Amanda Brooks recounts the story of her tenure at Gagosian Gallery back when it was two galleries in New York and one in LA just as we get news of a new London space. One reason for Gagosian’s success—outlined here in the excerpt below—has been his obsessive drive:
The gallery atmosphere was intense and often harsh. The salespeople were ultracompetitive, the artists were vulnerable, and Larry was brilliant verging on crazy. One minute he’d be shouting at me for not correctly intuiting what he wanted me to do, and the next minute he’d be begging — begging — me to take over his East Hampton guesthouse for the weekend with my boyfriend Christopher and as many friends as I liked so he wouldn’t have to be alone.
And his whole life was work. On Saturdays, when I was working in the city and he was in the Hamptons wondering what to do with himself, he’d call the gallery incessantly — over and over and over again — just to check in, five minutes, one minute, or even seconds after he last called. I almost always told him the same thing — that the gallery was quiet and not much was going on other than the usual visitors passing through. Sometimes he would call back so quickly, so manically, that he would get embarrassed and hang up just as I answered. He was a lot to handle.
Amanda Brooks – Always Pack A Party Dress (Refinery 29)
