Art Market Monitor

Global Coverage ~ Unique Analysis

  • AMMpro
  • AMM Fantasy Collecting Game
  • Podcast
  • Contact Us

If You Want to Know the Real Story About an Artist, For God’s Sake, Don’t Ask the Dealer

June 6, 2014 by Marion Maneker

IMG_0383

Anthony Haden Guest makes the excellent point that art history fails to tap the resources of art dealers. Haden Guest does this by way of anecdote using a conversation with Irving Blum (far left in the picture with Andy Warhol):

He was venting. Blum has a track record. Most famously he gave Andy Warhol his first show as a fine artist — Campbell’s Soup Cans at $100 apiece — at Ferus, his Los Angeles gallery, but he also gave early shows to Jasper Johns, Rauschenberg, Lichtenstein, you name it. His theme was that the contribution to art history made by commercial dealers was routinely dissed, by museum folk in particular.

This was something he had thought about since the early Sixties. He had just taken the LA artist Richard Diebenkorn aboard at Ferus and was lunching with the artist’s former dealer, Paul Kantor. Blum says: ‘I was so astonished by the enormous amount of information that he had, just off the top, that I blurted out, “Jesus, Paul! You’re a resource! Do museums call you all the time?” And he looked at me and he said, “They never call me.”

‘Well, in the same way I have had a 50-year career in the art world. And I’m never called. And I know many, many dealers. And they’re never called. It’s this kind of bugaboo that dealers have a commercial interest, and have a prejudice — which is total bullshit. If a museum called me I would bend over backwards to be careful in my analysis… to be precise… and to be informative.

Art dealers, the forgotten makers of art history – Spears.

More from Art Market Monitor

  • Almine Rech Brings Forg, Wesselmann to BaselAlmine Rech Brings Forg, Wesselmann to Basel
  • NDTV: Turner SaleNDTV: Turner Sale
  • Phillips de Pury London Cont = £5.7mPhillips de Pury London Cont = £5.7m
  • Merce Cunningham's Assets Were ArtMerce Cunningham's Assets Were Art
  • Art Fair Growth Levels Off But How Do They Measure Success?Art Fair Growth Levels Off But How Do They Measure Success?
  • Rosa!Rosa!

Filed Under: Dealers

About Marion Maneker

Want to get Art Market Monitor‘s posts sent to you in our email? Sign up below by clicking on the Subscribe button.

Top Posts

  • Keith Haring’s 1989 Retrospect Comes to Sotheby’s London Prints Sale
  • British Modernists Draw Deep Bidding in Christie's $42 M. London Sales
  • $10 M. Picasso Portrait Unseen for Decades to Sell at Bonhams
  • Tony Podesta's Secret Art Buying
  • Four of Picasso's Women Valued at $28m Come to Christie's from Rose-Walters Collection
  • Norman Rockwell's Not Gay. But Is He a Great Artist?
  • Roy Lichtenstein’s Top Ten Auction Prices
  • Miami Sales Report 2015
  • The Billion-Dollar NYC Apartment of Ben Heller
  • Mapping a Career in the Art World
  • About Us/ Contact
  • Podcast
  • AMMpro
  • Newsletter
  • FAQ

twitterfacebooksoundcloud
Privacy Policy
Terms & Conditions
California Privacy Rights
Do Not Sell My Personal Information
Advertise on Art Market Monitor