August 25, 2020 • 50 mins
Alec looks at the art world from two angles -- from someone in it, and from someone who has observed the world from a distance. First, writer Michael Shnayerson -- his latest book, Boom, gives an exhaustive history of how today’s art market came to be. Shnayerson writes for magazines -- including Time and Vanity Fair -- and has written seven books. He has collaborated with Harry Belafonte, written a portrait of Andrew Cuomo, and unpacked General Motors and the electric car. Art dealer Richard Feigen, Alec’s second guest, spent his entire career in the art market. His New York gallery has sold hundreds of millions of dollars of the greatest works of art, from the Renaissance to Basquiat. He was the dealer to the newly minted millionaires of 1980’s New York who bought their art -- and their cultural cache -- from Richard Feigen.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:02):
I'm Alec Baldwin and you're listening to Here's the Thing Today.
I look at the art world from two angles, from
someone in it and from someone who has observed that
world from a distance. Writer Michael Shnayerson's latest book, Boom,
gives an exhaustive history of how today's art market came
(00:23):
to be. Art dealer Richard Feigen spent his entire career
in that market. Will start with Michael Schneyerson. He grew
up in New York. His first writing job was as
the sports editor of the Santa Fe Reporter in New Mexico.
He made one dollars a week, but it led to
a job at Time Magazine, then Two Avenues, and finally
(00:45):
Vanity Fair, where he has published over feature stories. Shnayerson
writes books too. He's collaborated with Harry Belafonte, written a
portrait of Andrew Cuomo and Unpacked General Motors and the
Electric Car. For his latest book, Boom, Schneyerson interviewed more
than two hundred art dealers. Whenever he writes a book,
(01:07):
and Boom is his seventh, he becomes lost in the
world of his subject. One reason that I undertook those
books was to immerse myself in the different worlds. I mean,
I found Albany a fascinating world and very in its
own way, sort of exotic one. How soles about that?
This is the Cuomo biography? You know it's Yes, It's
often said that when your drive from New York to Albany,
(01:31):
let's say you're a representative of some kind, by the
time you get halfway there, you know you're you're within
the this realm that is completely apart from Manhattan, and
you know there's a kind of pervasive corruption in um
in Albany. It's so pervasive that there's everyone acknowledges it. Basically,
(01:51):
there's no there's virtually no rules or very modest ones
on campaign contributions. You can give anything through beyond cynicism. That, yeah,
let's beyond cynicism. I found that fascinating. Did I learn
more about Cuomo because of the Cuomo's a very complicated,
dark guy who's sort of haunted by his father, UM
(02:11):
Harry Belafonte, It occurred to me as someone who was
always haunted by his father. UM. Now with with Andrew Cuomo,
who I don't know well, I've met him many times,
and of course, like anybody who participates on any level,
especially a level that can involve check writing. Uh, you
you have Cuomo lieutenants reaching out to you. But um,
(02:36):
he's a guy who was always kind of uh fascinated
somewhat by that relationship with his father because he's so
much more of a retail politician than his dad. You know.
But and and their mother was this wonderful woe. She
was this dynamic and daughter, Matilda Cuomo was always how's
(02:58):
your mom and how's your mom's breast cancer? Thinger? She
she knew that game inside and out and she did
it sincerely. She was a very warm woman. And Como
would be standing there at Cuomo Senior and it was
like he had a hair shirt on. He just couldn't
wait for everybody to get the hell away from him
and he can go home. Well, it's very perceptive. I mean,
he was seen as written as being this avuncular, warm, empathetic,
(03:24):
you know, true democrat. Um. In fact, he was a
very tough father on on Andrew. Um. Um. You know,
maybe one thing to be gleaned here is that almost
everybody's got a father problem, this dynamic between fathers and sons. Um.
(03:46):
What was Belafonte's luck in terms of because because when
I met him, he was a pretty no nonsense guy.
To tough guys, beget tough sons or can What was
what was Belafonte's relationship with his father? Like they grew
up partly in Jamaica. His father was a sailor UM
in some sort of marine, in a military marine situation.
(04:09):
He um when he came home, he was um. He
was really abusive to his son, I mean physical, physical violence.
I remember Harry describing a moment when his father, Uh, well,
he had done something. Harry had done something wrong, and
(04:29):
his father said, we're going to take care of this.
And he made Harry fill the bathtub with absolutely scalding
water and then he told him to come out of
the bathtub and put his foot in, and just as
he was about to put his foot in, the father
sort of pushed him away. And that wasn't the only
time he did something like that. At one one time,
(04:50):
I remember Harry saying that his father took a a
lit cigarette and put it to his leg um. So
that was pretty extreme UM and I think it made
Harry a very tough character. Indeed, UM very tough. But
at the same time. When I met him, Yeah, he
did not suffer fools. When I met him, he really
(05:13):
really seemed like somebody who he had a chip on
his shoulder. Can I tell you a little story because
it's just one of the great stories from that book. Um. Uh,
I hope it's okay if we venture a little bit
away from from art um. Uh. So, Harry had served
in the military in the Army. Um, of course, in
a black regiment outside of Chicago. If you were black,
(05:36):
you were in a black regiment. Um. There was no integration.
And he came back. He didn't know what to do,
so he worked as a janitor in Harlem. Uh. And
one day one of his uh customers, not customers, the
people in the building said, Harry, could you help fix
my broiler or something? So he fixed the broiler and
(05:58):
she said, well, I want to pay you by giving
you these two theater tickets, and uh, it's for free.
It's something called the you know, the America, The American
Negro Theater was I think the name. So Harry had
never seen a play and he went down alone to
see this play and he was absolutely gobsmacked. It involved
is there contemporary involved black soldiers? Coming back from the
(06:21):
war trying to readjust so he goes up to the
founders afterwards, the directors of this theory, sis, I want
to help, only do anything I can, and they say, really, okay, well,
if you want to move the props around, come on back.
So he comes back. He starts moving the props around,
and he's below that area of the of the stage,
you know, whatever you call it where the orchestra's pit
is or whatever, is moving things around, and this very
(06:43):
surly guy uh is moving them around too, and and
Harry find says, you're not talking much. Is that because
you were just in jail? And the guy freaks out.
He says, why would you think that, um? And Harry says,
you know, just because that's sort of like I had
a sense when people are in jail have been. He says, well,
I can't talk about that, uh. And he says, well,
(07:03):
what's your name? And he says, Sydney Partier. And this
is how Harry and Sydney Potier met and it was
the beginning of their like seventy year friendship which continues
to this day. Were there white artists, writers, thinkers that
he trusted that he thought really cared about the movement,
(07:24):
you know, um, something that he respected I offhand, UM,
I don't have that recollection. What I have is actually
the opposite sort of recollection, which is a a white
guy whom he trusted explicitly because the guy was his therapist.
And actually the guy's last name was Kennedy. I've forgotten
(07:46):
his first name wasn't anything to do with the Kennedy family,
and um uh, as it turned out, the guy was
a spy for the FBI, and um, Janeer Hoover was
using Yeah, and and so you know, imagine the sense
of betrayal you feel if you're Harry Bellafonte and your
own therapist has been reporting on you to Jaeder Hoover, Um,
(08:10):
a white therapist. Just to clarify, So, I don't know.
I think I think trying. I thought my opinion of
Hoover couldn't go down maybe lower. Um, I have to
say I think that that he came to trust me
and we had a very very strong friendship, which continues.
I'm wondering as I hop over to the world of
(08:30):
art and your current book, Boom, did writing this book
lead you to look at art differently than you had before? Yeah,
I think it did. I mean, I'm quick to say
on page one of this book that I am not
an art critic. Uh, neither before nor after that, you
know that. That's no. I never collected friends that were
(08:50):
galorous or art artists. I had a few, to be honest.
I I first got into this story because some of
the art stories, if some of the stories I did
for any Fair, were about contemporary art. Yes, you know,
the whole Older Gallery, which and Freedom, which which we
have discussed, and uh, you know I found those stories fascinating. Um.
(09:13):
That was the first thing. I also was intrigued always
by Larry Gagosian, Um, you know, the the top dog
of the whole contemporary art dealer world, and I wanted
to write about him, and I would always be told
forget it. It took me a while to realize that,
of course, I would never get to write about it
goes In because he was a sacred cow. Because Si
(09:33):
new House, the head of you know, the head of
the company was Conny had bought a lot of art
and was buying more. I mean you know, uh, go
goes Ian had sat in an auction room with Um,
with Si new House, and they had been a work
up to seventeen million dollars, So of course I wasn't
gonna be allowed to write by It was fine. Uh,
(09:55):
time passed, I thought, you know, this subject is too big.
I've been I've been thinking, I'm going to write about
the whole contemporary art world and how it got this
way from the late fourteas until now, and it's going
to involve collectors and curators and dealers and artists. Yes,
but I, um, but I just was. I had just
(10:17):
taken on too much. So how was I going to
reduce it? Well, I finally occurred to be the answer
was to Winnow it down to the dealers, because you know,
there's no art without artists, but there's actually no art
without dealers either, and they had been kind of at
the center of this story from the beginning, and they
were a very interesting group of people. So that's how
I got going. You know, I when I've met you know,
(10:40):
there's something about him it's so exciting and so kind
of because because he has an energy to him, like
you want to believe, there's a rakishness to him. To me. Um,
the only person that could play in a movie about
him is Daddy would be John Garfield's a is a tough,
(11:01):
tenacious quality, and you want to believe that began his queer.
But like hijacking a truck, someone said, listen, kid, A
bunch of people like he just is a toughness to him.
There's a kind of a there's a kind of a
veneered him. He's really kind of a tough guy and warm.
You know, so many things come to mind as you
as you speak like I mean, one thing is just
(11:22):
to the point about his charm. It's fascinating. If he
wants something from you and I hear this again and again,
then he's the most charming guy in the world. Um,
and he loves I mean, there are these billionaires who
are his clients. You know, he's he's what they call
collector centric versus artists centric. You know, he's realized a
(11:44):
long time ago that if you can get Ron Perlman
or whoever else Steve Cohen to be at your table
and come to your parties, and then by the art
you're gonna be Not long ago, I was in the
restaurant Sedimentzo, and I overheard this little snippet of conversation Asian.
I guess it was around the holidays, and uh, this
(12:04):
heavyset guy, older guy leaned towards someone at the next
table and said, going down to uh st Bart's for Christmas,
and the and the other guy said, oh, you know
you're gonna you're gonna see Larry. Yeah, I'm gonna gonna
see Larry. And and where are you gonna stay? And
the other guys, oh, we just always stay with Larry.
We stay with Larry. And what that meant was that
(12:27):
this guy has bought a lot of art from Larry
and that's why he gets invited, not because of his charm,
which he probably thought he had anyway, So you know,
go Gozian's charm is uh. It turns on and off
at as as need be. Uh. He's also described as
someone who can be um very you know, just turn
(12:48):
a cold shoulder on you, just look right through you, um,
depending on if you you know, are necessary to him
or not. When you look at this line from Kesstelli,
we'll say that's the line, even though there were other
people that you write about as well. And the abdex
world as you call it, um this line from Castelli
onto Coos and these people who are making a market,
(13:10):
these people who have convinced other people. Um, would you
say that that who was are the equivalent? Because if
I read the book correctly, what you're saying is that
that that these men and some women they got rich
people to to turn this into a currency. So who
do you think it is? It's Castellian? Who else? Well?
So to go back, you know, to the beginning of
(13:31):
Gogs and I find it just fascinating, Um, that he
grew up in the way he did in an Armenian
community in Fresno, California. You know his parents, I think
we're they were Americans, but his grandparents on both sides
had were immigrants from Russia. And you know, this is
very at odds with the template, if you will, for
(13:54):
contemporary art dealers. Contemporary art dealers tend to be, you know,
to started as rich fops. Their parents have art on
the walls, their parents know the dealer, who will give
the kid a job. I mean, this is how these
things tend to come up. So when you get a
guy like a goes In who didn't even know what
art was growing up, never a piece of art on
(14:17):
his apartment. And the father we talked about, the father
actually was an accountant, did Okay, but you know, as
as Larry later said, there was he never heard of
anybody who had two cars. He never heard of anyone
who went to the country for the weekend. I mean,
he was just amazed to hear that when he finally
got into the art business, and so, you know, to
(14:37):
hear that and then to get that wonderful story, I
mean it's just so classic. You know, he he gets
out of USC, he doesn't know what he's gonna do.
He is actually gets a job at the William Morris
Male Room, the classics starting job, except that he hates
working for people like Mike Ovits, and he just he's
either fired or he quits whatever. He's out of there.
(14:58):
And then he spends a few years just working like
for a record store, a grocery store. You know, doesn't
have any ambition at all, which is quite bizarre when
you think of how ambitious he really is. And then
at a certain point he gets a job that has
him working as a parking lot manager. Okay, so he's
in his parking lot, he looks down the street and
there's a guy taking framed prints out of the trunk
(15:19):
of his car and selling them. As it turns out
and Larry's kind of fascinated it. And so he looks
into this and he finds out where these posters are made,
and he gets his own posters. And you know, it's
the thing about him, he didn't he didn't look at
the guys selling posters and think, well, maybe I'll try
to sell something else. He was very pragmatic. If the
posters sold, he would do posters. And he later said,
(15:42):
you know, if the guy had been selling widgets, he'd
probably be selling widgets now, right. So, uh so he
started he got to pop up story. Didn't he go
get a store? Yes, exactly right. He's he starts doing
this on the street, just like the other guy trunk
of his car. And then because he is framing these things,
(16:03):
it occurs to him maybe he should have a little
framing store, and so he does that. Uh, and then
he gets a little more ambitious and he has a
little gallery. So he's framing and he's trying to sell
the work. But he realizes that he's nowhere out there.
And I mean it's in Westwood, l A. It's it's
not a bad community. There's some wealthy people in the
movie business. But uh, he knows he has to come
(16:24):
to New York and try to ingratiate himself, and that
leads him to come in and to actually meet uh
Castelli and and that's where the whole art world sort
of begins turning into an art market. One day, he's
in his l A gallery and uh, he's looking through
(16:46):
a art magazine and they're these very cool abstract photographs
by guy named Ralph Gibson um who just parenthetically I
happen to know because he would do the photo shots
for Avenue magazine. So I would go to his too,
Ralph's studio, and we would choose these really cool shots
and they would go on the cover of the magazine. Uh.
(17:06):
At any rate, Ralph gets a call from Gozian, who says,
you don't know me, but I like your photos and
I'd like to have a show of them here in California.
And there's a pause on the line, and Ralph says,
but I'm in New York and and he goes says, oh,
I'm sorry, I got I thought you were in l A.
Uh And well, but how about if I take the
(17:27):
pictures anyway? And and and Gibson says, well, if you
want to fly here and introduce yourself. Then you know
we could talk about that. So Gozian flies out he
um Uh. He arrives on his own and he meets Gibson.
They're both actually very handsome, charming gods. I mean, they
really are charismatic the world. Yeah. Yeah, and they liked
(17:50):
each other a lot. And so Gibson says, hey, before
you go back, you gotta meet my my agent, my dealer,
you know, Leo Castelli and Uh. As soon as Castelli
go Goesi and met it was you know, an spark,
a spark and and and you wouldn't have expected that
because they're so different. He's an Italian born kid. Uh.
(18:12):
The mother's maiden name. Yeah, it took the mother's maiden
name because he was Jewish and the war was looming. Uh.
He learns five languages. He's a very debonair guy, comes
to New York, eventually starts this gallery, as you said,
on the street, becomes the sort of reigning king of
pop art um and is very generous in his dealings,
(18:34):
both with artists and with other dealers. He's actually the
one who pioneers this idea of splitting deals with far
flung dealers because instead of trying to make their money
as much as they can in their own shops. Why
not share the connections and and then everyone will eventually
do well. And so this a network was a new
(18:57):
concept and totally not what Gogozian would have done. This
was very much Castelle. And you know, Gogozian, uh was charismatic,
but he was also a very aggressive guy. Why he
hadn't showed that before, I don't know, but now he
was very aggressive and uh he started uh selling paintings
much as he had the frame posters and in l A.
(19:19):
He just was sort of a guy who would uh
buttonhole you on the street and say, I know you're
a dealer, you might be interested in this guy's work
and uh. And they said that, They said that Ralph
Lauren used to self ties to people table side. Lauren
would like walk up to people and show them like
his collection of ties. Funny. Well, that's that's basically I mean.
(19:40):
And and that's the way Gogozian was regarded as a
totally bumptious kind of you know, o riviste or whatever.
And uh. And there was one person who didn't agree
with that take, and that was Castelli. Would people tell
you who knew Castelli, that he was really very astute
about art, that he knew good art, or was he
(20:00):
the same? Was all about markets? Was the first? Well
that's a good question. Um. You know people are always
talking about an I does this guy have an eye?
Does he have a good critical eye? Can he really
recognize which is the good painting which is not the
good painting? And it was it was assumed by everybody
that Leo Castelli had a great eye. But those who
(20:22):
are real cognizanti in this world would tell you that
it was actually his wife, Alana Sana Bend who had
the great eye. Um. But you know, uh, you talked
to a really really smart critic like Robert Store, who
was the head of the Yale Art School, and he
would say it was Alana all the way. And and
Costelli was just writing on on her. You know that's
(20:44):
not a very good analogy, but was writing on her judgment,
her judgment. Robert Store, the the the great authority I've
just quoted here, would be just as quick to sort
of disparage go goes In as he was to disparaged Castelle. Um.
He would say that no, no go goes In, It's
(21:05):
just a retailed guy. That was his. He's just a
retailed guy. Um. But you know, uh, I don't think
that's fair. I I remember I said not long ago
that I am not an art expert, I'm not an
art critic. But I will say that every virtually every artwork,
every artist that goes in has represented that I'm going
to see. I've just felt excited and drawn to that art.
(21:29):
And and and people who really are in this business
are actually very respectful of Larry's eye. He's really got it.
And you want, when you walk into his gallery, it's
not just the art, but it's the frames. Back to
the frames. But now there you know, it's no simple
frames in in l a out of the trunk. It's
beautiful frames, and it's beautiful floors, and it's and it's
(21:50):
it's actually you know, very attractive people to you know,
uh you in. I mean, it's all really done perfectly.
And uh. And of course he's also the one who
had I don't know if the eye is the right
way putting it, but the the sense the prescience to
start expanding, uh, not only to another gallery in New York.
(22:12):
And there were a few who had two galleries in
New York, but to um to the rest of the world.
So I don't even know what the count is, whether
it's seventeen galleries or nineteen. It's somewhere between seventeen and nineteen.
We'll have to see how it settles. But um, you know,
this was a guy who who made his first move
in that regard in about two thousand when he went
(22:33):
to London. Um. There's a cute little story. I could
it just takes a minute because it's charming. Larry had
no thought of going to London. Uh. He was settled
in New York. UM. But he had someone who worked
from a lovely woman named Molly Dent Brocklehurst. There's a
name for you. And she was, as you might expect,
(22:55):
a very blue blood person. She was from. She was
English and she worked for Larry in his New York
Um gallery and the one that the flagship across from
the Carlisle Hotel. And one of her artists that she
handled for him was Damien Hurst. And Damien Hurst. Uh,
you know, we could talk for hours about Damian Hurst. Uh,
(23:16):
but the fact is hugely successful and the kind of
art that artists that that goes in liked best, the
kind who could churn out a stuff, you know, like
in a production line. Um. And so Molly was very
important to go goes In because she was the go
between with Damien Hurst. And one day she said to Larry,
I'm sorry, I've got to leave you because my father
(23:38):
has just died. There's a castle in the family and
I have to go tend to the castle. Um And
Larry took a beat and he said, well, why don't
you just open a Go goes In office in London
and then you can tend to your castle and Damien
Hurst is there anyway, and you can sell some art.
And so that's exactly what happened. That that happened to
(23:58):
be just the time that the Russian oligarchs were starting
to come over, and so there was this whole new
you know, vein of big money um and and Larry,
Larry didn't know that was going to happen. It just
it just happened out of serendipitous A lot of luck
involved with it. There is a lot of luck. Now
(24:18):
you touched on Mary Boone, so I have on my
own history with so I'm told I just want to ask,
you know, in the way that people build these careers
because because part of that experience for me, I looked
at it was kind of inexplicable, you know when I
when I went through what I went through, which was,
you know, very specifically, to purchase a painting by a
(24:40):
painter in a certain year, and let's say that it
was two thousand ten or two thousand eleven, and I
pay a five figure some for that painting, and then
I say, I want you to go find me this
other painting that's an older painting that might be worth
twice as much as that are more, and you then
sell me that painting. I think, selling me that painting,
(25:01):
But what we find out is it's a copy you
had made of that painting, and yet you charge me
the amount of money. This was kind of the undoing
of the whole thing for her when you represent that
you charge me a hundred and ninety thousand dollars when
I just bought the other one from you two weeks
ago for eighty five thousand dollars. Why would I pay
you a hundred ninety thousand for the one when I
(25:21):
just paid you eighty five for the one? That was frustrating.
There was a lot of things that made it difficult
for her to escape um responsibility, and and and and
when she settled with me means it's all on public record.
She she writes me a check for a million dollars
to go away. And my point is is that that
we all sat there the the the statute of limitations
(25:43):
had passed in terms of the criminal and we get
ready to do a civil trial and we're gonna we're
gonna go after a lot of emails of her. And
they settled the case very quickly at that point, because
you realize she didn't wake up one day and decided
to do this to me that day. We wondered whether
there was something and I'm wondering for someone who had
a career like hers, it was so you know important,
(26:05):
I mean, she represented people. She must Someone said to me,
you know, she'll just turn around and take a busk
yet out of the bin. That she hasn't selled to
cover her her losses, you know, to her in this litigation,
What do you think happened with someone like her? Why? Well,
here's what occurs to me to say. I mean, I've
interviewed Mary. I interviewed her a good long time for
the book. And then as the book was getting ready
(26:28):
to be published. Of course she was. Um Uh. She
was sentenced and for tax invasion, nail for tax evasion.
And so I went to interview her again. Um and
that actually became an article in Town Country. UM. So
I spent quite a bit of time with her, um
interviewed after the sentencing. Yes, yes, yes, spent a little
(26:48):
time in her gallery. UM. I think she was still
sort of trying to shape the narrative there and and
thought I could do this, and and maybe she thought
Town Country was a pretty sympathetic audience, which I suppose
it's fair to say it is. Um. But I had, well,
first of all, I had liked her. You know that
she's she's easy to like. She uh, she's charming, she's
(27:12):
sort of she's she's sexy. Felin is a great word
for it. And um uh. And certainly in those early
days she showed uh enormous uh cleverness in how she
built her business. By the way, Gogzian was the one
who discovered David Sally. Um Mary Boonett had a chance.
(27:34):
She looked at his work early on, but she'd rejected it.
She wasn't bold enough and that instance to think that
that would work for her. But Gogozian went to see
Sally's work and uh, and he took a chance. He
had rented aloft on the fifth floor overlooking for twenty
West Broadway, which for twenty West Broadway was the big
(27:55):
artist cooperative. Leo Castelli the king of the realm. And
so when go goes Ian rented a loft space on
the fifth floor literally looking down at the Kingdom, it
was kind of almost creepy, you know. It was like
he was looking down to what he was going to
conquer one days. Yes, he really was. And so he
(28:17):
had this show for for David Sally. It did very well.
He sold quite a number of paintings. Mary Boone came
across the street from her new little um gallery IF
at four twenty and she ended up taking Sally because
you know, it goes in At that point it was
just a guy from California. He didn't really know he
wasn't a dealer. He had to admit he was not
(28:37):
yet a dealer um and that's actually what drove him
to be kind of a different dealer. Instead of representing
an artist's primary work. In other words, you find an artist,
you discover him. He paints the painting. You take it
and you sell it to a collector. That's primary. That's
the primary market. If the art has been sold once,
(29:00):
then it doesn't matter how it sold the second time.
Might be an auction, might be a private deal, whatever
that then it's a secondary market. So Larry was always
most interested in the secondary market because there was more
money in it. It was usually a fifty fifty situation.
And uh, because there was just more art to buy
and sell. He would he would go to someone's house
(29:20):
for dinner. He would see work on the walls. He
would remember that who were businessmen. Yeah, meaning when you're
dealing with artists their artists. Yeah, And when I'm taking
the paintings that somebody who is the owner wants to sell,
everybody who realizes it's commerce and and and you know,
I mean he did discover Boskia very early on. I
wasn't the first, but the second, I would say, in
(29:42):
fairness to Larry um and um. And he uh did
enormously well with Boskia. But even so that again was
a primary artist. Uh. The work was selling for a
few thousand dollars in the early eighties, whereas only a
few years later in the eighties, UH Gogozian was representing
(30:04):
UM people like Sign New House and and and probably
getting half of a seventeen million dollar sales. So secondary
work was really where the big money was, and that's
where Gagosian went the one. The other thing I would
just say about Mary is that I think I think
that what she did really shocked the whole art community,
(30:26):
the whole art market, and I don't think that people
do that sort of thing a lot. Now, having just
said that, Larry Gogzian did have to give four million
and change to the to the I R S for
uh sending works that had been bought to a buyer's
second residents and and state rather than the first one.
(30:47):
You know, that sort of thing you that dealers can
sometimes do. I have one last question for you. I
want to say that you know this kid from the
Upper West Side where you grew up in the Upper
West Side of Manhattan, who's tooling around owned a New
Mexico with a guitar. He doesn't know what he wants
to do, he's running for the Santa Fe sports page.
And then you you enter a world in which you
(31:09):
see a lot of things that you experienced a lot
of things, and one of them is love. One of
them is you meet your wife, Yes in the in
the in the Towers of Manhattan show Yes. I think
that's fair. That well. Uh my wife, Gaiford Steinberg Um
was married to a very well known Titan of Wall Streets,
Saul Steinberg Uh no secret there. They had a wonderful
(31:33):
marriage for for many years, but he did eventually die
after a long lingering situation. I knew Gaifrid through a
few different women who are sort of hostesses around town
who would have me as a single guy at the table.
And I remember meeting her a first time and just
(31:54):
being dazzled by her intelligence or beauty. And so some
months after Saul died, I just thought, I really loved
talking to that woman. Let's just invite her to lunch
and see what happens. And we went to lunch and
we had a great time, and we went to dinner,
and one thing led to another. So that was We're
celebrating our fifth anniversary on Saturday. Michael Schnayerson his latest
(32:18):
book is Boom. If you want to hear more about
the social scene at the height of the nineteen eighties,
you can't get a better storyteller than Tina Brown, who
took over Vanity Fair just in time to document that
period's excesses. We were in the Reagan era, right, we
just role Reagan was on a glide path to re election.
(32:40):
I came in as a London outsider who didn't know
really much about America, and I was just plunged into
this world of Reagan's America, which was this kind of
black tie, wildly consumers. You know, Bob, he was on
the magazine. It was just, I mean, it boggles my
(33:01):
mind when I when I read the diaries now and
when I started to compile them, how much We went
out for a link to my full interview with Tina Brown.
Text Tina to seven zero one zero one. This is
(33:28):
Alec Baldwin and you're listening to. Here's the thing. Richard
Fagan's New York gallery has sold hundreds of millions of
dollars of the greatest works of art from the Renaissance
through boscuillat his expertise as the Italian Baroque. He was
one of the most important dealers to the newly minted
millionaires of nineteen eighties New York, who all bought their
(33:51):
art and their cultural cash from Figen. As Sathobies put it, quote,
Richard's a secret is to buy what's not in fashion
and to trust his keen eye for quality unquote. In
recent years he's been stepping back from the day to
day leadership of the gallery, but his taste is still
evident in its choices. Just this year, before the pandemic hit,
(34:15):
they put up an exhibit of old Master and nineteenth
century drawings. Richard Fagan is a dealer, but says he's
really a collector, a passion he's had his entire life.
The eleven year old Richard Figen earned a hundred dollars
and the first thing I bought was a hundred dollars.
You bought a painting for a hundred dollars. And when
you told your parents you're gonna take the hundred dollars
(34:38):
of your personal fortune, all of your personal fortune, and
by a painting with it, what did they say? I
don't think they much interfered. They just they just s't
as long as you were happy, as long as you
left them alone and bother them. He's gonna go buy
a painting, okay, So what let him go buy some
paintings and you bought what painting? I bought a your
(35:00):
painting from the sixteenth century in an antique store near
where I lived for a hundred dollars. And what was
what was it about? I mean it was it really
about an appreciation of art? Partially partially it was financial
At eleven, Yeah, you understood the equity involved at that
(35:21):
age because you were surrounded. But your father was successful. Yeah,
but he was a lawyer. He didn't have any art,
didn't have any art. So how does what's the two
thousand one a Space Odyssey moment for you? When the
Black Monoliths shows up in your bedroom and tells you
you need to go out and buy art? I don't know.
(35:41):
I guess I recognize the values, and I felt that
there was a vast difference between price and value. So
I decided to take advantage of that, and I ended
up selling it for a hundred dollars. It was not
a very successful It wasn't a score. It wasn't a
big coup for you. Does this progress or was was
it a one off? Would you keep going even when
(36:02):
you were eleven? You kept going? I kept going. When
did the aesthetic enter the picture? It entered it fairly early.
As I got more involved and I got to understand more,
then the aesthetics took over. In the beginning, I went
to work for a company that was in my family,
(36:22):
an insurance company on the West Coast, Beneficial Standard. Yeah,
did you enjoy that? I enjoyed the investment aspect, but
the art that I wanted as chase was in New York.
So I arranged to buy art for the chairman of
our company, which brought me to New York frequently, and
I ended up staying in New York. You sold your
(36:43):
seat on the Exchange in fifty seven. Yes, yes, one
of the great Wall Street figures told me that I
wouldn't like it, and he was right, so that I
only had that seat for about a year and you
and you and you dumped your seat on the Stock
Exchange dumped. I sold it for a lot of my
broken It cost me fifty dollars. I had about six
(37:08):
thousand dollars of initiation visa or whatever, and I sat
for the fifty six thousands. To start your own art, yes, business,
your own gallery, yes, But then you but when you
open up, Richard Feigen, your first company, you've got to
get money to go buy pay or do people lend
you to the people? Do they consign the pass and consignment?
(37:30):
And when did things begin to change for you? When
did you start to really take off, if you will,
and sell more paintings and build your business. Well, when
I got to know the collectors and the museums. That
became very much involved with a number of museums, and
I began to either know what they wanted or what
they ought to want, and then I have to convince
(37:54):
them well of what they ought to want if they're
lacking certain museums themselves or clients of your Oh yes,
a lot of museums. Was there a sale or a
transaction that you facilitated back then that really began to
make your reputation? Was there when you recall what you
thought that was a big turning point from my company? Um,
I don't think there was a single instance. But but
(38:17):
I've dealt with most of the major museums in the world,
I mean the Metropolitan National Gallery to Louver and so on,
and I would spend time look at their collection, decide
they need such just such a painting, and then if
I had it, I would offer it to them. Hopefully
they would agree with me. Someone that you were an
(38:39):
early proponent of was Bacon, who I am a great
admirer of. So I'm assuming you knew him. You must
have known him, correct. I never met Bacon. You never did.
I had the first Bacon show, I think in America,
but I didn't deal with him directly. I just brought
up his work around because I admired it. He originally
(39:02):
said he was going to come to my opening, and
I thought that was great. And then I later got
a call that he wanted me to fix him up
with some young boys, and I said, I'm I'm out
of my water here. I'm not up to this. I
couldn't handle it, so I dissuaded him from coming. You're
(39:23):
one chance to meet Bacon. I suppose I could have
met him. Had you been willing to pimp for Bacon,
you might have had a nice friendship. Yeah, I might have. Yeah,
but when I can't remember the exact timing. But I
bought my friends this Bacon show. The whole show of
(39:44):
fourteen paintings cost me an average of probably six seven painting,
and I sold him for a thousand, twelve paintings that
are individually worth now hundreds of thousands and hundreds of
thousands of dollars. Yeah, how would you describe the art
(40:05):
market today compared to when you first arrived here and
moved here in the sixties. And I think that the
art market is much much larger now, much more international,
and um, the focus has changed a lot. Right now,
the old master market is largely dead unless you have
(40:27):
something extraordinary that nobody's ever seen before. There's very small
market for old masters, largely contemporary, and that's where all
the focus of the spotlight has been on the contemporary.
So I may see permanent value in things and end
up buying it, and there isn't that much of a
market for it. I think when you see someone you
(40:50):
read about them in the paper and they say that
this guy bought this painting, uh uh, this Picasso or whatever,
some huge name in the in that world, and they
paid five million dollars for the painting they paid through
the highest amount ever paid. Do those people always assume
that the day will come that they'll sell that painting
(41:12):
for more than five million dollars or do they ever
sit there and say, I don't care about that, I
just want that painting because I love that painting. It's
always about or is it always about equity and markets
and resale about eventually? I think it depends a lot
on the individual. You know, um, I think of spending
that kind of money, usually they have to be assured
(41:36):
that the intrinsic value is there and we're going to
get it back. Some people don't much care. For some
people that five million dollars may not be that much.
The documentary that you were in, the Art of the Steel,
I want to get to something about that in a moment.
(41:57):
But another documentary I saw they showed coons standing in
a laboratory like setting with a bunch of his uh disciples,
and they're all applying paint to these canvases and under
his direction, and they're asking basically, is it a coon's
(42:18):
if your hand never touches the brush? And he was unrepentant.
He said, oh no, I'm everything. He said, what they're
doing is completely in my direction. And there was a
bunch of them working simultaneous. He's going from canvas to
canvas to well, he has he has a sort of
a factory. Now, what do you think about though, I
think a lot of these values are confections, and I
(42:45):
think that Jeff Coon's is a very sophisticated and clever
guy and a substantial buyer of old Master pictures, which
I understand a lot of them are on loan to
the Metropolitan Museum. Things he bought Coons things he bought,
and he's very sophisticated. I do not believe he's an
(43:08):
artist of any consequence. You don't know a lot of
people would different from different with me on that. I
don't think. So. You've never transacted to Coons, You never
bought I've never bought or sold a Coons because you
didn't want to. No. I I don't get involved in
(43:29):
things where I have doubts about the intrinsic value. Ever, No,
really not, And I don't consider Jeff Coons an artist
of consequence. Do you think there's a market for a place,
a gallery to open in which you have, uh, you know,
the curators of the gallery, let's say, are people with
(43:50):
some experience, and on the walls they hang art of
people that are undiscovered that they really really believe it,
And all the art is for arguments sake. You know,
under to have thousand dollars, it's not super expensive. It's
not no six figure purchases there, maybe even under ten thousand,
there's a market for that. Do you think people want
to come in and they want to look at art
or do most people who have money to buy art
(44:12):
their big game hunters. They want famous, big pieces and
feathers in their cap and so forth. I think there's
very little now that remains undiscovered. The market has expanded
and there's so many people in it that uh, and
(44:34):
you can't predict which things are going to be successful
or not. Um. I remember years ago I was in
Japan with a very dear friend of mine, Jim Rosenquist,
we just died last year, and um, we were in
(44:55):
this gallery and in walks the artist Sama. Her work
at that time was very inexpensive. Since then, they've gotten expensive,
and you couldn't have predicted that. For me, it's relatively
easy to tell which things they have permanent importance. That
(45:15):
doesn't mean that they're ever going to be picked up
by the market collectible expensive. There are things today that
I'm just flabber gasid at the prices they bring, because
I don't regard them as being intrinsically very significant. Whereas
five years ago they caused very little. Now their prices
are enormous. That doesn't happen very often, and you can't
(45:38):
tell what which things are going to have that kind
of appreciation. The documentary that you were in, Art of
the Steel, Uh, one of my favorite documentaries about the
acquisition of the Barnes collection, folded into the the Philadelphia
Museum and all the sterm and drawing about that. And
(45:58):
there you are at an shib but I think it's
either Christie's or south Aby's. And you say some are
my favorite quote, some art is attractive and not very significant,
significant enough, very attractive, And then you point to a painting, say,
now this picture, this painting is neither significant nor attractor,
but it'll sell for thirty million dollars or some obscene
amount of money. Yeah. I got a lot of flak
out of it. Really no. And the Barnes is a
(46:21):
very good example, because the Barnes Foundation I was very
much opposed to moving it, and they wanted it downtown
for tourist reasons. I always maintained it was it was
fine where it was, and if they wanted to make
it accessible to the general public, they could have run
(46:44):
shuttle buses back and forth. It was only a about
a fifteen minute trip. I visited it down in Philadelphia.
They tried to red they tried to recreate the Saints
and so on. I think that was absurd. Um, I
think it's been successful. I assume there are crowds of
(47:05):
people that come and see it, But I still think
it could have been handled were in their in their
other building where they were, which was an admirable building.
I don't think they had to move it is There
is there a if you go to one city and
you're gonna go and see the art in that city,
you're gonna pick one. Which one would you pick? I
(47:27):
would probably pick London. You would why because the National
Gallery has a great collection. The Tate Gallery has always
been very active. Uh, it's a it's a real and
the new British artists are continue to be very important.
(47:47):
They were when I was involved with giving exhibitions. I
focused on that new generation of British artists. Still longer
a new generation, they're now older, much revered group of artists,
but they've had a very significant um role in what's
(48:11):
going on today. So I think that Tate is important,
The National Gallery in London is important, and so on.
Now in your own home is art something that certain
pieces survive and they stay there forever. Of their pieces
(48:32):
that you have on a wall, and they're never gonna
leave that wall, and they live there forever. Pieces you love.
What is the art in your home change over time? Now?
The stuff of my home generally is stuff that I
own personally, and it's pretty stable as stays there stuff
you love. Oh, I have, uh, a pretty large group
of very early Italian pictures from the from fifteen centuries,
(49:01):
which is a is a period that interests me a lot.
Why First of all, I like it esthetically, and secondly
it's important in terms of the evolution of our history.
Some of the things in that period interests me intellectually.
(49:22):
So I have a large group of those things. Every
now and then I give something to the Yale Art Gallery.
But so you have beyond your home and in your gallery,
do you have in storage tons and tons of pieces
that you own? Not tons and tons of things, but
some some things I have, but I don't keep it
(49:44):
in storage. It usually is on my wall in my
home if it's personal gallery or in my gallery. And
I don't generally change that around that much. There's not
that much that interests me enough to buy it. I
don't have that big, diverse and inventory, Richard Fagin. Last year,
(50:08):
Fagen sold some of those personal treasures to fund his retirement.
This is Alec Baldwin, and you were listening to here's
the thing.
I'm Alec Baldwin and you're listening to Here's the Thing Today.
I look at the art world from two angles, from
someone in it and from someone who has observed that
world from a distance. Writer Michael Shnayerson's latest book, Boom,
gives an exhaustive history of how today's art market came
(00:23):
to be. Art dealer Richard Feigen spent his entire career
in that market. Will start with Michael Schneyerson. He grew
up in New York. His first writing job was as
the sports editor of the Santa Fe Reporter in New Mexico.
He made one dollars a week, but it led to
a job at Time Magazine, then Two Avenues, and finally
(00:45):
Vanity Fair, where he has published over feature stories. Shnayerson
writes books too. He's collaborated with Harry Belafonte, written a
portrait of Andrew Cuomo and Unpacked General Motors and the
Electric Car. For his latest book, Boom, Schneyerson interviewed more
than two hundred art dealers. Whenever he writes a book,
(01:07):
and Boom is his seventh, he becomes lost in the
world of his subject. One reason that I undertook those
books was to immerse myself in the different worlds. I mean,
I found Albany a fascinating world and very in its
own way, sort of exotic one. How soles about that?
This is the Cuomo biography? You know it's Yes, It's
often said that when your drive from New York to Albany,
(01:31):
let's say you're a representative of some kind, by the
time you get halfway there, you know you're you're within
the this realm that is completely apart from Manhattan, and
you know there's a kind of pervasive corruption in um
in Albany. It's so pervasive that there's everyone acknowledges it. Basically,
(01:51):
there's no there's virtually no rules or very modest ones
on campaign contributions. You can give anything through beyond cynicism. That, yeah,
let's beyond cynicism. I found that fascinating. Did I learn
more about Cuomo because of the Cuomo's a very complicated,
dark guy who's sort of haunted by his father, UM
(02:11):
Harry Belafonte, It occurred to me as someone who was
always haunted by his father. UM. Now with with Andrew Cuomo,
who I don't know well, I've met him many times,
and of course, like anybody who participates on any level,
especially a level that can involve check writing. Uh, you
you have Cuomo lieutenants reaching out to you. But um,
(02:36):
he's a guy who was always kind of uh fascinated
somewhat by that relationship with his father because he's so
much more of a retail politician than his dad. You know.
But and and their mother was this wonderful woe. She
was this dynamic and daughter, Matilda Cuomo was always how's
(02:58):
your mom and how's your mom's breast cancer? Thinger? She
she knew that game inside and out and she did
it sincerely. She was a very warm woman. And Como
would be standing there at Cuomo Senior and it was
like he had a hair shirt on. He just couldn't
wait for everybody to get the hell away from him
and he can go home. Well, it's very perceptive. I mean,
he was seen as written as being this avuncular, warm, empathetic,
(03:24):
you know, true democrat. Um. In fact, he was a
very tough father on on Andrew. Um. Um. You know,
maybe one thing to be gleaned here is that almost
everybody's got a father problem, this dynamic between fathers and sons. Um.
(03:46):
What was Belafonte's luck in terms of because because when
I met him, he was a pretty no nonsense guy.
To tough guys, beget tough sons or can What was
what was Belafonte's relationship with his father? Like they grew
up partly in Jamaica. His father was a sailor UM
in some sort of marine, in a military marine situation.
(04:09):
He um when he came home, he was um. He
was really abusive to his son, I mean physical, physical violence.
I remember Harry describing a moment when his father, Uh, well,
he had done something. Harry had done something wrong, and
(04:29):
his father said, we're going to take care of this.
And he made Harry fill the bathtub with absolutely scalding
water and then he told him to come out of
the bathtub and put his foot in, and just as
he was about to put his foot in, the father
sort of pushed him away. And that wasn't the only
time he did something like that. At one one time,
(04:50):
I remember Harry saying that his father took a a
lit cigarette and put it to his leg um. So
that was pretty extreme UM and I think it made
Harry a very tough character. Indeed, UM very tough. But
at the same time. When I met him, Yeah, he
did not suffer fools. When I met him, he really
(05:13):
really seemed like somebody who he had a chip on
his shoulder. Can I tell you a little story because
it's just one of the great stories from that book. Um. Uh,
I hope it's okay if we venture a little bit
away from from art um. Uh. So, Harry had served
in the military in the Army. Um, of course, in
a black regiment outside of Chicago. If you were black,
(05:36):
you were in a black regiment. Um. There was no integration.
And he came back. He didn't know what to do,
so he worked as a janitor in Harlem. Uh. And
one day one of his uh customers, not customers, the
people in the building said, Harry, could you help fix
my broiler or something? So he fixed the broiler and
(05:58):
she said, well, I want to pay you by giving
you these two theater tickets, and uh, it's for free.
It's something called the you know, the America, The American
Negro Theater was I think the name. So Harry had
never seen a play and he went down alone to
see this play and he was absolutely gobsmacked. It involved
is there contemporary involved black soldiers? Coming back from the
(06:21):
war trying to readjust so he goes up to the
founders afterwards, the directors of this theory, sis, I want
to help, only do anything I can, and they say, really, okay, well,
if you want to move the props around, come on back.
So he comes back. He starts moving the props around,
and he's below that area of the of the stage,
you know, whatever you call it where the orchestra's pit
is or whatever, is moving things around, and this very
(06:43):
surly guy uh is moving them around too, and and
Harry find says, you're not talking much. Is that because
you were just in jail? And the guy freaks out.
He says, why would you think that, um? And Harry says,
you know, just because that's sort of like I had
a sense when people are in jail have been. He says, well,
I can't talk about that, uh. And he says, well,
(07:03):
what's your name? And he says, Sydney Partier. And this
is how Harry and Sydney Potier met and it was
the beginning of their like seventy year friendship which continues
to this day. Were there white artists, writers, thinkers that
he trusted that he thought really cared about the movement,
(07:24):
you know, um, something that he respected I offhand, UM,
I don't have that recollection. What I have is actually
the opposite sort of recollection, which is a a white
guy whom he trusted explicitly because the guy was his therapist.
And actually the guy's last name was Kennedy. I've forgotten
(07:46):
his first name wasn't anything to do with the Kennedy family,
and um uh, as it turned out, the guy was
a spy for the FBI, and um, Janeer Hoover was
using Yeah, and and so you know, imagine the sense
of betrayal you feel if you're Harry Bellafonte and your
own therapist has been reporting on you to Jaeder Hoover, Um,
(08:10):
a white therapist. Just to clarify, So, I don't know.
I think I think trying. I thought my opinion of
Hoover couldn't go down maybe lower. Um, I have to
say I think that that he came to trust me
and we had a very very strong friendship, which continues.
I'm wondering as I hop over to the world of
(08:30):
art and your current book, Boom, did writing this book
lead you to look at art differently than you had before? Yeah,
I think it did. I mean, I'm quick to say
on page one of this book that I am not
an art critic. Uh, neither before nor after that, you
know that. That's no. I never collected friends that were
(08:50):
galorous or art artists. I had a few, to be honest.
I I first got into this story because some of
the art stories, if some of the stories I did
for any Fair, were about contemporary art. Yes, you know,
the whole Older Gallery, which and Freedom, which which we
have discussed, and uh, you know I found those stories fascinating. Um.
(09:13):
That was the first thing. I also was intrigued always
by Larry Gagosian, Um, you know, the the top dog
of the whole contemporary art dealer world, and I wanted
to write about him, and I would always be told
forget it. It took me a while to realize that,
of course, I would never get to write about it
goes In because he was a sacred cow. Because Si
(09:33):
new House, the head of you know, the head of
the company was Conny had bought a lot of art
and was buying more. I mean you know, uh, go
goes Ian had sat in an auction room with Um,
with Si new House, and they had been a work
up to seventeen million dollars, So of course I wasn't
gonna be allowed to write by It was fine. Uh,
(09:55):
time passed, I thought, you know, this subject is too big.
I've been I've been thinking, I'm going to write about
the whole contemporary art world and how it got this
way from the late fourteas until now, and it's going
to involve collectors and curators and dealers and artists. Yes,
but I, um, but I just was. I had just
(10:17):
taken on too much. So how was I going to
reduce it? Well, I finally occurred to be the answer
was to Winnow it down to the dealers, because you know,
there's no art without artists, but there's actually no art
without dealers either, and they had been kind of at
the center of this story from the beginning, and they
were a very interesting group of people. So that's how
I got going. You know, I when I've met you know,
(10:40):
there's something about him it's so exciting and so kind
of because because he has an energy to him, like
you want to believe, there's a rakishness to him. To me. Um,
the only person that could play in a movie about
him is Daddy would be John Garfield's a is a tough,
(11:01):
tenacious quality, and you want to believe that began his queer.
But like hijacking a truck, someone said, listen, kid, A
bunch of people like he just is a toughness to him.
There's a kind of a there's a kind of a
veneered him. He's really kind of a tough guy and warm.
You know, so many things come to mind as you
as you speak like I mean, one thing is just
(11:22):
to the point about his charm. It's fascinating. If he
wants something from you and I hear this again and again,
then he's the most charming guy in the world. Um,
and he loves I mean, there are these billionaires who
are his clients. You know, he's he's what they call
collector centric versus artists centric. You know, he's realized a
(11:44):
long time ago that if you can get Ron Perlman
or whoever else Steve Cohen to be at your table
and come to your parties, and then by the art
you're gonna be Not long ago, I was in the
restaurant Sedimentzo, and I overheard this little snippet of conversation Asian.
I guess it was around the holidays, and uh, this
(12:04):
heavyset guy, older guy leaned towards someone at the next
table and said, going down to uh st Bart's for Christmas,
and the and the other guy said, oh, you know
you're gonna you're gonna see Larry. Yeah, I'm gonna gonna
see Larry. And and where are you gonna stay? And
the other guys, oh, we just always stay with Larry.
We stay with Larry. And what that meant was that
(12:27):
this guy has bought a lot of art from Larry
and that's why he gets invited, not because of his charm,
which he probably thought he had anyway, So you know,
go Gozian's charm is uh. It turns on and off
at as as need be. Uh. He's also described as
someone who can be um very you know, just turn
(12:48):
a cold shoulder on you, just look right through you, um,
depending on if you you know, are necessary to him
or not. When you look at this line from Kesstelli,
we'll say that's the line, even though there were other
people that you write about as well. And the abdex
world as you call it, um this line from Castelli
onto Coos and these people who are making a market,
(13:10):
these people who have convinced other people. Um, would you
say that that who was are the equivalent? Because if
I read the book correctly, what you're saying is that
that that these men and some women they got rich
people to to turn this into a currency. So who
do you think it is? It's Castellian? Who else? Well?
So to go back, you know, to the beginning of
(13:31):
Gogs and I find it just fascinating, Um, that he
grew up in the way he did in an Armenian
community in Fresno, California. You know his parents, I think
we're they were Americans, but his grandparents on both sides
had were immigrants from Russia. And you know, this is
very at odds with the template, if you will, for
(13:54):
contemporary art dealers. Contemporary art dealers tend to be, you know,
to started as rich fops. Their parents have art on
the walls, their parents know the dealer, who will give
the kid a job. I mean, this is how these
things tend to come up. So when you get a
guy like a goes In who didn't even know what
art was growing up, never a piece of art on
(14:17):
his apartment. And the father we talked about, the father
actually was an accountant, did Okay, but you know, as
as Larry later said, there was he never heard of
anybody who had two cars. He never heard of anyone
who went to the country for the weekend. I mean,
he was just amazed to hear that when he finally
got into the art business, and so, you know, to
(14:37):
hear that and then to get that wonderful story, I
mean it's just so classic. You know, he he gets
out of USC, he doesn't know what he's gonna do.
He is actually gets a job at the William Morris
Male Room, the classics starting job, except that he hates
working for people like Mike Ovits, and he just he's
either fired or he quits whatever. He's out of there.
(14:58):
And then he spends a few years just working like
for a record store, a grocery store. You know, doesn't
have any ambition at all, which is quite bizarre when
you think of how ambitious he really is. And then
at a certain point he gets a job that has
him working as a parking lot manager. Okay, so he's
in his parking lot, he looks down the street and
there's a guy taking framed prints out of the trunk
(15:19):
of his car and selling them. As it turns out
and Larry's kind of fascinated it. And so he looks
into this and he finds out where these posters are made,
and he gets his own posters. And you know, it's
the thing about him, he didn't he didn't look at
the guys selling posters and think, well, maybe I'll try
to sell something else. He was very pragmatic. If the
posters sold, he would do posters. And he later said,
(15:42):
you know, if the guy had been selling widgets, he'd
probably be selling widgets now, right. So, uh so he
started he got to pop up story. Didn't he go
get a store? Yes, exactly right. He's he starts doing
this on the street, just like the other guy trunk
of his car. And then because he is framing these things,
(16:03):
it occurs to him maybe he should have a little
framing store, and so he does that. Uh, and then
he gets a little more ambitious and he has a
little gallery. So he's framing and he's trying to sell
the work. But he realizes that he's nowhere out there.
And I mean it's in Westwood, l A. It's it's
not a bad community. There's some wealthy people in the
movie business. But uh, he knows he has to come
(16:24):
to New York and try to ingratiate himself, and that
leads him to come in and to actually meet uh
Castelli and and that's where the whole art world sort
of begins turning into an art market. One day, he's
in his l A gallery and uh, he's looking through
(16:46):
a art magazine and they're these very cool abstract photographs
by guy named Ralph Gibson um who just parenthetically I
happen to know because he would do the photo shots
for Avenue magazine. So I would go to his too,
Ralph's studio, and we would choose these really cool shots
and they would go on the cover of the magazine. Uh.
(17:06):
At any rate, Ralph gets a call from Gozian, who says,
you don't know me, but I like your photos and
I'd like to have a show of them here in California.
And there's a pause on the line, and Ralph says,
but I'm in New York and and he goes says, oh,
I'm sorry, I got I thought you were in l A.
Uh And well, but how about if I take the
(17:27):
pictures anyway? And and and Gibson says, well, if you
want to fly here and introduce yourself. Then you know
we could talk about that. So Gozian flies out he
um Uh. He arrives on his own and he meets Gibson.
They're both actually very handsome, charming gods. I mean, they
really are charismatic the world. Yeah. Yeah, and they liked
(17:50):
each other a lot. And so Gibson says, hey, before
you go back, you gotta meet my my agent, my dealer,
you know, Leo Castelli and Uh. As soon as Castelli
go Goesi and met it was you know, an spark,
a spark and and and you wouldn't have expected that
because they're so different. He's an Italian born kid. Uh.
(18:12):
The mother's maiden name. Yeah, it took the mother's maiden
name because he was Jewish and the war was looming. Uh.
He learns five languages. He's a very debonair guy, comes
to New York, eventually starts this gallery, as you said,
on the street, becomes the sort of reigning king of
pop art um and is very generous in his dealings,
(18:34):
both with artists and with other dealers. He's actually the
one who pioneers this idea of splitting deals with far
flung dealers because instead of trying to make their money
as much as they can in their own shops. Why
not share the connections and and then everyone will eventually
do well. And so this a network was a new
(18:57):
concept and totally not what Gogozian would have done. This
was very much Castelle. And you know, Gogozian, uh was charismatic,
but he was also a very aggressive guy. Why he
hadn't showed that before, I don't know, but now he
was very aggressive and uh he started uh selling paintings
much as he had the frame posters and in l A.
(19:19):
He just was sort of a guy who would uh
buttonhole you on the street and say, I know you're
a dealer, you might be interested in this guy's work
and uh. And they said that, They said that Ralph
Lauren used to self ties to people table side. Lauren
would like walk up to people and show them like
his collection of ties. Funny. Well, that's that's basically I mean.
(19:40):
And and that's the way Gogozian was regarded as a
totally bumptious kind of you know, o riviste or whatever.
And uh. And there was one person who didn't agree
with that take, and that was Castelli. Would people tell
you who knew Castelli, that he was really very astute
about art, that he knew good art, or was he
(20:00):
the same? Was all about markets? Was the first? Well
that's a good question. Um. You know people are always
talking about an I does this guy have an eye?
Does he have a good critical eye? Can he really
recognize which is the good painting which is not the
good painting? And it was it was assumed by everybody
that Leo Castelli had a great eye. But those who
(20:22):
are real cognizanti in this world would tell you that
it was actually his wife, Alana Sana Bend who had
the great eye. Um. But you know, uh, you talked
to a really really smart critic like Robert Store, who
was the head of the Yale Art School, and he
would say it was Alana all the way. And and
Costelli was just writing on on her. You know that's
(20:44):
not a very good analogy, but was writing on her judgment,
her judgment. Robert Store, the the the great authority I've
just quoted here, would be just as quick to sort
of disparage go goes In as he was to disparaged Castelle. Um.
He would say that no, no go goes In, It's
(21:05):
just a retailed guy. That was his. He's just a
retailed guy. Um. But you know, uh, I don't think
that's fair. I I remember I said not long ago
that I am not an art expert, I'm not an
art critic. But I will say that every virtually every artwork,
every artist that goes in has represented that I'm going
to see. I've just felt excited and drawn to that art.
(21:29):
And and and people who really are in this business
are actually very respectful of Larry's eye. He's really got it.
And you want, when you walk into his gallery, it's
not just the art, but it's the frames. Back to
the frames. But now there you know, it's no simple
frames in in l a out of the trunk. It's
beautiful frames, and it's beautiful floors, and it's and it's
(21:50):
it's actually you know, very attractive people to you know,
uh you in. I mean, it's all really done perfectly.
And uh. And of course he's also the one who
had I don't know if the eye is the right
way putting it, but the the sense the prescience to
start expanding, uh, not only to another gallery in New York.
(22:12):
And there were a few who had two galleries in
New York, but to um to the rest of the world.
So I don't even know what the count is, whether
it's seventeen galleries or nineteen. It's somewhere between seventeen and nineteen.
We'll have to see how it settles. But um, you know,
this was a guy who who made his first move
in that regard in about two thousand when he went
(22:33):
to London. Um. There's a cute little story. I could
it just takes a minute because it's charming. Larry had
no thought of going to London. Uh. He was settled
in New York. UM. But he had someone who worked
from a lovely woman named Molly Dent Brocklehurst. There's a
name for you. And she was, as you might expect,
(22:55):
a very blue blood person. She was from. She was
English and she worked for Larry in his New York
Um gallery and the one that the flagship across from
the Carlisle Hotel. And one of her artists that she
handled for him was Damien Hurst. And Damien Hurst. Uh,
you know, we could talk for hours about Damian Hurst. Uh,
(23:16):
but the fact is hugely successful and the kind of
art that artists that that goes in liked best, the
kind who could churn out a stuff, you know, like
in a production line. Um. And so Molly was very
important to go goes In because she was the go
between with Damien Hurst. And one day she said to Larry,
I'm sorry, I've got to leave you because my father
(23:38):
has just died. There's a castle in the family and
I have to go tend to the castle. Um And
Larry took a beat and he said, well, why don't
you just open a Go goes In office in London
and then you can tend to your castle and Damien
Hurst is there anyway, and you can sell some art.
And so that's exactly what happened. That that happened to
(23:58):
be just the time that the Russian oligarchs were starting
to come over, and so there was this whole new
you know, vein of big money um and and Larry,
Larry didn't know that was going to happen. It just
it just happened out of serendipitous A lot of luck
involved with it. There is a lot of luck. Now
(24:18):
you touched on Mary Boone, so I have on my
own history with so I'm told I just want to ask,
you know, in the way that people build these careers
because because part of that experience for me, I looked
at it was kind of inexplicable, you know when I
when I went through what I went through, which was,
you know, very specifically, to purchase a painting by a
(24:40):
painter in a certain year, and let's say that it
was two thousand ten or two thousand eleven, and I
pay a five figure some for that painting, and then
I say, I want you to go find me this
other painting that's an older painting that might be worth
twice as much as that are more, and you then
sell me that painting. I think, selling me that painting,
(25:01):
But what we find out is it's a copy you
had made of that painting, and yet you charge me
the amount of money. This was kind of the undoing
of the whole thing for her when you represent that
you charge me a hundred and ninety thousand dollars when
I just bought the other one from you two weeks
ago for eighty five thousand dollars. Why would I pay
you a hundred ninety thousand for the one when I
(25:21):
just paid you eighty five for the one? That was frustrating.
There was a lot of things that made it difficult
for her to escape um responsibility, and and and and
when she settled with me means it's all on public record.
She she writes me a check for a million dollars
to go away. And my point is is that that
we all sat there the the the statute of limitations
(25:43):
had passed in terms of the criminal and we get
ready to do a civil trial and we're gonna we're
gonna go after a lot of emails of her. And
they settled the case very quickly at that point, because
you realize she didn't wake up one day and decided
to do this to me that day. We wondered whether
there was something and I'm wondering for someone who had
a career like hers, it was so you know important,
(26:05):
I mean, she represented people. She must Someone said to me,
you know, she'll just turn around and take a busk
yet out of the bin. That she hasn't selled to
cover her her losses, you know, to her in this litigation,
What do you think happened with someone like her? Why? Well,
here's what occurs to me to say. I mean, I've
interviewed Mary. I interviewed her a good long time for
the book. And then as the book was getting ready
(26:28):
to be published. Of course she was. Um Uh. She
was sentenced and for tax invasion, nail for tax evasion.
And so I went to interview her again. Um and
that actually became an article in Town Country. UM. So
I spent quite a bit of time with her, um
interviewed after the sentencing. Yes, yes, yes, spent a little
(26:48):
time in her gallery. UM. I think she was still
sort of trying to shape the narrative there and and
thought I could do this, and and maybe she thought
Town Country was a pretty sympathetic audience, which I suppose
it's fair to say it is. Um. But I had, well,
first of all, I had liked her. You know that
she's she's easy to like. She uh, she's charming, she's
(27:12):
sort of she's she's sexy. Felin is a great word
for it. And um uh. And certainly in those early
days she showed uh enormous uh cleverness in how she
built her business. By the way, Gogzian was the one
who discovered David Sally. Um Mary Boonett had a chance.
(27:34):
She looked at his work early on, but she'd rejected it.
She wasn't bold enough and that instance to think that
that would work for her. But Gogozian went to see
Sally's work and uh, and he took a chance. He
had rented aloft on the fifth floor overlooking for twenty
West Broadway, which for twenty West Broadway was the big
(27:55):
artist cooperative. Leo Castelli the king of the realm. And
so when go goes Ian rented a loft space on
the fifth floor literally looking down at the Kingdom, it
was kind of almost creepy, you know. It was like
he was looking down to what he was going to
conquer one days. Yes, he really was. And so he
(28:17):
had this show for for David Sally. It did very well.
He sold quite a number of paintings. Mary Boone came
across the street from her new little um gallery IF
at four twenty and she ended up taking Sally because
you know, it goes in At that point it was
just a guy from California. He didn't really know he
wasn't a dealer. He had to admit he was not
(28:37):
yet a dealer um and that's actually what drove him
to be kind of a different dealer. Instead of representing
an artist's primary work. In other words, you find an artist,
you discover him. He paints the painting. You take it
and you sell it to a collector. That's primary. That's
the primary market. If the art has been sold once,
(29:00):
then it doesn't matter how it sold the second time.
Might be an auction, might be a private deal, whatever
that then it's a secondary market. So Larry was always
most interested in the secondary market because there was more
money in it. It was usually a fifty fifty situation.
And uh, because there was just more art to buy
and sell. He would he would go to someone's house
(29:20):
for dinner. He would see work on the walls. He
would remember that who were businessmen. Yeah, meaning when you're
dealing with artists their artists. Yeah, And when I'm taking
the paintings that somebody who is the owner wants to sell,
everybody who realizes it's commerce and and and you know,
I mean he did discover Boskia very early on. I
wasn't the first, but the second, I would say, in
(29:42):
fairness to Larry um and um. And he uh did
enormously well with Boskia. But even so that again was
a primary artist. Uh. The work was selling for a
few thousand dollars in the early eighties, whereas only a
few years later in the eighties, UH Gogozian was representing
(30:04):
UM people like Sign New House and and and probably
getting half of a seventeen million dollar sales. So secondary
work was really where the big money was, and that's
where Gagosian went the one. The other thing I would
just say about Mary is that I think I think
that what she did really shocked the whole art community,
(30:26):
the whole art market, and I don't think that people
do that sort of thing a lot. Now, having just
said that, Larry Gogzian did have to give four million
and change to the to the I R S for
uh sending works that had been bought to a buyer's
second residents and and state rather than the first one.
(30:47):
You know, that sort of thing you that dealers can
sometimes do. I have one last question for you. I
want to say that you know this kid from the
Upper West Side where you grew up in the Upper
West Side of Manhattan, who's tooling around owned a New
Mexico with a guitar. He doesn't know what he wants
to do, he's running for the Santa Fe sports page.
And then you you enter a world in which you
(31:09):
see a lot of things that you experienced a lot
of things, and one of them is love. One of
them is you meet your wife, Yes in the in
the in the Towers of Manhattan show Yes. I think
that's fair. That well. Uh my wife, Gaiford Steinberg Um
was married to a very well known Titan of Wall Streets,
Saul Steinberg Uh no secret there. They had a wonderful
(31:33):
marriage for for many years, but he did eventually die
after a long lingering situation. I knew Gaifrid through a
few different women who are sort of hostesses around town
who would have me as a single guy at the table.
And I remember meeting her a first time and just
(31:54):
being dazzled by her intelligence or beauty. And so some
months after Saul died, I just thought, I really loved
talking to that woman. Let's just invite her to lunch
and see what happens. And we went to lunch and
we had a great time, and we went to dinner,
and one thing led to another. So that was We're
celebrating our fifth anniversary on Saturday. Michael Schnayerson his latest
(32:18):
book is Boom. If you want to hear more about
the social scene at the height of the nineteen eighties,
you can't get a better storyteller than Tina Brown, who
took over Vanity Fair just in time to document that
period's excesses. We were in the Reagan era, right, we
just role Reagan was on a glide path to re election.
(32:40):
I came in as a London outsider who didn't know
really much about America, and I was just plunged into
this world of Reagan's America, which was this kind of
black tie, wildly consumers. You know, Bob, he was on
the magazine. It was just, I mean, it boggles my
(33:01):
mind when I when I read the diaries now and
when I started to compile them, how much We went
out for a link to my full interview with Tina Brown.
Text Tina to seven zero one zero one. This is
(33:28):
Alec Baldwin and you're listening to. Here's the thing. Richard
Fagan's New York gallery has sold hundreds of millions of
dollars of the greatest works of art from the Renaissance
through boscuillat his expertise as the Italian Baroque. He was
one of the most important dealers to the newly minted
millionaires of nineteen eighties New York, who all bought their
(33:51):
art and their cultural cash from Figen. As Sathobies put it, quote,
Richard's a secret is to buy what's not in fashion
and to trust his keen eye for quality unquote. In
recent years he's been stepping back from the day to
day leadership of the gallery, but his taste is still
evident in its choices. Just this year, before the pandemic hit,
(34:15):
they put up an exhibit of old Master and nineteenth
century drawings. Richard Fagan is a dealer, but says he's
really a collector, a passion he's had his entire life.
The eleven year old Richard Figen earned a hundred dollars
and the first thing I bought was a hundred dollars.
You bought a painting for a hundred dollars. And when
you told your parents you're gonna take the hundred dollars
(34:38):
of your personal fortune, all of your personal fortune, and
by a painting with it, what did they say? I
don't think they much interfered. They just they just s't
as long as you were happy, as long as you
left them alone and bother them. He's gonna go buy
a painting, okay, So what let him go buy some
paintings and you bought what painting? I bought a your
(35:00):
painting from the sixteenth century in an antique store near
where I lived for a hundred dollars. And what was
what was it about? I mean it was it really
about an appreciation of art? Partially partially it was financial
At eleven, Yeah, you understood the equity involved at that
(35:21):
age because you were surrounded. But your father was successful. Yeah,
but he was a lawyer. He didn't have any art,
didn't have any art. So how does what's the two
thousand one a Space Odyssey moment for you? When the
Black Monoliths shows up in your bedroom and tells you
you need to go out and buy art? I don't know.
(35:41):
I guess I recognize the values, and I felt that
there was a vast difference between price and value. So
I decided to take advantage of that, and I ended
up selling it for a hundred dollars. It was not
a very successful It wasn't a score. It wasn't a
big coup for you. Does this progress or was was
it a one off? Would you keep going even when
(36:02):
you were eleven? You kept going? I kept going. When
did the aesthetic enter the picture? It entered it fairly early.
As I got more involved and I got to understand more,
then the aesthetics took over. In the beginning, I went
to work for a company that was in my family,
(36:22):
an insurance company on the West Coast, Beneficial Standard. Yeah,
did you enjoy that? I enjoyed the investment aspect, but
the art that I wanted as chase was in New York.
So I arranged to buy art for the chairman of
our company, which brought me to New York frequently, and
I ended up staying in New York. You sold your
(36:43):
seat on the Exchange in fifty seven. Yes, yes, one
of the great Wall Street figures told me that I
wouldn't like it, and he was right, so that I
only had that seat for about a year and you
and you and you dumped your seat on the Stock
Exchange dumped. I sold it for a lot of my
broken It cost me fifty dollars. I had about six
(37:08):
thousand dollars of initiation visa or whatever, and I sat
for the fifty six thousands. To start your own art, yes, business,
your own gallery, yes, But then you but when you
open up, Richard Feigen, your first company, you've got to
get money to go buy pay or do people lend
you to the people? Do they consign the pass and consignment?
(37:30):
And when did things begin to change for you? When
did you start to really take off, if you will,
and sell more paintings and build your business. Well, when
I got to know the collectors and the museums. That
became very much involved with a number of museums, and
I began to either know what they wanted or what
they ought to want, and then I have to convince
(37:54):
them well of what they ought to want if they're
lacking certain museums themselves or clients of your Oh yes,
a lot of museums. Was there a sale or a
transaction that you facilitated back then that really began to
make your reputation? Was there when you recall what you
thought that was a big turning point from my company? Um,
I don't think there was a single instance. But but
(38:17):
I've dealt with most of the major museums in the world,
I mean the Metropolitan National Gallery to Louver and so on,
and I would spend time look at their collection, decide
they need such just such a painting, and then if
I had it, I would offer it to them. Hopefully
they would agree with me. Someone that you were an
(38:39):
early proponent of was Bacon, who I am a great
admirer of. So I'm assuming you knew him. You must
have known him, correct. I never met Bacon. You never did.
I had the first Bacon show, I think in America,
but I didn't deal with him directly. I just brought
up his work around because I admired it. He originally
(39:02):
said he was going to come to my opening, and
I thought that was great. And then I later got
a call that he wanted me to fix him up
with some young boys, and I said, I'm I'm out
of my water here. I'm not up to this. I
couldn't handle it, so I dissuaded him from coming. You're
(39:23):
one chance to meet Bacon. I suppose I could have
met him. Had you been willing to pimp for Bacon,
you might have had a nice friendship. Yeah, I might have. Yeah,
but when I can't remember the exact timing. But I
bought my friends this Bacon show. The whole show of
(39:44):
fourteen paintings cost me an average of probably six seven painting,
and I sold him for a thousand, twelve paintings that
are individually worth now hundreds of thousands and hundreds of
thousands of dollars. Yeah, how would you describe the art
(40:05):
market today compared to when you first arrived here and
moved here in the sixties. And I think that the
art market is much much larger now, much more international,
and um, the focus has changed a lot. Right now,
the old master market is largely dead unless you have
(40:27):
something extraordinary that nobody's ever seen before. There's very small
market for old masters, largely contemporary, and that's where all
the focus of the spotlight has been on the contemporary.
So I may see permanent value in things and end
up buying it, and there isn't that much of a
market for it. I think when you see someone you
(40:50):
read about them in the paper and they say that
this guy bought this painting, uh uh, this Picasso or whatever,
some huge name in the in that world, and they
paid five million dollars for the painting they paid through
the highest amount ever paid. Do those people always assume
that the day will come that they'll sell that painting
(41:12):
for more than five million dollars or do they ever
sit there and say, I don't care about that, I
just want that painting because I love that painting. It's
always about or is it always about equity and markets
and resale about eventually? I think it depends a lot
on the individual. You know, um, I think of spending
that kind of money, usually they have to be assured
(41:36):
that the intrinsic value is there and we're going to
get it back. Some people don't much care. For some
people that five million dollars may not be that much.
The documentary that you were in, the Art of the Steel,
I want to get to something about that in a moment.
(41:57):
But another documentary I saw they showed coons standing in
a laboratory like setting with a bunch of his uh disciples,
and they're all applying paint to these canvases and under
his direction, and they're asking basically, is it a coon's
(42:18):
if your hand never touches the brush? And he was unrepentant.
He said, oh no, I'm everything. He said, what they're
doing is completely in my direction. And there was a
bunch of them working simultaneous. He's going from canvas to
canvas to well, he has he has a sort of
a factory. Now, what do you think about though, I
think a lot of these values are confections, and I
(42:45):
think that Jeff Coon's is a very sophisticated and clever
guy and a substantial buyer of old Master pictures, which
I understand a lot of them are on loan to
the Metropolitan Museum. Things he bought Coons things he bought,
and he's very sophisticated. I do not believe he's an
(43:08):
artist of any consequence. You don't know a lot of
people would different from different with me on that. I
don't think. So. You've never transacted to Coons, You never
bought I've never bought or sold a Coons because you
didn't want to. No. I I don't get involved in
(43:29):
things where I have doubts about the intrinsic value. Ever, No,
really not, And I don't consider Jeff Coons an artist
of consequence. Do you think there's a market for a place,
a gallery to open in which you have, uh, you know,
the curators of the gallery, let's say, are people with
(43:50):
some experience, and on the walls they hang art of
people that are undiscovered that they really really believe it,
And all the art is for arguments sake. You know,
under to have thousand dollars, it's not super expensive. It's
not no six figure purchases there, maybe even under ten thousand,
there's a market for that. Do you think people want
to come in and they want to look at art
or do most people who have money to buy art
(44:12):
their big game hunters. They want famous, big pieces and
feathers in their cap and so forth. I think there's
very little now that remains undiscovered. The market has expanded
and there's so many people in it that uh, and
(44:34):
you can't predict which things are going to be successful
or not. Um. I remember years ago I was in
Japan with a very dear friend of mine, Jim Rosenquist,
we just died last year, and um, we were in
(44:55):
this gallery and in walks the artist Sama. Her work
at that time was very inexpensive. Since then, they've gotten expensive,
and you couldn't have predicted that. For me, it's relatively
easy to tell which things they have permanent importance. That
(45:15):
doesn't mean that they're ever going to be picked up
by the market collectible expensive. There are things today that
I'm just flabber gasid at the prices they bring, because
I don't regard them as being intrinsically very significant. Whereas
five years ago they caused very little. Now their prices
are enormous. That doesn't happen very often, and you can't
(45:38):
tell what which things are going to have that kind
of appreciation. The documentary that you were in, Art of
the Steel, Uh, one of my favorite documentaries about the
acquisition of the Barnes collection, folded into the the Philadelphia
Museum and all the sterm and drawing about that. And
(45:58):
there you are at an shib but I think it's
either Christie's or south Aby's. And you say some are
my favorite quote, some art is attractive and not very significant,
significant enough, very attractive, And then you point to a painting, say,
now this picture, this painting is neither significant nor attractor,
but it'll sell for thirty million dollars or some obscene
amount of money. Yeah. I got a lot of flak
out of it. Really no. And the Barnes is a
(46:21):
very good example, because the Barnes Foundation I was very
much opposed to moving it, and they wanted it downtown
for tourist reasons. I always maintained it was it was
fine where it was, and if they wanted to make
it accessible to the general public, they could have run
(46:44):
shuttle buses back and forth. It was only a about
a fifteen minute trip. I visited it down in Philadelphia.
They tried to red they tried to recreate the Saints
and so on. I think that was absurd. Um, I
think it's been successful. I assume there are crowds of
(47:05):
people that come and see it, But I still think
it could have been handled were in their in their
other building where they were, which was an admirable building.
I don't think they had to move it is There
is there a if you go to one city and
you're gonna go and see the art in that city,
you're gonna pick one. Which one would you pick? I
(47:27):
would probably pick London. You would why because the National
Gallery has a great collection. The Tate Gallery has always
been very active. Uh, it's a it's a real and
the new British artists are continue to be very important.
(47:47):
They were when I was involved with giving exhibitions. I
focused on that new generation of British artists. Still longer
a new generation, they're now older, much revered group of artists,
but they've had a very significant um role in what's
(48:11):
going on today. So I think that Tate is important,
The National Gallery in London is important, and so on.
Now in your own home is art something that certain
pieces survive and they stay there forever. Of their pieces
(48:32):
that you have on a wall, and they're never gonna
leave that wall, and they live there forever. Pieces you love.
What is the art in your home change over time? Now?
The stuff of my home generally is stuff that I
own personally, and it's pretty stable as stays there stuff
you love. Oh, I have, uh, a pretty large group
of very early Italian pictures from the from fifteen centuries,
(49:01):
which is a is a period that interests me a lot.
Why First of all, I like it esthetically, and secondly
it's important in terms of the evolution of our history.
Some of the things in that period interests me intellectually.
(49:22):
So I have a large group of those things. Every
now and then I give something to the Yale Art Gallery.
But so you have beyond your home and in your gallery,
do you have in storage tons and tons of pieces
that you own? Not tons and tons of things, but
some some things I have, but I don't keep it
(49:44):
in storage. It usually is on my wall in my
home if it's personal gallery or in my gallery. And
I don't generally change that around that much. There's not
that much that interests me enough to buy it. I
don't have that big, diverse and inventory, Richard Fagin. Last year,
(50:08):
Fagen sold some of those personal treasures to fund his retirement.
This is Alec Baldwin, and you were listening to here's
the thing.
Host
Alec Baldwin
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