Boom: Mad Money, Mega Dealers, and the Rise of Contemporary Art

by Michael Shnayerson

Overview

The meteoric rise of the largest unregulated financial market in the world — for contemporary art — is driven by a few passionate, guileful, and very hard-nosed dealers. They can make and break careers and fortunes.

The contemporary art market is an international juggernaut, throwing off multimillion-dollar deals as wealthy buyers move from fair to fair, auction to auction, party to glittering party. But none of it would happen without the dealers-the tastemakers who back emerging artists and steer them to success, often to see them picked off by a rival.

Dealers operate within a private world of handshake agreements, negotiating for the highest commissions. Michael Shnayerson, a longtime contributing editor to Vanity Fair, writes the first ever definitive history of their activities. He has spoken to all of today's so-called mega dealers — Larry Gagosian, David Zwirner, Arne and Marc Glimcher, and Iwan Wirth — along with dozens of other dealers — from Irving Blum to Gavin Brown — who worked with the greatest artists of their times: Jackson Pollock, Andy Warhol, Cy Twombly, and more.

This kaleidoscopic history begins in the mid-1940s in genteel poverty with a scattering of galleries in midtown Manhattan, takes us through the ramshackle 1950s studios of Coenties Slip, the hipster locations in SoHo and Chelsea, London's Bond Street, and across the terraces of Art Basel until today. Now, dealers and auctioneers are seeking the first billion-dollar painting. It hasn't happened yet, but they are confident they can push the price there soon.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781610398404
Publisher:	PublicAffairs
Publication date:	05/21/2019
Pages:	464
Sales rank:	457,860
Product dimensions:	6.10(w) x 9.40(h) x 1.70(d)

About the Author

Michael Shnayerson is a long-time contributing editor to Vanity Fair and the author of eight books on a range of nonfiction subjects, from biographies of entertainer Harry Belafonte (My Song) and New York governor Andrew Cuomo (The Contender) to narrative-driven accounts of drug-resistant bacteria (The Killer Within) and mountaintop coal removal (Coal River). Shnayerson is married to Gayfryd Steinberg, and lives in Sag Harbor and Manhattan.

Table of Contents

Author's Note ix

Prologue The Kings and Their Court 1

Part I Miracle On 57th Street 1947-1979

Chapter 1 Before Downtown 15

Chapter 2 The Elegant Mr. Castelli 35

Chapter 3 Pop, Minimalism, and the Move to SoHo 61

Part II The Eighties Explode 1979-1990

Chapter 4 Young Man in a Hurry 81

Chapter 5 The Start of a Dissolute Decade 99

Chapter 6 SoHo and Beyond 118

Chapter 7 Boom, Then Gloom 136

Part III Reinventing The Contemporary 1990-2008

Chapter 8 Up from the Ashes 151

Chapter 9 The Europeans Swoop In 168

Chapter 10 The Curious Charm of Chelsea 186

Chapter 11 The Mega Dealers 200

Chapter 12 LA Rising 224

Part IV Apocalypse Not 2009-2014

Chapter 13 A Most Astonishing Revival 247

Chapter 14 Lawsuits and London 262

Chapter 15 Larry's Annus Horribilis 275

Chapter 16 A Market for Black Artists at Last 289

Chapter 17 A Colombian Fairy Tale 304

Chapter 18 The Art Farmers 315

Part V Vying For Supremacy 2015-2019

Chapter 19 A Question of Succession 327

Chapter 20 Turbulence at Two Citadels of Art 339

Chapter 21 Art Fairs Forever 356

Chapter 22 Dirty Laundry 366

Chapter 23 The Dealer Is Present 372

Chapter 24 Of Sharks and Suckerfish 382

Acknowledgments 397

Notes 401

Bibliography 431

Index 437

Editorial Reviews

02/25/2019

Journalist Shnayerson (The Car That Could) traces the back-stabbing, money-driven history of the contemporary art market in this engrossing account. Drawing together historic documents and interviews with artists and gallery owners, Shnayerson reveals how colorful dealers propelled the market from one of the love of collecting in the 1940s into today’s “big way that a lot of rich people were going to express themselves.” Betty Parsons nurtured and promoted burgeoning talent in her Upper East Side gallery in the 1940s (representing Alfonso Ossorio, Theodoros Stamos, and Hedda Sterne); in the 1950s, Leo Castelli provided stipends and established satellite dealers worldwide, representing Willem de Kooning, Franz Kline, and Robert Rauschenberg. The world of art dealing exploded in the 1970s, when Larry Gagosian evolved from struggling poster salesman in L.A. into the world’s most powerful and controversial art dealer, poaching artists, selling art on the secondary market, and establishing galleries around the world. Other galleries followed his lead, and the price of art rose so high that, for many collectors, art became an even more lucrative investment than stocks. Focusing on personalities as much as business development, Shnayerson’s writing is conversational and accessible, even for those without deep art knowledge. Fast-paced and eye-opening, this is a wildly entertaining business history. (May)

Publishers Weekly

"The narrative is packed with scrumptious anecdotes and revealing portraits of key players and artists... In this rich, superbly nuanced history, Shnayerson fully demonstrates that he has his finger on the financial pulse of modern art."—Kirkus, Starred Review

"Focusing on personalities as much as business development, Shnayerson's writing is conversational and accessible, even for those without deep art knowledge. Fast-paced and eye-opening, this is a wildly entertaining business history."—Publishers Weekly

"In Boom, Michael
Shnayerson masterfully traces the blaze-like contemporary art market back to what now seem like unassuming origins. He tells how, somewhere along the way,
dealers persuaded the rest of the art world that what they were looking at was not as important as why they were looking at it. And the why, as it turns out,
was money."—Graydon Carter, former editor of Vanity Fair and founder of Air Mail newsletter

"How did the art world-the rarefied, decorous realm of a few hundred in the 1960s-become the art market? Michael Shnayerson penetrates the mysterious conclave of taste, style and money in this sparkling, high-octane account. It's all here and beautifully bound together, from Lucien Freud's gambling debts to the AIDS epidemic to private museums to the magical question of whether the artist makes the dealer or the dealer the artist."—Stacy Schiff, author of Cleopatra: A Life and The Witches: Salem, 1692

"Boom reflects better than anything I have read the characters, the motives, and the overall vibe of the contemporary art world."—Daniel Weiss, President and CEO of the Metropolitan Museum of Art

"The high end of the contemporary art market is driven by branding, backstories, mega dealers, art fairs, art investment funds, and occasionally, a hugely talented artist. Most important, it is driven by people. Michael Shnayerson has done the best job I know in pulling all these together. Think of the book as a 400-page Vanity Fair article (where he is a longtime contributing editor). I offer that comparison as a compliment to its style and depth of detail.

He has captured profiles of the mega-dealers: Gagosian, Zwirner, Wirth, and the Glimchers; the billionaire collectors; and the lawsuits, with background and astute observations. My own books on the contemporary art market would have been much improved this had come earlier. A great read."—Don Thompson is the author of The $12 Million Stuffed Shark: The Curious Economics of Contemporary Art, and The Orange Balloon Dog: Bubbles, Turmoil and Avarice in the Contemporary Art Market

"Part Painted Bird,
part Off the Wall, and part Duveen, Michael Shnayerson's Boom deftly captures the extraordinary dynamics at work in the contemporary art market by focusing on the global mega dealers and their constantly evolving stable of artists, many of whom together have become fabulously rich beyond their wildest dreams. In
Shnayerson's confident hands, the story of their successes is riveting,
informative, and often hard to fathom."—William Cohan, author of House of Cards: A Tale of Hubris and Wretched Excess on Wall Street

"The book is a pleasure to read, lively, smart, and wonderfully informative, full of the big personalities, genius, passion, and skullduggery of the contemporary art world."—Roxana Robinson author of Georgia O'Keeffe: A Life

From the Publisher

★ 2019-02-13

An inside portrait of the movers and shakers of modern art.

In this hefty, meticulously researched history, Vanity Fair contributing editor Shnayerson (The Contender: Andrew Cuomo, a Biography, 2015, etc.) recounts the absorbing story of "how a coterie of dealers made a global market for contemporary art." He opens with the rise of abstract expressionism and the "rather modest and uncertain beginnings" of galleries in the late 1940s, and he ends with the "wildly unpredictable financial roller coaster" of today. From the start, the author realized he would need to talk to the "art market's four most powerful figures": Arne Glimcher, Iwan Wirth, David Zwirner, and the "undisputed mega of megas," Larry Gagosian. He did, along with numerous other dealers, critics, and collectors, and these conversations give the book an exquisite intimacy and air of excitement. Along the way, Shnayerson learned that "nobody really needs a painting," as one dealer told him. "It's an act of collective faith what an object is worth." Dealers make "sure that important art feels important" and worth the investment. In 1957, Leo Castelli, the "greatest dealer of his day," opened his gallery and "let his art sell itself." His clients were a who's who of the time: de Kooning, Rauschenberg, Pollock, Johns, Lichtenstein, and, later, Warhol. In 1979, Gagosian opened his first New York gallery, offering Cy Twombly and David Salle. Glimcher soon followed. In 1980, Glimcher "startled the art world" by selling Johns' Three Flags for $1 million, and Gagosian continued to battle with the "brilliant, but drug-troubled, Basquiat." Shnayerson incisively describes dealers poaching from each other, recessions negatively affecting markets, how galleries and auction houses operate, and Instagram's emerging role in selling art. The narrative is packed with scrumptious anecdotes and revealing portraits of key players and artists. For example, for every two paintings Agnes Martin offered Glimcher, she'd destroy 10 while he watched.

In this rich, superbly nuanced history, Shnayerson fully demonstrates that he has his finger on the financial pulse of modern art.

Kirkus Reviews

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