February 16, 2022 • 48 mins
Art Fraud is investigative journey through one of the biggest cases of art fraud in US history done by The Knoedler Gallery written by VANITY REPORTER Michael Shnayerson and hosted by Alec Baldwin. The Knoedler Gallery first opened its doors in 1846 in New York City. The gallery sold works of unparalleled quality. But who was Knoedler? And how did the venerable gallery get its start? In this episode we meet Ann Freedman who finds success in the art world, but not without controversy. Listen to Art Fraud on the iHeartRadio app or wherever you get your podcasts.
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
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Some restrictions apply. When you go into a gallery, you
go into a museum, and you look at a painting,
you don't know what the story is behind the painting.
It's like seeing somebody in the street who's an old man.
(01:26):
You don't know all the adventures he's had, and all
the marriages he's had, and all the divorces he's had.
My name is Aaron Richard Gollub. I'm an attorney licensed
to practice law in the state of New York, and
my concentration is art world issues. I had a case
years ago involving a portrait of Coloma Picasso by Picasso,
(01:49):
and there were two precisely the same portraits of Picasso's daughter,
one owned by a dealer in Spain and one owned
by a collector in Switzerland. They were idea entacle. Claude
Picasso came over to the gallery and unpacked the painting
that Cogozian was about to show in a Picasso show,
(02:09):
and Claude said, well, the nails are rusted that attacked
the canvas to the stretcher on this painting, and on
the other painting the nails are not rusted, and that
was his basis of saying that one picture was a
counterfeit and the other picture was not. I don't think
that's a basis to determine authenticity. Authenticity can fall under
the general rubric of fraud, but authenticity is a world
(02:34):
in and of itself where painting has been counterfeited. Somebody
has made a painting and claims it's by a certain
artist in that style of the artist, and in fact
that artist never made that painting. Now if somebody sells
you that painting and claims that that painting is by
a Matisse or it's by Warhole, and it's not, that's fraud,
(02:58):
but it's actually really counterfeit. It is what you're going
to have to prove. People are always fooling everybody in
the art world. It's a place where that game is
played by everybody. And Friedman would never have imagined growing
up to be the most notorious dealer of the New
York art market. She might have been an art professor, perhaps,
(03:21):
but as her career blossomed and she came to see
just how good she was at selling art, being a
dealer suited her quite well, and not just a run
of the mill dealer to be sure, but one of distinction,
helping artists and collectors she loved. She was born and
Louise Fertig in the early nineteen fifties in Scarsdale, a
(03:44):
wealthy bedroom community north of New York City. Her father
was a vice president of a commercial real estate company
called Williams and Company, perhaps not by chance, and would
marry a commercial real estate executive herself, Robert Lawrence Freedman
real Men and told one of her staffers worked in commercial,
(04:06):
not residential real estate. Two people in Anne Friedman's life
would play an instrumental role in inspiring her art career.
The first was her mother, Hilda Fertig, who first brought
Anne to New York City's art museums as a child.
The other was H. W. Jansen, the legendary author of
(04:28):
the History of Art, the standard text for millions of
students around the world. Jansen was a Russian emigre. Through
the nineteen forties, he taught at Washington University in St.
Louis and helped expand the breadth of these school's art collection.
He left a legacy for generations of students to admire,
(04:50):
though not without controversy. Not a single female artist was
described in his epic tone. Anne Freedman would become one
of those captivated new students upon her own arrival at
Washington University in the late nineteen sixties, earning a Bachelor
of Fine Arts degree in the summer of nineteen seventy one.
(05:13):
When Anne graduated, finding gainful employment wasn't easy. New York
was on the verge of a nasty recession. Somehow, Anne
managed to reach Robert Miller, a senior director of the
American Gallery on fifty seventh Street, and talked him into
granting her a job interview. Whatever she said at the meeting,
it worked. Friedman began working as a receptionist at the
(05:37):
Emeric and immersed herself in the color field painters for
which it was known abstract expressionists of a softer school
like Maurice Lewis and Helen Frankenthaler, with their broad washes
of color, as opposed to the bold, almost brutal strokes
of the action painters like Jackson Pollock and William Dacooning.
(05:58):
Here's writer Michael shne Yerson, and starting salary was five
thousand dollars a year or a hundred dollars a week.
It was typical pay for newcomers in the world where
wealthy parents who were expected to do their part. Eager
and perhaps somewhat desperate and began overstepping her lowly tasks
and started actually selling art. And she was successful, so
(06:21):
much so that her boss was thunderstruck. As Anne said
herself in one of my interviews with her for Vanity Fair,
she said, Andre started seeing more and more invoices on
his desk than he ever could have imagined. There was
a sense of some disbelief, if not resentment. No one
paved the way for me to sell, but I sought
out the opportunity and I never looked back. Her personal
(06:46):
life was bossoming as well. Anne would marry her fiancee,
Robert Friedman, on Christmas Day. A Long Island Rabbi Jack
Stern performed the ceremony at Manhattan's Regency Hotel. Anne and
Robert would have a daughter, Jessica, and moved to an
apartment on East Street, where they still live. Despite her
(07:10):
early successes both personally and professionally, it would be fair
to say that Anne wasn't embraced by her colleagues at
the Emeric Gallery. She glowed with ambition and showed little
interest in making new friends. Rumor had it that one
of Anne's colleagues threw a typewriter at her. Another time,
(07:32):
the owner of the gallery, andre Emrick, returned to New
York from a trip to London with little gifts for
his staffers. Emeric announced that his gift to Anne was
a Rose Royce. Supposedly, she raced to the window to
see if there was a real one parked on the street.
Those were the kinds of expectations she had, The staffer said,
(07:52):
it was, of course a little toy. She was very ambitious.
People at the gallery hated her. Emeric widow, Suzanne, said
the galleries registrar once wrote to owner andre Emrick about
Anne and how she behaved when he was gone. She
was vicious, the registrar fumed. While Anne was rising at Emeric,
(08:18):
another young ambitious staffer was a step ahead of her
at the Knoedler Gallery. Leslie Feeley came to Ndler in
one with the legendary dealer Larry Ruben when the armand
hammer era of Ndler ownership began. By this time, the
Knodler was no longer the most venerable gallery in New
(08:40):
York those days, were long gone. By one the gallery
had slumped to a third rate institution, with artists like
Leroy Nieman, who was most well known for depicting bright,
splashy sports scenes with crowd pleasing speed. The longtime dealer
Richard Fagen famously said that armand Hammer bought a cadaver
(09:02):
when he bought the Knodler. As Leslie Feely recalled, the
Knoedler had no contemporary art at that point in the
early nineteen seventies. I never thought of Nodler. I don't
think it was active. Armand Hammer needed a dealer who
could help bring prestige and clients back to Knoedler. In
(09:23):
Larry Reuben. He'd found his man. Starting with the brilliant
Frank Stella and Kenneth Noland. Reuben was proving his value
to Nodler and armand Hammer right away. He also brought
in Richard Debencorne, the great abstract landscape painter. That's why
he signed up Larry. For the artists, Leslie Feely and
(09:45):
Larry came in together. That's Joe Stevens. Joe was the
Nodler's art handler. My main job was I was the
shipping manager and the head preparator of all the artwork
and hanging shows. Leslie was Larry's partner assistant. She was
on a higher level. She sold at work. Leslie worked
(10:08):
at Adler for nearly half a decade until she left
abruptly in n As. Leslie said armand Hammer didn't keep
his word with her. He'd offered up her compensation for
artwork sold. She said yes on a Friday. On Monday
he came back and said, I'm sorry, I can't give
you that deal. With that, Leslie left to become an
independent dealer on her own. I opened to gallery when
(10:32):
Frank Gary built gallery for me. I mean he was
my architect. He's terrivic friend. I think, a great architect.
And it was a very beautiful gallery on sixty eight
and Madison. That was when Anne became Larry Rubin's right hand,
taking Leslie's place, and then Ann Freedman came in and
(10:54):
the changes were happening. She was the receptionist, very knowledgeable woman.
You know, she knew her stuff and she had that
I always called it the gifted gap. She was incredible talker.
What change did you observe? Well, she didn't move up,
you know, she went move right up, she get out,
(11:15):
and she wand up at getting her own office. Since
she started selling artwork, often vying for paintings with her
from outside the gallery, Leslie would come to know an
Freedman style of business all too well. Almost from the beginning,
it sounds like you've got a sense of this woman
not only as abrasive and difficult and unpleasant, but someone
(11:38):
who was, you know, willing to do anything to make
a profit. Absolutely, it was in the fall of nineteen
seventy seven when Leslie left the Notler, with an eager
and Friedman stepping in to take her place. After her departure,
Leslie's dealings with Larry Reuben on works by the artist
(11:59):
which are deep in corn came from outside the gallery.
The work was beautiful, anyone could see that, but the
heat of deep in Corns market was also due to
the way he worked. He would produce a dozens of
ocean park paintings and drawings, then send them in one
great clump to Knoedler dealer. Larry Reuben would earmark new
(12:22):
paintings for his favorite clients, many of them dealers themselves.
Leslie Feely was lucky enough to be on that list
to Anne's intense irritation. There was nothing she could do
to keep Larry from allocating a Deep in Corn to
Leslie when one of those batches of new work came in.
I think I bought a Deep and Corn in every
(12:43):
Deep in Corn show. I was still friendly with Larry,
which was good, and I was friendly with the deepon Corns,
and I loved his work, and it was so exciting
for me to buy one. One staffer at Ndler said
that opening those Deep in Corn and shipments was like
opening presents on Christmas morning. The paintings would be all
(13:05):
lined up. These were the days when an ocean park
crossed maybe eighteen to dollars. Larry would let Ann Friedman
have first pick. The staffer later said to Larry, why
let Anne have first choice? Because Ruben said, with a laugh,
I know she'll pick the worst one. Would she be
(13:26):
buying Deep in Corns as well? Well? She must have.
I don't think she had a particularly good relationship with
the artist, or the wife or the children. Who were
you know who ended up managing these days soon enough,
to the shock of the gallery staff, and acquired the
(13:47):
title of head of Contemporary Art Sales. She felt she'd
paid her dues as the front receptionist and demanded a
position of greater distinction. The title was quite a leap, perhaps,
but her sales skills were being noticed. She was known
as the rainmaker. That's artist Michael David. Michael came to
(14:08):
Ndler as a client of the gallery in a collector
introduced my work to end and then and and Larry
came to the studio. There was this desire to find
young artists at that point, and I think that Larry
liked me, not so much for the work at that point,
but because of the way I spoke, in the speed
of my speaking reminds him of Frank Stella. I know
(14:30):
that there was a hierarchy of floors. You go past
that red velvet rope and then there'll be one floor,
and then it would be Ant's officer in Larry's office,
and Larry would focus more on the higher end blue
chip and Ann would do more of the volume selling.
That was my impression. Joe Stevens remembers what it was
(14:51):
like handling art for private meetings with Ann's clients. Atle
she had a huge supply of artwork in her office
was always painted and taken care of and you know
she had six French windows overlooking seventy Street. He had
a big, huge office. You know, she had a couch
in front of it, sat down with the clients. Very
(15:13):
convenient and well done. You know. It was always a
very clean and immaculate and we used to come up
and you know, you have the two people have to
pull out one of these big motherwells, you know, so
you know, put it right back and pull out at
all this It was kind of really cool to do
that because I'm listening to how what they're paying for
(15:34):
these things, and I'm going, you know, it was an
incredible a mans of money that these people paid for him.
Here's artist Michael David. Again. There was also a thing
that you know, there was always you know, we don't
sell work. We place work, and you know we'll always
take the work back. Was it true? Could you decide
(15:54):
you didn't like a stella and bring it back and
get your money back. I don't think that you get
your money back. I think they would make efforts to
sell it for you. Interestingly, in my Vanity Fair story,
Michael David had described Anne rather more sharply. He said
she wasn't someone you wanted to play poker with, or
someone you wanted to cross. She's a complicated person. She
(16:17):
was great at what she did. I never saw evidence
of her being unethical. She had an edge, she took
no prisoners, and she could be vindictive. I think for
her it was always about making it rain. I think
that was how she defined herself. That may have been
a fatal flaw that led her not to be as
mindful as she should have been. But at some point
(16:38):
after the Vanity Fair story appeared, Anne had taken Michael
David to lunch more than once and conveyed how hurt
she had been to be called vindictive, and so David's
portrait of her had softened over the years. For Noodler's artists,
like Michael David, art was never anything less than a business.
(16:59):
But how did the money change hands between the buyer,
the seller and the artist. That's after the break. What's up, guys?
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(17:20):
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(19:47):
or wherever you get your podcast. The financial arrangement between
Nodler and its artists seemed simple enough on the surface.
Everything was on paper before computers. Recalled one staffer, if
the price for a painting just sold was say one
hundred thousand dollars, then the standards split on painting sold
(20:09):
was fifty fifty fifty for the artist and fifty percent
for the gallery. But at Nadler there was a category
called report to Artists. Instead of being recorded as a
sale for one hundred thousand dollars, the report to artist
would show the sale as, say, ninety six thousand dollars.
(20:30):
When the fifty fifty split was made, the artist got
fifty percent of ninety six thousand dollars, not of one
hundred thousand dollars. It wasn't a big reduction for the artist.
In fact, it was so small that most of the
artists were probably perfectly happy pocketing their fifty of the
report to artists that they failed to question the galleries
(20:53):
accounting methods. The staffer a new arrival at the time,
questioned one or two book about the practice. To her,
it seemed unsavory, a red flag, as she put it,
but she felt if she pushed too far, she'd put
her job in jeopardy. Donald Sultan, one of the Knodler
(21:14):
galleries younger artists at the time, confirmed that Anne kept
two separate sets of books. Sultan said she told people
she sold an artwork for X, but she actually sold
it for X plus y. Either she or the gallery
kept the difference. Another delicate matter at Ndler was the
(21:36):
upstairs presence of an accountant, Dr. Maury Leebovitz, who ran
a much larger operation. He oversaw not just the Kndler,
but also the very commercial Hammer Gallery situated on Park Avenue,
just above Street, which the Hammer family had bought some
time before. He was a shadowy figure. The staffers set
(21:58):
of Maury You were not allowed to even mention his
presence because they didn't want anyone to know the two
galleries were run together. Why because while the Noodlers sold
art of impeccable quality to wealthy collectors, the Hammer Gallery
over on Park Avenue sold tacky artists like Leroy Nieman
with his highly commercial sports scenes to Larry, Reuben and
(22:23):
the rest of Knoedler, Niemen was an embarrassment. In spite
of this, Niemen was the biggest earner for the two
galleries combined, and his profits helped prop up the galleries
bottom line. There was nothing illegal about this, It was
just a way of disguising the galleries finances. The k
Nodler would disguise its finances later on too, in a
(22:45):
much different and very illegal way. By the nineteen eighties,
Anna had become a fixture at Knodler, selling far more
than anyone else at the gallery, and thus accruing more
power as she did it. One former staffer recalls Anne saying,
I could have sold catalogs, but I chose to sell art.
(23:07):
Perhaps she was being facetious, but to the staffer that
sort of rang true. When I used to go to
the Nolar Gallery, which I did every trip to New York,
to see Larry, perhaps to buy something, or you know,
just have Blanche whatever. Ann Friedman's office was not in office.
It was a desk in the showroom where they had
(23:30):
their paintings in racks. She would be right there. That's
John Burgruin, who San Francisco gallery remains a bastion of
the art business more than half a century since he
opened it on Grant Avenue, and Friedman was always, as
far as I'm concerned, controversial person, you know, I don't.
(23:51):
I often wondered how Larry dealt with her on a
day to day basis. What was striking about her presence,
the fact that factly she was even there in a way.
But what was her style? Well, she was aggressive. Another
former staffer took a slightly softer view. She was demanding,
but not totally unfair. She was like that type in
(24:12):
the devil Wares product That was Anne. He never felt
close to her, the staffer added, there's an almost masculine quality,
hard to read. She was tough and a lot of
people ended up not liking her. The note was a
long time manager and art handler, Joe Stephens, once stopped
at her desk in the late nineteen eighties after hours.
(24:34):
When she was gone, his eyes widened. There was Anne's
latest paycheck. I was juned and she was already made
seventies thousand dollars. It was June and she had already
made three seventy five for the year. So far, so far,
that's a lot of money in the late eighties. That's
(24:54):
what I found out. These were the go go years
in the contemporary art market. Dealers like Leo Castelli and
Mary Boone were selling big, bold canvases of artists like
Julian Schnabel and Eric Fischel, along with David Sally and
Ross Bleckner. Abstract art was out along with minimalist art.
(25:18):
Figurative art was back in with a vengeance. The Knoedler
wasn't quite at the heart of all this. Once again,
it was selling the art no longer quite of its
day under Larry Reuben. However, it did well enough when
(25:39):
Larry was the head of the gallery. Were we weren't
in trouble for money? It was? It was a name
armand Hammer died in nineteen ninety, leaving his grandson Michael
as chairman of Knoedler as well as head of the
Tacky Hammer Gallery on Park Avenue. Michael Hammer was an
elusive are known mostly for his born again evangelical zeal,
(26:04):
his deep affinity for tanning machines, and later for his
two dozen or so vintage automobiles. But he was smart
enough to let Larry Reuben keep running the Notler Gallery,
and though the whole art market suffered a major recession
in the early nineteen nineties, with the galleries closing right
and left, Nler survived due in combination to the revenues
(26:28):
from the Hammer Gallery and blue chip artists who stayed
loyal to Larry Reuben. What Michael Hammer failed to sense, however,
was that Anne was no longer a docile salesperson for Nler.
She felt she was the one keeping the gallery afloat.
The major sales were hers, and yet the gallery wasn't
giving her the credit she felt she deserved. The more
(26:53):
underappreciated she felt, the more resentment she radiated. It was
about that time in the early nineties, said Larry Reuben
started planning his exit. I didn't understand him leaving the gallery,
but he missed Europe. He had a house in the
south of France, and then he had the house in Italy.
(27:14):
He wanted a semi retire. Joe Stevens recalls Larry's departure.
I knew something was wrong now. I didn't know if
it was because the galery was taken over by Michael
I couldn't figure it out. Reuben wanted a life of
(27:34):
European travel. Yet he still wanted to retain control of
the gallery. He would manage to do just that by
bringing in a successor, one who reported directly to him.
This was an expert in multiples named Donald Staff. Multiples
(27:55):
mean any art made in more than one copy. Usually
it's a numbered and signed edition. Lithographs are multiples, for example,
so were engravings, which were part of the origins of Nodler.
Back in the eighteen forties. Donald Staff had done multiples
for the great pop artist Roy Lichtenstein, and the two
had grown close. It was a good chance that Staff
(28:16):
might get Lichtenstein to join the Notar Gallery. Larry Ruben
thought he had talked Michael Hammer into adopting this plan.
Larry would direct the gallery from Italy, where he had
a country home, and Larry and Donald Staff would run
it together, and Friedman would be the hard driving salesperson.
(28:36):
I'm sure at that point she was saying, I'm making
all the sales. He's not doing anything. You don't need him,
You'll do just as many sales, which was probably true
in a sense. No, no, but she had no connections
to get Liechtenstein or Rauschenberg. The other guy had better
connections Donald Saft, Yeah, yeah, and so even though not
(28:58):
didn't yet have Ralchenberg or there was a hope of it,
whereas there was no hope if if Anne was the
head of the gallery she didn't know any of these artists.
I mean, what what sort of self delusion you've called it?
(29:18):
The news of Larry's retirement and Staff's imminent arrival in
the fall of infuriated Anne. Later she said she just
wanted to know what don sass Roll would be that
seemed to cause a problems and put it dryly to me,
she wanted more than that, She wanted to know why
she shouldn't be made director of the gallery after seventeen years,
(29:38):
when she was the one who sold the art and
shored up the company's bottom line Like a heat seeking
missile and shot into Michael Hammer's office on a mid
November day in and took him on directly. She could
do everything Ruben and saff could do, she pointed out
(29:59):
to have. She could cultivate new artists, organized their shows,
and run the business at the same time. She would
sell a lot more art than Reuben or Staff put together.
Why not let her run the gallery with Michael Hammer's help,
of course, and send the old men packing, and must
have been persuasive because Michael Hammer changed his mind on
(30:22):
the spot and gave her the job. He did that
even though Sav had just been formerly hired as co
director and was sent a letter detailing the terms of
his employment. According to Staff's lawyer, the letter was signed
by Staff and sent back to Ndler to be countersigned.
It was sitting in an inbox at the Knoedler when
(30:44):
Hammer changed his mind and seized it. Staff's lawyers accused
Hammer of preaching an oral agreement, but the charge went nowhere.
There would be no more talk of Sav and Reuben
as co directors. There would be just one direct her
and Friedman. We'll be back in a minute. And we're
(31:11):
live here outside the Perez family home, just waiting for
the And there they go, almost on time. This morning,
Mom is coming out the front door, strong with a
double arm kid carry. Looks like Dad has the bags
daughter he's bringing up the rear. Oh but the diaper
bag wasn't closed. Diapers and toys are everywhere. Oh but
(31:32):
mom has just nailed the perfect car seat buckle for
the toddler. And now the eldest daughter, who looks to
be about nine or ten, has secured herself in the
booster seat. Dad zips the bag clothes and they're off,
but looks like Mom doesn't realize her coffee cup is
still on the roof of the car and there it goes. Ah,
(31:52):
that's a shame that mug was a fan favorite. Don't
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(32:15):
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(33:19):
no is royalty, not despair. Beat out here and every
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It's a rugged, ratchet, realistic look at history. Listen, so
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(33:40):
just wherever you get your podcast from. Ann's new title
seemed to assure her great success, but Leslie Feeley since
the story would turn out badly if only because of
Anne's temperament. She was not a people person. She would
try to you know, sway people gush over people, but
(34:03):
a lot of people didn't go for her. One collecting
couple who resisted her charms was the Mayer Hoffs. Wonderful,
fabulous collect According to one person in Baltimore, they would
have nothing to do with Anne. A lot of people
had that reaction, like me, yea, whether collectors or dealers
anything so interesting that she should alienated them all and
(34:28):
yet still get this job. So thanks to Michael Hammer,
I guess right. So the amazing thing to me about
this story at this point is that you know, Anne
gets her wish, and be careful what you wish for,
because now there's no one to guide her and to
keep her from making truly calamitous decisions. Making a calamitous
(34:54):
I don't I think she wanted to make more money
so she didn't care how she did it. I mean,
don't you think it was in her blood? She wasn't
making enough money to carry the gallery And now that
she had gotten this job and this power, and pushed
aside any chance of these other artists coming in also
(35:18):
having artists leave because of her. Stephen Corn gone, wow,
when did that happen? I think redwayd I think she
was pushed out of Stephen Corn right away because they
never liked her. Joe Stevens got an earful of Larry
(35:40):
Reuben's fury as Stevens drove Larry across town that day.
We're coming back from Frank Stella's studio and you got
a call. It might have been a treasury spoke to
me and he goes, dad fucking and now he's boiling
stick kill up. He says, what the are you fucking
(36:04):
fitting me? And he just rent and raved. So he says,
I says, Larry, what's going on? You know? He says
that bitch, and but he didn't get into it. He
just says that you'll you'll hear about it soon enough.
So I had said to him, Mrs Larry, do I
(36:24):
have to get another job? He says, I don't know, Joe.
He says things are happening right now. I don't know.
He didn't specified like say, if you get along with
and you'll be around for a while, you know. But
he was absolutely furious, and within a month he was
(36:45):
gone and had seized power in the last ticking moments
she had while that letter from Donald Save lay in
Mike Hammer's inbox. With that move, she changed the course
of her life and ultimately the Knodler Galleries too, But
(37:08):
it came with a drawback. The problem was that the
art market of the early to mid nine nineties was
terrible like all her rivals, and needed top quality art
to sell. It wasn't so easy to find, especially for
a dealer who lacked a lifetime of friendships with famous artists.
(37:31):
Anne's predicament was actually worse than it seemed. Her harsh
personality and the swiftness with which she had grabbed her
prize had alienated many of the galleries living artists, along
with the estates that represented deceased ones. The Adolph Gottlieb
Foundation was alarmed, so was the David Smith Foundation, the
(37:53):
Robert Motherwell Foundation, and the Richard Deepencorn Foundation. Upon Anne's coup,
they all left the gallery. Joe Stevens recalls Anne's rise
to leadership with mixed feelings. She became an officer of
the company. You know, she became like a vice president,
(38:13):
so she changed. She had authority to me, she just
became bitchy because she knew who she was. She sold
a lot of artwork. She was a big time salesperson.
I had really good working with her in the very beginning,
and then she became the boss. She never really said
(38:34):
nothing much to me in the beginning because she knew
I knew my job I do. I took care of everything.
I took care of everything that had to be taken
care of. I was the top sergeant in that place,
and it's in physical I took care of it, the
building everything. If a window cracked, I had have it fixed,
the air conditioning. I did it all. But my main
job was I was the shipping manager and the head
(38:57):
preparative of all the artwork. I don't care if you'd
the precedent to company. I deserve respect. I take care
of this whole gallery from the minute it opens to
the minute it closes, and I handle all the art work,
every bit of it. In that capacity, there was a
(39:22):
lot that Joe would see as the gallery began to
sink and money became an issue. Even as Anne began
wielding her new power. As noted as director, sales were plummeting,
and aggressive and ruthless tactics had pushed away the gallery's
best clients and the staff were turning against her, and
(39:43):
Friedman was now totally on her own to decide which
artists to promote and sell. Her standards became the galleries standards.
Her eagerness to close these deals conveyed a clear message, sell, sell, sell,
no matter what. This guy, I think his name was
Buddy Yorkin, he used to be a directive of like Bewitched.
(40:06):
He bought this Pollock. Now, if you remember Michael's you
go back when Cardier was sending out empty packages so
people don't have to pay taxes. Absolutely. Okay, here's the
scam that Joe is referring to. In five Cardier, the
world famous jewelry brand, was helping its customers evade sales tax.
(40:27):
At the time, those taxes in New York City were
eight point to five. Out of state buyers were exempt
from those taxes. So the scam was when a customer
came in and purchased an expensive item, Cardier would ship
an empty box to a bogus address and the customer
would walk out of the store with their merchandise, and
(40:47):
it worked for a while. Time Magazine reported in April
five that at least two hundred and sixty thousand dollars
in taxes when unpaid on a hundred and twenty five
sales over three years. Similar scams at the time were
estimated to have cost New York State and local governments
more than a hundred million and tax revenue annually. Well,
(41:11):
this guy here had to go and delivered his painting
to Kauai, Hawaii. I did. I jumped on a plane
in North flew nonstopped to Hunold, got in another plane
and flew to Kauai and delivered. It took me seventeen hours,
seven million dollars. You know why because she say four
(41:33):
thousand dollars in taxes by me delivering It was your
sense that that was common place at er No. I
did it once, and I said I'll never do it again.
In the aftermath of Larry Reuben's departure, the changes at
Knodler were profound, with the gallery still struggling through tough times,
(41:57):
and became more demanding and sharp tongue, even imperious. Even
Michael Hammer, the gallery's owner seemed to defer to Anne
more often than not. Anne was always screaming at everybody.
One staffer recalled, always screaming for himI Andratti, her assistant.
If she didn't have the right pen, she would call
(42:18):
to himaid to get her more. Anne's personal assistance came
and went in dizzying succession. If you unwrapped her sandwich,
she wouldn't eat it, says one former assistant. If you
answered the phone in the wrong way, she would pounce
on you. One woman was fired after three days for
having too strong an Eastern European accent, a staffer recalled.
(42:42):
Another lasted two weeks for being too young and inexperienced.
So the next assistant they hired was older, in her forties.
She was fired after a few months because Anne seemed
threatened by her. One staffer recalled that she and her
colleagues kept a list of all the assistants who came
and went during the years she was there. As she said,
(43:06):
if you made it past the hazing rituals, you became
part of this dysfunctional family. The most memorable of that
long line of the demoralized was a fragile Southerner straight
out of a Tennessee Williams play and would call her
five or six times a day. One Stafford recalled, they
(43:26):
would be crying and screaming, and Friedman's Nodler gallery was
in free fall. Help would come not long after Anne's
ascension at a Soho art gallery opening, surprisingly in the
form of a demure Mexican art dealer in her mid
(43:47):
forties named La Rosalis. Anne had never met Rosales, and
upon learning that she had something to do with the
gallery and Great Neck Long Island, she might have given
the woman a pain to smile and moved on. But
Rosalves had sailed up to Anne on the arm of
(44:09):
the Noodler's own himI Andrade, and so Anne was intrigued.
From such a casual meeting, the whole art market would
be seismically altered, leaving the Knodler itself devastated and ultimately doomed.
Depending on who you asked him, Andrade was either a
(44:30):
long trusted employee of the gallery, harmless and endearing, or
an agent provocateur who saw a way to put Ann
Freedman together with Gia Rosalees, ensuring that all three of
them would profit from their endeavors. Oh please that's not
a connection. I mean, that's just trying to push the
guilt onto this poor, uneducated sweet man. It has nothing
(44:55):
to do with I mean, Anne would say that, of course,
but I take your point. I mean, as as she
was just just naming someone else besides her. Okay, he
introduced her. So what she made the judgment? She that's right,
She just nothing else. I mean it was totally her call.
(45:19):
Next time on art Fraud, she swears that she didn't know,
which seems hard to believe. Should she have known? Yeah,
I believe from the beginning she knew these were fakes.
They had no provenances. She made up provenances. Every Day,
(45:42):
Art Fraud is brought to you by I Heart Radio
and Cavalry Audio. Our executive producers are Matt del Piano,
Keegan Rosenberger, myself, and Michael Shnayerson. We're produced by Brandon
Morgan and Zach McNeice. Zach also edited and mixed this episode.
Lindsay Huffman is our managing producer. Our writer is Michael Shnayerson.
(46:36):
The Gangster Chronicles podcast is a weekly conversation that involves
around the underworld the criminals and entertainers to victims crime
and law enforcement. We cover all facets of the game.
Gainst the Chronicles podcast doesn't glorify promotilised activities. We just
discussed the ramifications and repercussions of these activities. Because after Wall,
if you played gamester games, you are ultimately rewarded with
(46:57):
Gagster prizes. Our heart ready you dosmember one for podcasts,
but don't take our word for it. Find against the
Chronicles podcast, my Heart radio app or wherever you get
your podcast. Give us silver attention. We need everything you've
got Fast Waiting on Reparations. We beat the podcast two
it in every Thursday politics and wordplay. We fight for
(47:18):
the people because they got us in the worst way,
from the Hill Cooper, the Bombay to Kunta, from the
left on Clay to what the neo kan said every conversation.
And to break us off with some break because we're waiting.
Listen to Waiting on Reparations and I Heart radio app,
Apple podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts. The Black
(47:40):
Effect presents I didn't know, maybe you didn't either, but
the history of black people ain't rooted in slavery. Oh no,
it's royalty, not despair. Beat out here and every day.
In February, I will give you a Black history fact
that I didn't know and maybe you didn't either. It's
a rugged, ratchet, real baistic look at history. Listen so
(48:02):
I didn't know, maybe you didn't either. On the Black
Effect Podcast Network, our Heart Radio app, Apple Podcast, or
just wherever you get your podcasts from.
The more we learn about COVID nineteen, the more questions
and worries we have. Cal Hope can help with free
COVID nineteen emotional support. Call eight three three three one
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the more questions we have. The biggest question now, what's next?
What will COVID bring in six months a year? If
you're feeling anxious about the future, You're not alone. Cal
Hope offers free COVID nineteen emotional support. Call eight three
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chat at cal hope dot org today. Advertising is online
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Some restrictions apply. When you go into a gallery, you
go into a museum, and you look at a painting,
you don't know what the story is behind the painting.
It's like seeing somebody in the street who's an old man.
(01:26):
You don't know all the adventures he's had, and all
the marriages he's had, and all the divorces he's had.
My name is Aaron Richard Gollub. I'm an attorney licensed
to practice law in the state of New York, and
my concentration is art world issues. I had a case
years ago involving a portrait of Coloma Picasso by Picasso,
(01:49):
and there were two precisely the same portraits of Picasso's daughter,
one owned by a dealer in Spain and one owned
by a collector in Switzerland. They were idea entacle. Claude
Picasso came over to the gallery and unpacked the painting
that Cogozian was about to show in a Picasso show,
(02:09):
and Claude said, well, the nails are rusted that attacked
the canvas to the stretcher on this painting, and on
the other painting the nails are not rusted, and that
was his basis of saying that one picture was a
counterfeit and the other picture was not. I don't think
that's a basis to determine authenticity. Authenticity can fall under
the general rubric of fraud, but authenticity is a world
(02:34):
in and of itself where painting has been counterfeited. Somebody
has made a painting and claims it's by a certain
artist in that style of the artist, and in fact
that artist never made that painting. Now if somebody sells
you that painting and claims that that painting is by
a Matisse or it's by Warhole, and it's not, that's fraud,
(02:58):
but it's actually really counterfeit. It is what you're going
to have to prove. People are always fooling everybody in
the art world. It's a place where that game is
played by everybody. And Friedman would never have imagined growing
up to be the most notorious dealer of the New
York art market. She might have been an art professor, perhaps,
(03:21):
but as her career blossomed and she came to see
just how good she was at selling art, being a
dealer suited her quite well, and not just a run
of the mill dealer to be sure, but one of distinction,
helping artists and collectors she loved. She was born and
Louise Fertig in the early nineteen fifties in Scarsdale, a
(03:44):
wealthy bedroom community north of New York City. Her father
was a vice president of a commercial real estate company
called Williams and Company, perhaps not by chance, and would
marry a commercial real estate executive herself, Robert Lawrence Freedman
real Men and told one of her staffers worked in commercial,
(04:06):
not residential real estate. Two people in Anne Friedman's life
would play an instrumental role in inspiring her art career.
The first was her mother, Hilda Fertig, who first brought
Anne to New York City's art museums as a child.
The other was H. W. Jansen, the legendary author of
(04:28):
the History of Art, the standard text for millions of
students around the world. Jansen was a Russian emigre. Through
the nineteen forties, he taught at Washington University in St.
Louis and helped expand the breadth of these school's art collection.
He left a legacy for generations of students to admire,
(04:50):
though not without controversy. Not a single female artist was
described in his epic tone. Anne Freedman would become one
of those captivated new students upon her own arrival at
Washington University in the late nineteen sixties, earning a Bachelor
of Fine Arts degree in the summer of nineteen seventy one.
(05:13):
When Anne graduated, finding gainful employment wasn't easy. New York
was on the verge of a nasty recession. Somehow, Anne
managed to reach Robert Miller, a senior director of the
American Gallery on fifty seventh Street, and talked him into
granting her a job interview. Whatever she said at the meeting,
it worked. Friedman began working as a receptionist at the
(05:37):
Emeric and immersed herself in the color field painters for
which it was known abstract expressionists of a softer school
like Maurice Lewis and Helen Frankenthaler, with their broad washes
of color, as opposed to the bold, almost brutal strokes
of the action painters like Jackson Pollock and William Dacooning.
(05:58):
Here's writer Michael shne Yerson, and starting salary was five
thousand dollars a year or a hundred dollars a week.
It was typical pay for newcomers in the world where
wealthy parents who were expected to do their part. Eager
and perhaps somewhat desperate and began overstepping her lowly tasks
and started actually selling art. And she was successful, so
(06:21):
much so that her boss was thunderstruck. As Anne said
herself in one of my interviews with her for Vanity Fair,
she said, Andre started seeing more and more invoices on
his desk than he ever could have imagined. There was
a sense of some disbelief, if not resentment. No one
paved the way for me to sell, but I sought
out the opportunity and I never looked back. Her personal
(06:46):
life was bossoming as well. Anne would marry her fiancee,
Robert Friedman, on Christmas Day. A Long Island Rabbi Jack
Stern performed the ceremony at Manhattan's Regency Hotel. Anne and
Robert would have a daughter, Jessica, and moved to an
apartment on East Street, where they still live. Despite her
(07:10):
early successes both personally and professionally, it would be fair
to say that Anne wasn't embraced by her colleagues at
the Emeric Gallery. She glowed with ambition and showed little
interest in making new friends. Rumor had it that one
of Anne's colleagues threw a typewriter at her. Another time,
(07:32):
the owner of the gallery, andre Emrick, returned to New
York from a trip to London with little gifts for
his staffers. Emeric announced that his gift to Anne was
a Rose Royce. Supposedly, she raced to the window to
see if there was a real one parked on the street.
Those were the kinds of expectations she had, The staffer said,
(07:52):
it was, of course a little toy. She was very ambitious.
People at the gallery hated her. Emeric widow, Suzanne, said
the galleries registrar once wrote to owner andre Emrick about
Anne and how she behaved when he was gone. She
was vicious, the registrar fumed. While Anne was rising at Emeric,
(08:18):
another young ambitious staffer was a step ahead of her
at the Knoedler Gallery. Leslie Feeley came to Ndler in
one with the legendary dealer Larry Ruben when the armand
hammer era of Ndler ownership began. By this time, the
Knodler was no longer the most venerable gallery in New
(08:40):
York those days, were long gone. By one the gallery
had slumped to a third rate institution, with artists like
Leroy Nieman, who was most well known for depicting bright,
splashy sports scenes with crowd pleasing speed. The longtime dealer
Richard Fagen famously said that armand Hammer bought a cadaver
(09:02):
when he bought the Knodler. As Leslie Feely recalled, the
Knoedler had no contemporary art at that point in the
early nineteen seventies. I never thought of Nodler. I don't
think it was active. Armand Hammer needed a dealer who
could help bring prestige and clients back to Knoedler. In
(09:23):
Larry Reuben. He'd found his man. Starting with the brilliant
Frank Stella and Kenneth Noland. Reuben was proving his value
to Nodler and armand Hammer right away. He also brought
in Richard Debencorne, the great abstract landscape painter. That's why
he signed up Larry. For the artists, Leslie Feely and
(09:45):
Larry came in together. That's Joe Stevens. Joe was the
Nodler's art handler. My main job was I was the
shipping manager and the head preparator of all the artwork
and hanging shows. Leslie was Larry's partner assistant. She was
on a higher level. She sold at work. Leslie worked
(10:08):
at Adler for nearly half a decade until she left
abruptly in n As. Leslie said armand Hammer didn't keep
his word with her. He'd offered up her compensation for
artwork sold. She said yes on a Friday. On Monday
he came back and said, I'm sorry, I can't give
you that deal. With that, Leslie left to become an
independent dealer on her own. I opened to gallery when
(10:32):
Frank Gary built gallery for me. I mean he was
my architect. He's terrivic friend. I think, a great architect.
And it was a very beautiful gallery on sixty eight
and Madison. That was when Anne became Larry Rubin's right hand,
taking Leslie's place, and then Ann Freedman came in and
(10:54):
the changes were happening. She was the receptionist, very knowledgeable woman.
You know, she knew her stuff and she had that
I always called it the gifted gap. She was incredible talker.
What change did you observe? Well, she didn't move up,
you know, she went move right up, she get out,
(11:15):
and she wand up at getting her own office. Since
she started selling artwork, often vying for paintings with her
from outside the gallery, Leslie would come to know an
Freedman style of business all too well. Almost from the beginning,
it sounds like you've got a sense of this woman
not only as abrasive and difficult and unpleasant, but someone
(11:38):
who was, you know, willing to do anything to make
a profit. Absolutely, it was in the fall of nineteen
seventy seven when Leslie left the Notler, with an eager
and Friedman stepping in to take her place. After her departure,
Leslie's dealings with Larry Reuben on works by the artist
(11:59):
which are deep in corn came from outside the gallery.
The work was beautiful, anyone could see that, but the
heat of deep in Corns market was also due to
the way he worked. He would produce a dozens of
ocean park paintings and drawings, then send them in one
great clump to Knoedler dealer. Larry Reuben would earmark new
(12:22):
paintings for his favorite clients, many of them dealers themselves.
Leslie Feely was lucky enough to be on that list
to Anne's intense irritation. There was nothing she could do
to keep Larry from allocating a Deep in Corn to
Leslie when one of those batches of new work came in.
I think I bought a Deep and Corn in every
(12:43):
Deep in Corn show. I was still friendly with Larry,
which was good, and I was friendly with the deepon Corns,
and I loved his work, and it was so exciting
for me to buy one. One staffer at Ndler said
that opening those Deep in Corn and shipments was like
opening presents on Christmas morning. The paintings would be all
(13:05):
lined up. These were the days when an ocean park
crossed maybe eighteen to dollars. Larry would let Ann Friedman
have first pick. The staffer later said to Larry, why
let Anne have first choice? Because Ruben said, with a laugh,
I know she'll pick the worst one. Would she be
(13:26):
buying Deep in Corns as well? Well? She must have.
I don't think she had a particularly good relationship with
the artist, or the wife or the children. Who were
you know who ended up managing these days soon enough,
to the shock of the gallery staff, and acquired the
(13:47):
title of head of Contemporary Art Sales. She felt she'd
paid her dues as the front receptionist and demanded a
position of greater distinction. The title was quite a leap, perhaps,
but her sales skills were being noticed. She was known
as the rainmaker. That's artist Michael David. Michael came to
(14:08):
Ndler as a client of the gallery in a collector
introduced my work to end and then and and Larry
came to the studio. There was this desire to find
young artists at that point, and I think that Larry
liked me, not so much for the work at that point,
but because of the way I spoke, in the speed
of my speaking reminds him of Frank Stella. I know
(14:30):
that there was a hierarchy of floors. You go past
that red velvet rope and then there'll be one floor,
and then it would be Ant's officer in Larry's office,
and Larry would focus more on the higher end blue
chip and Ann would do more of the volume selling.
That was my impression. Joe Stevens remembers what it was
(14:51):
like handling art for private meetings with Ann's clients. Atle
she had a huge supply of artwork in her office
was always painted and taken care of and you know
she had six French windows overlooking seventy Street. He had
a big, huge office. You know, she had a couch
in front of it, sat down with the clients. Very
(15:13):
convenient and well done. You know. It was always a
very clean and immaculate and we used to come up
and you know, you have the two people have to
pull out one of these big motherwells, you know, so
you know, put it right back and pull out at
all this It was kind of really cool to do
that because I'm listening to how what they're paying for
(15:34):
these things, and I'm going, you know, it was an
incredible a mans of money that these people paid for him.
Here's artist Michael David. Again. There was also a thing
that you know, there was always you know, we don't
sell work. We place work, and you know we'll always
take the work back. Was it true? Could you decide
(15:54):
you didn't like a stella and bring it back and
get your money back. I don't think that you get
your money back. I think they would make efforts to
sell it for you. Interestingly, in my Vanity Fair story,
Michael David had described Anne rather more sharply. He said
she wasn't someone you wanted to play poker with, or
someone you wanted to cross. She's a complicated person. She
(16:17):
was great at what she did. I never saw evidence
of her being unethical. She had an edge, she took
no prisoners, and she could be vindictive. I think for
her it was always about making it rain. I think
that was how she defined herself. That may have been
a fatal flaw that led her not to be as
mindful as she should have been. But at some point
(16:38):
after the Vanity Fair story appeared, Anne had taken Michael
David to lunch more than once and conveyed how hurt
she had been to be called vindictive, and so David's
portrait of her had softened over the years. For Noodler's artists,
like Michael David, art was never anything less than a business.
(16:59):
But how did the money change hands between the buyer,
the seller and the artist. That's after the break. What's up, guys?
I'm a Shop Bloud and I am Troy Millions and
we are the host of the Earn Your Leisure podcast
where we break down business models and examine the latest
(17:20):
trends and finance. We hold court and have exclusive interviews
with some of the biggest names of business, sport, and
entertainment from DJ Khaled to Mark Cuban, Rick Ross, and
Shaquille O'Neil. I mean our alumni list is expansive. Listen
in as our guests reveal their business models, hardships and
triumphs and their respective fields. The knowledge is in death
and the questions are always delivered from your standpoint. We
want to know what you want to know. We talked
(17:40):
to the legends of business, sports, and entertainment about how
they got their start and most importantly, how they make
their money. Earn your Leisia is a college business class
mixed with pop culture. I want to learn about the
real estate game, unclears, how the stock market works. We
got you interested in starting a truck and company or
vendor machine business. Not really sure about how taxes or
credit work. We got it all covered. The Arnie Leisure
(18:01):
podcast is available now. Listen to Ernie Leisure on the
Black Effect podcast Network. I hear radio, app, Apple podcast
or wherever you get your podcasts. I'm Emilia on this podcast.
I'm taking you on a search, a search for love.
(18:23):
Hard working Latina seeks cool, down to earth guy. Swipe
swipe slide. It's hard out there. For a girl to
find Mr Wright, I have to meet a lot of
Mr Wrong's. He'd invite me over to have dinner with
his family. I knew he didn't tell them that it
was transgender. Dating as a trans woman can be complicated,
(18:44):
but there were other reasons. I felt like I couldn't
always beat myself. And he's asking me things about my family,
like my mom's in prison, my grandmother was arrested for
working with the Mexican drug cartel. This scrumbs my love story.
It's to show about the things we set up for
and the bits of ourselves that make us who we are.
(19:05):
Listen to Crumbs as part of the Michael la podcast network,
available on the I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or
wherever you get your podcasts. The Gangster Chronicles podcast is
a weekly conversation that revolves around the underworld and criminals
and entertainers to victims, crime and law enforcement. We cover
(19:26):
all facets of the game. Gainst Chronicles podcast doesn't glorify
promotilstit activities. We just discussed the ramifications and repercussions of
these activities. Because after all, she played gamester games. You
are ultimately rewarded with Gangster prizes our Heart Radios number
one for podcasts, but don't take our award for it.
Find Against the Chronicles podcast and I Heart Radio app
(19:47):
or wherever you get your podcast. The financial arrangement between
Nodler and its artists seemed simple enough on the surface.
Everything was on paper before computers. Recalled one staffer, if
the price for a painting just sold was say one
hundred thousand dollars, then the standards split on painting sold
(20:09):
was fifty fifty fifty for the artist and fifty percent
for the gallery. But at Nadler there was a category
called report to Artists. Instead of being recorded as a
sale for one hundred thousand dollars, the report to artist
would show the sale as, say, ninety six thousand dollars.
(20:30):
When the fifty fifty split was made, the artist got
fifty percent of ninety six thousand dollars, not of one
hundred thousand dollars. It wasn't a big reduction for the artist.
In fact, it was so small that most of the
artists were probably perfectly happy pocketing their fifty of the
report to artists that they failed to question the galleries
(20:53):
accounting methods. The staffer a new arrival at the time,
questioned one or two book about the practice. To her,
it seemed unsavory, a red flag, as she put it,
but she felt if she pushed too far, she'd put
her job in jeopardy. Donald Sultan, one of the Knodler
(21:14):
galleries younger artists at the time, confirmed that Anne kept
two separate sets of books. Sultan said she told people
she sold an artwork for X, but she actually sold
it for X plus y. Either she or the gallery
kept the difference. Another delicate matter at Ndler was the
(21:36):
upstairs presence of an accountant, Dr. Maury Leebovitz, who ran
a much larger operation. He oversaw not just the Kndler,
but also the very commercial Hammer Gallery situated on Park Avenue,
just above Street, which the Hammer family had bought some
time before. He was a shadowy figure. The staffers set
(21:58):
of Maury You were not allowed to even mention his
presence because they didn't want anyone to know the two
galleries were run together. Why because while the Noodlers sold
art of impeccable quality to wealthy collectors, the Hammer Gallery
over on Park Avenue sold tacky artists like Leroy Nieman
with his highly commercial sports scenes to Larry, Reuben and
(22:23):
the rest of Knoedler, Niemen was an embarrassment. In spite
of this, Niemen was the biggest earner for the two
galleries combined, and his profits helped prop up the galleries
bottom line. There was nothing illegal about this, It was
just a way of disguising the galleries finances. The k
Nodler would disguise its finances later on too, in a
(22:45):
much different and very illegal way. By the nineteen eighties,
Anna had become a fixture at Knodler, selling far more
than anyone else at the gallery, and thus accruing more
power as she did it. One former staffer recalls Anne saying,
I could have sold catalogs, but I chose to sell art.
(23:07):
Perhaps she was being facetious, but to the staffer that
sort of rang true. When I used to go to
the Nolar Gallery, which I did every trip to New York,
to see Larry, perhaps to buy something, or you know,
just have Blanche whatever. Ann Friedman's office was not in office.
It was a desk in the showroom where they had
(23:30):
their paintings in racks. She would be right there. That's
John Burgruin, who San Francisco gallery remains a bastion of
the art business more than half a century since he
opened it on Grant Avenue, and Friedman was always, as
far as I'm concerned, controversial person, you know, I don't.
(23:51):
I often wondered how Larry dealt with her on a
day to day basis. What was striking about her presence,
the fact that factly she was even there in a way.
But what was her style? Well, she was aggressive. Another
former staffer took a slightly softer view. She was demanding,
but not totally unfair. She was like that type in
(24:12):
the devil Wares product That was Anne. He never felt
close to her, the staffer added, there's an almost masculine quality,
hard to read. She was tough and a lot of
people ended up not liking her. The note was a
long time manager and art handler, Joe Stephens, once stopped
at her desk in the late nineteen eighties after hours.
(24:34):
When she was gone, his eyes widened. There was Anne's
latest paycheck. I was juned and she was already made
seventies thousand dollars. It was June and she had already
made three seventy five for the year. So far, so far,
that's a lot of money in the late eighties. That's
(24:54):
what I found out. These were the go go years
in the contemporary art market. Dealers like Leo Castelli and
Mary Boone were selling big, bold canvases of artists like
Julian Schnabel and Eric Fischel, along with David Sally and
Ross Bleckner. Abstract art was out along with minimalist art.
(25:18):
Figurative art was back in with a vengeance. The Knoedler
wasn't quite at the heart of all this. Once again,
it was selling the art no longer quite of its
day under Larry Reuben. However, it did well enough when
(25:39):
Larry was the head of the gallery. Were we weren't
in trouble for money? It was? It was a name
armand Hammer died in nineteen ninety, leaving his grandson Michael
as chairman of Knoedler as well as head of the
Tacky Hammer Gallery on Park Avenue. Michael Hammer was an
elusive are known mostly for his born again evangelical zeal,
(26:04):
his deep affinity for tanning machines, and later for his
two dozen or so vintage automobiles. But he was smart
enough to let Larry Reuben keep running the Notler Gallery,
and though the whole art market suffered a major recession
in the early nineteen nineties, with the galleries closing right
and left, Nler survived due in combination to the revenues
(26:28):
from the Hammer Gallery and blue chip artists who stayed
loyal to Larry Reuben. What Michael Hammer failed to sense, however,
was that Anne was no longer a docile salesperson for Nler.
She felt she was the one keeping the gallery afloat.
The major sales were hers, and yet the gallery wasn't
giving her the credit she felt she deserved. The more
(26:53):
underappreciated she felt, the more resentment she radiated. It was
about that time in the early nineties, said Larry Reuben
started planning his exit. I didn't understand him leaving the gallery,
but he missed Europe. He had a house in the
south of France, and then he had the house in Italy.
(27:14):
He wanted a semi retire. Joe Stevens recalls Larry's departure.
I knew something was wrong now. I didn't know if
it was because the galery was taken over by Michael
I couldn't figure it out. Reuben wanted a life of
(27:34):
European travel. Yet he still wanted to retain control of
the gallery. He would manage to do just that by
bringing in a successor, one who reported directly to him.
This was an expert in multiples named Donald Staff. Multiples
(27:55):
mean any art made in more than one copy. Usually
it's a numbered and signed edition. Lithographs are multiples, for example,
so were engravings, which were part of the origins of Nodler.
Back in the eighteen forties. Donald Staff had done multiples
for the great pop artist Roy Lichtenstein, and the two
had grown close. It was a good chance that Staff
(28:16):
might get Lichtenstein to join the Notar Gallery. Larry Ruben
thought he had talked Michael Hammer into adopting this plan.
Larry would direct the gallery from Italy, where he had
a country home, and Larry and Donald Staff would run
it together, and Friedman would be the hard driving salesperson.
(28:36):
I'm sure at that point she was saying, I'm making
all the sales. He's not doing anything. You don't need him,
You'll do just as many sales, which was probably true
in a sense. No, no, but she had no connections
to get Liechtenstein or Rauschenberg. The other guy had better
connections Donald Saft, Yeah, yeah, and so even though not
(28:58):
didn't yet have Ralchenberg or there was a hope of it,
whereas there was no hope if if Anne was the
head of the gallery she didn't know any of these artists.
I mean, what what sort of self delusion you've called it?
(29:18):
The news of Larry's retirement and Staff's imminent arrival in
the fall of infuriated Anne. Later she said she just
wanted to know what don sass Roll would be that
seemed to cause a problems and put it dryly to me,
she wanted more than that, She wanted to know why
she shouldn't be made director of the gallery after seventeen years,
(29:38):
when she was the one who sold the art and
shored up the company's bottom line Like a heat seeking
missile and shot into Michael Hammer's office on a mid
November day in and took him on directly. She could
do everything Ruben and saff could do, she pointed out
(29:59):
to have. She could cultivate new artists, organized their shows,
and run the business at the same time. She would
sell a lot more art than Reuben or Staff put together.
Why not let her run the gallery with Michael Hammer's help,
of course, and send the old men packing, and must
have been persuasive because Michael Hammer changed his mind on
(30:22):
the spot and gave her the job. He did that
even though Sav had just been formerly hired as co
director and was sent a letter detailing the terms of
his employment. According to Staff's lawyer, the letter was signed
by Staff and sent back to Ndler to be countersigned.
It was sitting in an inbox at the Knoedler when
(30:44):
Hammer changed his mind and seized it. Staff's lawyers accused
Hammer of preaching an oral agreement, but the charge went nowhere.
There would be no more talk of Sav and Reuben
as co directors. There would be just one direct her
and Friedman. We'll be back in a minute. And we're
(31:11):
live here outside the Perez family home, just waiting for
the And there they go, almost on time. This morning,
Mom is coming out the front door, strong with a
double arm kid carry. Looks like Dad has the bags
daughter he's bringing up the rear. Oh but the diaper
bag wasn't closed. Diapers and toys are everywhere. Oh but
(31:32):
mom has just nailed the perfect car seat buckle for
the toddler. And now the eldest daughter, who looks to
be about nine or ten, has secured herself in the
booster seat. Dad zips the bag clothes and they're off,
but looks like Mom doesn't realize her coffee cup is
still on the roof of the car and there it goes. Ah,
(31:52):
that's a shame that mug was a fan favorite. Don't
sweat the small stuff, just nailed the big stuff, like
making sure your kids are buckled correctly in the right
seat for their agent's eye. Learn more n h t
s A dot go Slash the Right Seat visits n
h s A dot gov Slash the Right Seat. Brought
to you by NITZA and the Ad Council. Hi, I'm
Arden Marine from Shameless and Statiable, Chelsea Lately and the
(32:15):
I Heart Radio podcast Will You Accept This Rose? And
I'm Julianne Robinson and Emmy and bafta nominated director most
recently of Bridgetain. And we are the hosts of Lady
of the Road, a funny and inspiring podcast where we
have conversations with influential women about their lives and we
get self help advice. We're always looking to improve ourselves
and we figure there's no better source for learning how
(32:36):
to be brave, take risks and advocate for yourself in
life than speaking with motivating, uplifting women. Some of them
we've met throughout our careers and some of them were
just meeting now. We talk about money, health, relationships, parenthood,
running a business you name it from inspiring women like
Joan Jet, Nicole Buyer, Lauren lobkis Htta, Ricky Lindholm, Kate mccouchee,
(32:58):
Kate Walsh, shondaland per You, Sir, Betsy bears Adu and
o Jen Kirkman and more. Listen and subscribe to Lady
of the Road on the I Heart Radio app Apple
podcasts over if would you get your podcasts? The Black
Effect presents I didn't know, maybe you didn't either, but
the history of black people ain't rooted in slavery. Oh,
(33:19):
no is royalty, not despair. Beat out here and every
day in February, I will give you a black history
fact that I didn't know, and maybe you didn't either.
It's a rugged, ratchet, realistic look at history. Listen, so
I didn't know, maybe you didn't either. On the Black
Effect podcast Network, our Heart Radio app, Apple podcast or
(33:40):
just wherever you get your podcast from. Ann's new title
seemed to assure her great success, but Leslie Feeley since
the story would turn out badly if only because of
Anne's temperament. She was not a people person. She would
try to you know, sway people gush over people, but
(34:03):
a lot of people didn't go for her. One collecting
couple who resisted her charms was the Mayer Hoffs. Wonderful,
fabulous collect According to one person in Baltimore, they would
have nothing to do with Anne. A lot of people
had that reaction, like me, yea, whether collectors or dealers
anything so interesting that she should alienated them all and
(34:28):
yet still get this job. So thanks to Michael Hammer,
I guess right. So the amazing thing to me about
this story at this point is that you know, Anne
gets her wish, and be careful what you wish for,
because now there's no one to guide her and to
keep her from making truly calamitous decisions. Making a calamitous
(34:54):
I don't I think she wanted to make more money
so she didn't care how she did it. I mean,
don't you think it was in her blood? She wasn't
making enough money to carry the gallery And now that
she had gotten this job and this power, and pushed
aside any chance of these other artists coming in also
(35:18):
having artists leave because of her. Stephen Corn gone, wow,
when did that happen? I think redwayd I think she
was pushed out of Stephen Corn right away because they
never liked her. Joe Stevens got an earful of Larry
(35:40):
Reuben's fury as Stevens drove Larry across town that day.
We're coming back from Frank Stella's studio and you got
a call. It might have been a treasury spoke to
me and he goes, dad fucking and now he's boiling
stick kill up. He says, what the are you fucking
(36:04):
fitting me? And he just rent and raved. So he says,
I says, Larry, what's going on? You know? He says
that bitch, and but he didn't get into it. He
just says that you'll you'll hear about it soon enough.
So I had said to him, Mrs Larry, do I
(36:24):
have to get another job? He says, I don't know, Joe.
He says things are happening right now. I don't know.
He didn't specified like say, if you get along with
and you'll be around for a while, you know. But
he was absolutely furious, and within a month he was
(36:45):
gone and had seized power in the last ticking moments
she had while that letter from Donald Save lay in
Mike Hammer's inbox. With that move, she changed the course
of her life and ultimately the Knodler Galleries too, But
(37:08):
it came with a drawback. The problem was that the
art market of the early to mid nine nineties was
terrible like all her rivals, and needed top quality art
to sell. It wasn't so easy to find, especially for
a dealer who lacked a lifetime of friendships with famous artists.
(37:31):
Anne's predicament was actually worse than it seemed. Her harsh
personality and the swiftness with which she had grabbed her
prize had alienated many of the galleries living artists, along
with the estates that represented deceased ones. The Adolph Gottlieb
Foundation was alarmed, so was the David Smith Foundation, the
(37:53):
Robert Motherwell Foundation, and the Richard Deepencorn Foundation. Upon Anne's coup,
they all left the gallery. Joe Stevens recalls Anne's rise
to leadership with mixed feelings. She became an officer of
the company. You know, she became like a vice president,
(38:13):
so she changed. She had authority to me, she just
became bitchy because she knew who she was. She sold
a lot of artwork. She was a big time salesperson.
I had really good working with her in the very beginning,
and then she became the boss. She never really said
(38:34):
nothing much to me in the beginning because she knew
I knew my job I do. I took care of everything.
I took care of everything that had to be taken
care of. I was the top sergeant in that place,
and it's in physical I took care of it, the
building everything. If a window cracked, I had have it fixed,
the air conditioning. I did it all. But my main
job was I was the shipping manager and the head
(38:57):
preparative of all the artwork. I don't care if you'd
the precedent to company. I deserve respect. I take care
of this whole gallery from the minute it opens to
the minute it closes, and I handle all the art work,
every bit of it. In that capacity, there was a
(39:22):
lot that Joe would see as the gallery began to
sink and money became an issue. Even as Anne began
wielding her new power. As noted as director, sales were plummeting,
and aggressive and ruthless tactics had pushed away the gallery's
best clients and the staff were turning against her, and
(39:43):
Friedman was now totally on her own to decide which
artists to promote and sell. Her standards became the galleries standards.
Her eagerness to close these deals conveyed a clear message, sell, sell, sell,
no matter what. This guy, I think his name was
Buddy Yorkin, he used to be a directive of like Bewitched.
(40:06):
He bought this Pollock. Now, if you remember Michael's you
go back when Cardier was sending out empty packages so
people don't have to pay taxes. Absolutely. Okay, here's the
scam that Joe is referring to. In five Cardier, the
world famous jewelry brand, was helping its customers evade sales tax.
(40:27):
At the time, those taxes in New York City were
eight point to five. Out of state buyers were exempt
from those taxes. So the scam was when a customer
came in and purchased an expensive item, Cardier would ship
an empty box to a bogus address and the customer
would walk out of the store with their merchandise, and
(40:47):
it worked for a while. Time Magazine reported in April
five that at least two hundred and sixty thousand dollars
in taxes when unpaid on a hundred and twenty five
sales over three years. Similar scams at the time were
estimated to have cost New York State and local governments
more than a hundred million and tax revenue annually. Well,
(41:11):
this guy here had to go and delivered his painting
to Kauai, Hawaii. I did. I jumped on a plane
in North flew nonstopped to Hunold, got in another plane
and flew to Kauai and delivered. It took me seventeen hours,
seven million dollars. You know why because she say four
(41:33):
thousand dollars in taxes by me delivering It was your
sense that that was common place at er No. I
did it once, and I said I'll never do it again.
In the aftermath of Larry Reuben's departure, the changes at
Knodler were profound, with the gallery still struggling through tough times,
(41:57):
and became more demanding and sharp tongue, even imperious. Even
Michael Hammer, the gallery's owner seemed to defer to Anne
more often than not. Anne was always screaming at everybody.
One staffer recalled, always screaming for himI Andratti, her assistant.
If she didn't have the right pen, she would call
(42:18):
to himaid to get her more. Anne's personal assistance came
and went in dizzying succession. If you unwrapped her sandwich,
she wouldn't eat it, says one former assistant. If you
answered the phone in the wrong way, she would pounce
on you. One woman was fired after three days for
having too strong an Eastern European accent, a staffer recalled.
(42:42):
Another lasted two weeks for being too young and inexperienced.
So the next assistant they hired was older, in her forties.
She was fired after a few months because Anne seemed
threatened by her. One staffer recalled that she and her
colleagues kept a list of all the assistants who came
and went during the years she was there. As she said,
(43:06):
if you made it past the hazing rituals, you became
part of this dysfunctional family. The most memorable of that
long line of the demoralized was a fragile Southerner straight
out of a Tennessee Williams play and would call her
five or six times a day. One Stafford recalled, they
(43:26):
would be crying and screaming, and Friedman's Nodler gallery was
in free fall. Help would come not long after Anne's
ascension at a Soho art gallery opening, surprisingly in the
form of a demure Mexican art dealer in her mid
(43:47):
forties named La Rosalis. Anne had never met Rosales, and
upon learning that she had something to do with the
gallery and Great Neck Long Island, she might have given
the woman a pain to smile and moved on. But
Rosalves had sailed up to Anne on the arm of
(44:09):
the Noodler's own himI Andrade, and so Anne was intrigued.
From such a casual meeting, the whole art market would
be seismically altered, leaving the Knodler itself devastated and ultimately doomed.
Depending on who you asked him, Andrade was either a
(44:30):
long trusted employee of the gallery, harmless and endearing, or
an agent provocateur who saw a way to put Ann
Freedman together with Gia Rosalees, ensuring that all three of
them would profit from their endeavors. Oh please that's not
a connection. I mean, that's just trying to push the
guilt onto this poor, uneducated sweet man. It has nothing
(44:55):
to do with I mean, Anne would say that, of course,
but I take your point. I mean, as as she
was just just naming someone else besides her. Okay, he
introduced her. So what she made the judgment? She that's right,
She just nothing else. I mean it was totally her call.
(45:19):
Next time on art Fraud, she swears that she didn't know,
which seems hard to believe. Should she have known? Yeah,
I believe from the beginning she knew these were fakes.
They had no provenances. She made up provenances. Every Day,
(45:42):
Art Fraud is brought to you by I Heart Radio
and Cavalry Audio. Our executive producers are Matt del Piano,
Keegan Rosenberger, myself, and Michael Shnayerson. We're produced by Brandon
Morgan and Zach McNeice. Zach also edited and mixed this episode.
Lindsay Huffman is our managing producer. Our writer is Michael Shnayerson.
(46:36):
The Gangster Chronicles podcast is a weekly conversation that involves
around the underworld the criminals and entertainers to victims crime
and law enforcement. We cover all facets of the game.
Gainst the Chronicles podcast doesn't glorify promotilised activities. We just
discussed the ramifications and repercussions of these activities. Because after Wall,
if you played gamester games, you are ultimately rewarded with
(46:57):
Gagster prizes. Our heart ready you dosmember one for podcasts,
but don't take our word for it. Find against the
Chronicles podcast, my Heart radio app or wherever you get
your podcast. Give us silver attention. We need everything you've
got Fast Waiting on Reparations. We beat the podcast two
it in every Thursday politics and wordplay. We fight for
(47:18):
the people because they got us in the worst way,
from the Hill Cooper, the Bombay to Kunta, from the
left on Clay to what the neo kan said every conversation.
And to break us off with some break because we're waiting.
Listen to Waiting on Reparations and I Heart radio app,
Apple podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts. The Black
(47:40):
Effect presents I didn't know, maybe you didn't either, but
the history of black people ain't rooted in slavery. Oh no,
it's royalty, not despair. Beat out here and every day.
In February, I will give you a Black history fact
that I didn't know and maybe you didn't either. It's
a rugged, ratchet, real baistic look at history. Listen so
(48:02):
I didn't know, maybe you didn't either. On the Black
Effect Podcast Network, our Heart Radio app, Apple Podcast, or
just wherever you get your podcasts from.
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