Here’s something you don’t see every day: the world’s most respected art critic interviewing the world’s most famous art dealer. But thanks to Numero magazine, we now have the pleasure of reading Roberta Smith’s interview with Larry Gagosian (and, inevitably, his with her).
Here are the key takeways.
They aren’t exactly buddies. Smith, who has been an art critic since the 1970s, and spent 13 years as the New York Times co-chief art critic until she retired last year, reviewed dozens of Gagosian shows but “seldom exchanged more than ‘Hello, nice to see you,‘ and the occasional air kiss” with the dealer until this interview.
Gagosian is very hands-on. “I can’t micromanage eighteen galleries. It’s impossible,” he says, then adds, “I call up almost all of my directors, almost every day.”
He’s made some mistakes (actually, just two). “We had two galleries we shut down because it was a mistake to open them, and I recognized it pretty quickly. San Francisco was one of them.” He later names the other: Geneva.
Yes, Gagosian’s non-New York locations are often tryout spaces for artists. “Like off-Broadway,” Gagosian says.
He’s not Matthew Marks. “Matthew Marks, I think, is a genius in how he represents a very concise, distilled group of artists,” he says. “It’s incredibly focused—but that’s just not how I’m wired.”
His staff is the size of a regional law firm. “We’ve got about 300 people working for us,” the dealer said.
The first Picasso Gagosian ever bought came from a “hated guy.” “It’s hanging in my dining room. I’m not sure it was the very first, but it was close. A beautiful Dora Maar portrait. It came up at Sotheby’s with a high estimate of $900,000. It was the last lot in the sale, and no one bid on it. I bought it for the estimate—$900,000. Today, it’s a $40 million painting. Afterwards, I ran into someone on Madison Avenue with a sharp tongue who said, ‘You know why you got that Picasso so cheap, Larry? Because everyone hated the guy who sold it.‘ Worked out pretty well for me.”
Smith liked Gagosian’s first-ever show in New York, which he put on in his loft in the ’70s. “It might have been the first time I saw [David] Salle’s work,” she recalled. “I remember standing in a bedroom of that loft—it was high up—looking at a wonderful Salle painting over the bed.”
She also liked his 1986 show of Warhol’s famous “Oxidation,” or “Piss,” paintings. “I don’t think they really registered until that show. It gave me a whole new perspective on Warhol— as a kind of Abstract Expressionist manqué.”
Barbara Kruger introduced Gagosian to Basquiat. “[She] called and asked, ‘Are you in New York?‘ I said, ‘Yeah—I mean, you just called me on my New York number.’ She said, ‘I’m in a group show at Annina Nosei’s gallery around the corner. Why don’t you come to the opening?‘”
He thinks he should have kept Eli Broad’s Basquiat skull painting for himself. “I should’ve held on to that one. But I sold it to Eli [Broad], and that painting is arguably Basquiat’s masterpiece. … I sold it for $80,000 and felt like I’d won the lottery.” A painting from that series, which many in the market consider to be lesser than Broad’s, sold for Basquiat’s highest-ever auction price of $110 million in 2017.
He’s really just a shopkeeper. “We’re mostly just talking shop,” Smith observes. “I’m a shopkeeper, after all,” Gagosian replies.
