It's Castelli's Art World, We Just Live In It

Amanda Vaill does a brilliant job of synopsizing Annie Cohen-Solal’s biography of Leo Castelli in the Washington Post. Vaill singles out the 1958 show that launched Rauschenberg and Johns, then she goes on to describe the next 20 years of Castelli’s career that seems strangely familiar to today’s art world:

Castelli represented virtually every major American artist of the next two decades, from Frank Stella, James Rosenquist and Richard Serra to Ellsworth Kelly, Roy Lichtenstein and Andy Warhol. Indeed, Cohen-Solal suggests that his championship of American artists won them “new stature at home and abroad” and “introduce[d] major new currents into the flow of art history.” Castelli was at the center of controversy numerous times — for, among other things, the alleged arm-twisting at the Venice Biennale that led to Rauschenberg’s receiving the top prize in 1964; for his feud with the Metropolitan Museum’s hard-charging modern curator Henry Geldzahler; for maintaining (and allegedly manipulating) “waiting lists” for certain painters’ work and excluding would-be collectors from it. But by actively searching out provocative new work, by understanding the nexus between art and fashion, and art and commerce, and by creating tentacles of affiliate galleries to promote his artists worldwide, this slight, diffident man changed the way the art world worked. If, in the end, new waves in art formed and other dealers (many mentored by Castelli) caught them, none had his effect. As the collector Eli Broad says, “They don’t make Castellis anymore.”

Annie Cohen-Solal’s Biography of Leo Castelli (Washington Post)