Sarah Douglas shares a memory of dealer Robert Shapazian that involves the critic Dave Hickey telling a story at a talk held at the Frieze art fair:
Towards the opening of his talk, he told an anecdote about art’s value in a boomtime economy. “The prices of everybody’s work are compromised by selling art for too much money,” he said. “For a dealer, this is virtually impossible to avoid these days. My friend Bob Shapazian, who was director of the Gagosian Gallery in Los Angeles, quit. And why did he quit? He said: ‘I’m not an art dealer anymore. I sit around, a crate comes in, I see who the crate’s from, I go to the waiting list, I make up this outrageous number and send it out. That’s not being an art dealer. I am creating value, but it is not real value.'”
In Memoriam: Gagosian Director Robert Shapazian (ArtInfo.com)
