that's

where Gagosian went the one. The other thing I would just say about Mary is that I think I think that what she did really shocked the whole art community, the whole art market, and I don't think that people do that sort of thing a lot. Now, having just said that, Larry Gogzian did have to give four million and change to the to the I R S for uh sending works that had been bought to a buyer's second residents and and state rather than the first one.

You know, that sort of thing you that dealers can sometimes do. I have one last question for you. I want to say that you know this kid from the Upper West Side where you grew up in the Upper West Side of Manhattan, who's tooling around owned a New Mexico with a guitar. He doesn't know what he wants to do, he's running for the Santa Fe sports page. And then you you enter a world in which you see a lot of things that you experienced a lot

of things, and one of them is love. One of them is you meet your wife, Yes in the in the in the Towers of Manhattan show Yes. I think that's fair. That well. Uh my wife, Gaiford Steinberg Um was married to a very well known Titan of Wall Streets, Saul Steinberg Uh no secret there. They had a wonderful marriage for for many years, but he did eventually die

after a long lingering situation. I knew Gaifrid through a few different women who are sort of hostesses around town who would have me as a single guy at the table. And I remember meeting her a first time and just being dazzled by her intelligence or beauty. And so some months after Saul died, I just thought, I really loved talking to that woman. Let's just invite her to lunch and see what happens. And we went to lunch and we had a great time, and we went to dinner,

and one thing led to another. So that was We're celebrating our fifth anniversary on Saturday. Michael Schnayerson his latest book is Boom. If you want to hear more about the social scene at the height of the nineteen eighties, you can't get a better storyteller than Tina Brown, who took over Vanity Fair just in time to document that period's excesses. We were in the Reagan era, right, we just role Reagan was on a glide path to re election.

I came in as a London outsider who didn't know really much about America, and I was just plunged into this world of Reagan's America, which was this kind of black tie, wildly consumers. You know, Bob, he was on the magazine. It was just, I mean, it boggles my mind when I when I read the diaries now and when I started to compile them, how much We went out for a link to my full interview with Tina Brown. Text Tina to seven zero one zero one. This is

Alec Baldwin and you're listening to. Here's the thing. Richard Fagan's New York gallery has sold hundreds of millions of dollars of the greatest works of art from the Renaissance through boscuillat his expertise as the Italian Baroque. He was one of the most important dealers to the newly minted millionaires of nineteen eighties New York, who all bought their art and their cultural cash from Figen. As Sathobies put it, quote, Richard's a secret is to buy what's not in fashion

and to trust his keen eye for quality unquote. In recent years he's been stepping back from the day to day leadership of the gallery, but his taste is still evident in its choices. Just this year, before the pandemic hit, they put up an exhibit of old Master and nineteenth century drawings. Richard Fagan is a dealer, but says he's really a collector, a passion he's had his entire life. The eleven year old Richard Figen earned a hundred dollars and the first thing I bought was a hundred dollars.

You bought a painting for a hundred dollars. And when you told your parents you're gonna take the hundred dollars of your personal fortune, all of your personal fortune, and by a painting with it, what did they say? I don't think they much interfered. They just they just s't as long as you were happy, as long as you left them alone and bother them. He's gonna go buy a painting, okay, So what let him go buy some

paintings and you bought what painting? I bought a your painting from the sixteenth century in an antique store near where I lived for a hundred dollars. And what was what was it about? I mean it was it really about an appreciation of art? Partially partially it was financial At eleven, Yeah, you understood the equity involved at that age because you were surrounded. But your father was successful. Yeah, but he was a lawyer. He didn't have any art, didn't have any art. So how does what's the two

thousand one a Space Odyssey moment for you? When the Black Monoliths shows up in your bedroom and tells you you need to go out and buy art? I don't know. I guess I recognize the values, and I felt that there was a vast difference between price and value. So I decided to take advantage of that, and I ended up selling it for a hundred dollars. It was not a very successful It wasn't a score. It wasn't a big coup for you. Does this progress or was was it a one off? Would you keep going even when

you were eleven? You kept going? I kept going. When did the aesthetic enter the picture? It entered it fairly early. As I got more involved and I got to understand more, then the aesthetics took over. In the beginning, I went to work for a company that was in my family, an insurance company on the West Coast, Beneficial Standard. Yeah, did you enjoy that? I enjoyed the investment aspect, but the art that I wanted as chase was in New York.

So I arranged to buy art for the chairman of our company, which brought me to New York frequently, and I ended up staying in New York. You sold your seat on the Exchange in fifty seven. Yes, yes, one of the great Wall Street figures told me that I wouldn't like it, and he was right, so that I only had that seat for about a year and you and you and you dumped your seat on the Stock Exchange dumped. I sold it for a lot of my

broken It cost me fifty dollars. I had about six thousand dollars of initiation visa or whatever, and I sat for the fifty six thousands. To start your own art, yes, business, your own gallery, yes, But then you but when you open up, Richard Feigen, your first company, you've got to get money to go buy pay or do people lend you to the people? Do they consign the pass and consignment? And when did things begin to change for you? When did you start to really take off, if you will,

and sell more paintings and build your business. Well, when I got to know the collectors and the museums. That became very much involved with a number of museums, and I began to either know what they wanted or what they ought to want, and then I have to convince them well of what they ought to want if they're lacking certain museums themselves or clients of your Oh yes, a lot of museums. Was there a sale or a transaction that you facilitated back then that really began to

make your reputation? Was there when you recall what you thought that was a big turning point from my company? Um, I don't think there was a single instance. But but I've dealt with most of the major museums in the world, I mean the Metropolitan National Gallery to Louver and so on, and I would spend time look at their collection, decide they need such just such a painting, and then if I had it, I would offer it to them. Hopefully

they would agree with me. Someone that you were an early proponent of was Bacon, who I am a great admirer of. So I'm assuming you knew him. You must have known him, correct. I never met Bacon. You never did. I had the first Bacon show, I think in America, but I didn't deal with him directly. I just brought up his work around because I admired it. He originally said he was going to come to my opening, and

I thought that was great. And then I later got a call that he wanted me to fix him up with some young boys, and I said, I'm I'm out of my water here. I'm not up to this. I couldn't handle it, so I dissuaded him from coming. You're one chance to meet Bacon. I suppose I could have met him. Had you been willing to pimp for Bacon, you might have had a nice friendship. Yeah, I might have. Yeah, but when I can't remember the exact timing. But I

bought my friends this Bacon show. The whole show of fourteen paintings cost me an average of probably six seven painting, and I sold him for a thousand, twelve paintings that are individually worth now hundreds of thousands and hundreds of thousands of dollars. Yeah, how would you describe the art market today compared to when you first arrived here and moved here in the sixties. And I think that the art market is much much larger now, much more international,

and um, the focus has changed a lot. Right now, the old master market is largely dead unless you have something extraordinary that nobody's ever seen before. There's very small market for old masters, largely contemporary, and that's where all the focus of the spotlight has been on the contemporary. So I may see permanent value in things and end up buying it, and there isn't that much of a

market for it. I think when you see someone you read about them in the paper and they say that this guy bought this painting, uh uh, this Picasso or whatever, some huge name in the in that world, and they paid five million dollars for the painting they paid through the highest amount ever paid. Do those people always assume that the day will come that they'll sell that painting for more than five million dollars or do they ever sit there and say, I don't care about that, I

just want that painting because I love that painting. It's always about or is it always about equity and markets and resale about eventually? I think it depends a lot on the individual. You know, um, I think of spending that kind of money, usually they have to be assured that the intrinsic value is there and we're going to get it back. Some people don't much care. For some people that five million dollars may not be that much.

The documentary that you were in, the Art of the Steel, I want to get to something about that in a moment. But another documentary I saw they showed coons standing in a laboratory like setting with a bunch of his uh disciples, and they're all applying paint to these canvases and under his direction, and they're asking basically, is it a coon's if your hand never touches the brush? And he was unrepentant. He said, oh no, I'm everything. He said, what they're

doing is completely in my direction. And there was a bunch of them working simultaneous. He's going from canvas to canvas to well, he has he has a sort of a factory. Now, what do you think about though, I think a lot of these values are confections, and I think that Jeff Coon's is a very sophisticated and clever guy and a substantial buyer of old Master pictures, which I understand a lot of them are on loan to the Metropolitan Museum. Things he bought Coons things he bought,

and he's very sophisticated. I do not believe he's an artist of any consequence. You don't know a lot of people would different from different with me on that. I don't think. So. You've never transacted to Coons, You never bought I've never bought or sold a Coons because you didn't want to. No. I I don't get involved in things where I have doubts about the intrinsic value. Ever, No, really not, And I don't consider Jeff Coons an artist

of consequence. Do you think there's a market for a place, a gallery to open in which you have, uh, you know, the curators of the gallery, let's say, are people with some experience, and on the walls they hang art of people that are undiscovered that they really really believe it, And all the art is for arguments sake. You know, under to have thousand dollars, it's not super expensive. It's not no six figure purchases there, maybe even under ten thousand,

there's a market for that. Do you think people want to come in and they want to look at art or do most people who have money to buy art their big game hunters. They want famous, big pieces and feathers in their cap and so forth. I think there's very little now that remains undiscovered. The market has expanded and there's so many people in it that uh, and you can't predict which things are going to be successful

or not. Um. I remember years ago I was in Japan with a very dear friend of mine, Jim Rosenquist, we just died last year, and um, we were in this gallery and in walks the artist Sama. Her work at that time was very inexpensive. Since then, they've gotten expensive, and you couldn't have predicted that. For me, it's relatively easy to tell which things they have permanent importance. That doesn't mean that they're ever going to be picked up

by the market collectible expensive. There are things today that I'm just flabber gasid at the prices they bring, because I don't regard them as being intrinsically very significant. Whereas five years ago they caused very little. Now their prices are enormous. That doesn't happen very often, and you can't tell what which things are going to have that kind

of appreciation. The documentary that you were in, Art of the Steel, Uh, one of my favorite documentaries about the acquisition of the Barnes collection, folded into the the Philadelphia Museum and all the sterm and drawing about that. And there you are at an shib but I think it's

either Christie's or south Aby's. And you say some are my favorite quote, some art is attractive and not very significant, significant enough, very attractive, And then you point to a painting, say, now this picture, this painting is neither significant nor attractor, but it'll sell for thirty million dollars or some obscene amount of money. Yeah. I got a lot of flak

out of it. Really no. And the Barnes is a very good example, because the Barnes Foundation I was very much opposed to moving it, and they wanted it downtown for tourist reasons. I always maintained it was it was fine where it was, and if they wanted to make it accessible to the general public, they could have run shuttle buses back and forth. It was only a about a fifteen minute trip. I visited it down in Philadelphia. They tried to red they tried to recreate the Saints

and so on. I think that was absurd. Um, I think it's been successful. I assume there are crowds of people that come and see it, But I still think it could have been handled were in their in their other building where they were, which was an admirable building. I don't think they had to move it is There is there a if you go to one city and you're gonna go and see the art in that city, you're gonna pick one. Which one would you pick? I would probably pick London. You would why because the National

Gallery has a great collection. The Tate Gallery has always been very active. Uh, it's a it's a real and the new British artists are continue to be very important. They were when I was involved with giving exhibitions. I focused on that new generation of British artists. Still longer a new generation, they're now older, much revered group of artists, but they've had a very significant um role in what's

going on today. So I think that Tate is important, The National Gallery in London is important, and so on. Now in your own home is art something that certain pieces survive and they stay there forever. Of their pieces that you have on a wall, and they're never gonna leave that wall, and they live there forever. Pieces you love. What is the art in your home change over time? Now? The stuff of my home generally is stuff that I own personally, and it's pretty stable as stays there stuff

you love. Oh, I have, uh, a pretty large group of very early Italian pictures from the from fifteen centuries, which is a is a period that interests me a lot. Why First of all, I like it esthetically, and secondly it's important in terms of the evolution of our history. Some of the things in that period interests me intellectually. So I have a large group of those things. Every now and then I give something to the Yale Art Gallery.

But so you have beyond your home and in your gallery, do you have in storage tons and tons of pieces that you own? Not tons and tons of things, but some some things I have, but I don't keep it in storage. It usually is on my wall in my home if it's personal gallery or in my gallery. And I don't generally change that around that much. There's not that much that interests me enough to buy it. I

don't have that big, diverse and inventory, Richard Fagin. Last year, Fagen sold some of those personal treasures to fund his retirement. This is Alec Baldwin, and you were listening to here's the thing.