The Art Dealer's Apprentice: Behind the Scenes of the New York Art World

by David Guenther

Overview

The Art Dealer’s Apprentice tells the story of how the author moved to New York in 1989 as a young Midwesterner, found a job at an Upper East Side gallery, and became the protégé of Carla Panicali, an Italian countess and major international art world figure. From Carla – an extraordinary woman whom he deeply admired – the author learned to navigate the treacherous waters of authenticity, power and money in the art business and his own life. As gallery director, he gradually piloted the gallery through a sea of fakes, frauds, and unscrupulous colleagues, competitors, collectors and experts, until the art market crashed, and in the ensuing crisis, in the increasingly money-driven art world of the 1990s, he came to question even the authenticity of his friendship with Carla.

In The Art Dealer’s Apprentice, the author recounts how he learned the New York art business from the inside, including the roles of dealers, auction houses, runners, collectors and experts; the personal histories of famous artists and the art historical importance and salability of their work; and how paintings and sculptures were (or were not) authenticated and sold, often based, surprisingly, on factors having little to do with the artwork itself. The author also details how international business was done, in some cases through illicit transport of artworks, payoffs to experts, and Swiss bank accounts. Increasingly disillusioned, the author ultimately concludes that by the early 1990s, the art business was no longer really about art.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781538189672
Publisher:	Bloomsbury Academic
Publication date:	03/05/2024
Pages:	246
Product dimensions:	6.35(w) x 9.30(h) x 0.95(d)

About the Author

David Guenther was a gallery assistant and gallery director at Panicali Fine Art in New York from 1989-1992. He was also a gallery assistant at The Drawing Center in New York (1984-1985) and a journalist and art critic for The Pittsburgh Press, In Pittsburgh, New Art Examiner, Pittsburgh Magazine and other publications (1988-1989).

Editorial Reviews

The Art Dealer's Apprentice, equal parts memoir and tribute to the prominent dealer Carla Panicali, is a crash course in the shadow world of the art gallery system. David B. Guenther takes us along on his youthful journey through the New York gallery scene of the late 1980s and early 1990s, and regales the reader with vivid reminiscences of its lack of regulation, artworks and people of dubious authenticity, authentication certificates bought, sold, and refused outright — that is, all of the weighty trials and tribulations of the art world that still pollute the art market today.

Caterina Y. Pierre

The Art Dealer’s Apprentice is a charming coming of age story set in the high stakes, sometimes shady, world of tony Manhattan art galleries. If you ever wondered what happens behind the scenes, buy this book. Now.

Nancy Moses

In a memoir recounting his time as a gallery assistant, then gallery director at Panicali Fine Art on New York’s Upper East Side from 1989 to 1992, Guenther looks at the art business' ecosystem, one populated by collectors, dealers, artists, experts, and more than a few unscrupulous types. He writes that working at the “gallery turned out to be the most interesting job I ever had” and that he learned a lot about art, artists, art history, and international business. When the art market collapsed, and money and power played increasingly larger roles in the business of art, he soured on the field since it “wasn’t really about art anymore.” He writes about the people and personalities he encountered, including his mentor, Carla Panicali, owner of the eponymous gallery, and his experience as a Midwesterner adapting to living and working in New York. Documentation is an essential part of the art trade, and Guenther provides helpful notes and a sizable bibliography. Anyone interested in the business side of the art world will enjoy this candid and personal account.

Booklist

Guenther encounters the works of dozens of artists and devotes chapters to many of the most important ones his Panicali gallery deals with, including Kandinsky, Balthus, Dubuffet, Modigliani, Zurbarán, Rothko, Chagall, Renoir, Tamayo, Fontana, and others. He offers opinions on these painters and sculptors, some profound, some prosaic, but that is this book’s charm. It doesn’t try to be something other than what it is, unlike the art market of this period, which the author characterizes as spanning “the fakery, the genius, and everything in between.” …Perhaps this kind of Midwestern frankness is what made the author so successful during the course of the tale he relates, navigating a milieu of ersatz cultural sophistication and hyperbolic artistic faddism, in one of the most ruthless commercial cities in the world. Even more so, it makes The Art Dealer’s Apprentice a stimulating and refreshing read.

Pittsburgh Quarterly