Seven Days in the Art World

by Sarah Thornton

  Art world insiders take a hard line on collecting for the “right” reasons. Acceptable motives include a love of art and a philanthropic desire to support artists. While it seems that everyone, including dealers, hates speculators, established collectors most loathe conspicuous social climbers. “Sometimes I’m embarrassed to identify myself as a collector. It’s about being rich, privileged, and powerful,” says Mera. Don listens to his wife with affection, then adds, “There is an implied incompetence. Out of everyone in the art world, collectors are the least professional. All they have to do is write a check.” Both Don and Mera have down-to-earth Brooklyn accents. Their heights differ by a full foot. Married since 1964, they rally the conversation between them. “‘Collector’ should be an earned category,” says Mera. “An artist doesn’t become an artist in a day, so a collector shouldn’t become a collector in a day. It’s a lifetime process.”

  The Rubells have a twenty-seven-room museum where they rotate displays of their family collection. They also have a research library containing over 30,000 volumes. “We read, we look, we hear, we travel, we commit, we talk, we sleep art. At the end of the day, we commit virtually every penny we make—all our resources—to it,” Mera declares with a half-raised fist. “But it’s not a sacrifice. It’s a real privilege.”

  Although their collection includes work from the 1960s, the family is particularly passionate about “emergent” art, a term that is indicative of changing times. In the 1980s, when people started to feel uncomfortable with the word avant-garde, they adopted the euphemism cutting-edge. Now, with emergent art, anticipation of market potential replaces vanguard experiment. And a model in which individuals surface haphazardly overthrows a linear history in which leaders advance movements. For the Rubells, nothing gives more pleasure than being there first. They enjoy being the first collectors to visit an artist’s studio, the first to buy work, and the first to exhibit it. As Mera explains earnestly, “With young artists, you find the greatest purity. When you buy from the first or second show, you’re inside the confidence-building, the identity-building of an artist. It’s not just about buying a piece. It’s about buying into someone’s life and where they are going with it. It’s a mutual commitment, which is pretty intense.”

  When I ask the couple if I can shadow them through the fair to observe their buying, Mera looks horrified. “Absolutely not!” she exclaims. “That’s like asking to come into our bedroom.”

  Eleven o’clock. And the collectors are off, slipping through the turnstiles and past the Swiss security as quickly as their dignity will allow. From behind me an avid collector half jokes, “You’re not shoving enough!” Those interested in blue-chip art vanish around the corners at ground level, while those in pursuit of emergent swarm up the escalators. Pulled along with the flow, I find myself upstairs with a good view of the Barbara Gladstone stand. A collector once told me, “Barbara is one of my compass points. There is north, south, east, and Barbara.” At Art Basel, the Gladstone booth is in the front row facing the courtyard, an aggressive location appropriate to a gallery that has been in operation since 1980 and sits on top of the ruthless ranks of the New York art world. Gladstone herself has jet-black hair and is dressed entirely in black Prada. One wouldn’t imagine that this sophisticated sorceress was once upon a time a Long Island housewife who taught art history part-time at the local university—until she disarms you with her down-home charm.

  Gladstone stands erect and gestures gracefully toward two photographs with high production values from Matthew Barney’s Drawing Restraint 9 series as she talks quietly to an older couple and smiles apologetically over their shoulder at a restless collector who is waiting in the wings. She has four staff members artfully posted around the stand, but they too are already trapped in intense exchanges. “The first hour is always exhilarating and horrendous,” says Gladstone. “It is flattering when good collectors make us their first stop, but it is impossible to have a real conversation. I depend on everybody’s good humor.” In her gallery, Gladstone enjoys having in-depth discussions about artists’ work, but here at the fair…“It is like being a whore in Amsterdam,” she says. “You’re trapped in these little rooms and there is no privacy whatsoever.”

  Gladstone tends to anchor her booth with a few key pieces. “I don’t want it to look like a bad group show,” she explains. “The trick is to find a space for everything, so each work has a chance to breathe. It means hanging less and thinking about the thematic connections and the sight lines.” Some believe that a good stand should represent an attitude or taste in art; it should declare the gallery brand. “I don’t know what the Gladstone brand is!” Gladstone protests, with a laugh. “My taste in art comes out of conceptualism. I know that! Even when I like paintings, they’re conceptual paintings. I like artists who have an individual vision, and I want each artist to be seen on his or her own.”

  “Barbara Gladstone. How are you?” She introduces herself with a girlish tilt of her head and an outstretched hand to the man who has been waiting patiently for her attention. She deftly ignores all the other people trying to greet her. They walk over to a predominantly pink Richard Prince painting that bears a joke about a man walking out of a brothel. “This is the first work in which Richard took images from 1970s girly magazines and collaged them across the canvas like he did with canceled checks,” says Gladstone to the gentleman. “It’s a very exciting departure for those of us who follow his work. A signature moment.”

  Gladstone admits that her agenda is “more complicated than it used to be, now that we take sales for granted.” Placing works in collections, “which are formed for the sake of living with and enjoying art,” is still paramount. But with the phenomenal growth of the art market, differentiating genuine collectors from speculators (whether they are mercenary collectors whose connoisseurship consists of a knowledge of prices or secondary-market dealers masquerading as collectors) is more difficult. “I used to know everybody,” says Gladstone matter-of-factly. “If I didn’t know them as clients, then I knew their names. But now there are new people constantly.”

  At Art Basel, one rarely witnesses a hard sell, but one increasingly overhears something I’ve come to recognize as a “hard buy.” This takes the form of the collector describing his own “unique selling points,” including notable works in his collection, the museum acquisition committees on which he sits, the way he is committed to loaning works, and that he often underwrites exhibition and catalogue costs. “Identifying people of consequence—it’s an educated guess or a couple of phone calls,” explains Gladstone. “The art world is still a village.”

  Amy Cappellazzo, the Christie’s specialist who helped me understand the auction world, saunters into view. Amid the intense dealer-collector interaction, she comes across as exceedingly relaxed. “Fairs are less stressful than auctions,” she explains. “There is something about standing before the object you want and the person you’re going to buy it from. I can see the appeal of the real-time transaction.” Cappellazzo beams, then confesses, “I just bought a great piece!” She tells me how much she loves Gabriel Orozco and recounts how she and her girlfriend have several pieces by the influential Mexican artist. Then, as if remembering that art fairs are an auction house’s competition, she adds, “Downstairs, it’s clear that dealers are having difficulty coming up with top-quality inventory. I saw a lot of ex-lots…” Then the big grin returns. “But, man, I’m happy!” She does a goofy finger-jive, which is interrupted by the bing of her BlackBerry. “Excuse me,” she says with a wink. “I’ve got to consult on condition for a client.”

  Two booths down from Barbara Gladstone is the stand of another dauntingly grand gallerist. In London, Victoria Miro Gallery enjoys 17,000 square feet of exhibition and office space. Here in Basel, the stand is a poky 800 square feet. Gallery director Glenn Scott Wright is a handsome mix of Southeast Asian and British, and he has one of those hard-to-place accents that attest to years of constant international travel. He’s comf
ortably gay in a world where even the straight men often come across as camp.

  There are no prices or red dots on the wall. Such an overt gesture at commerce is considered tacky. Moreover, a prospective buyer’s query about cost is, according to Scott Wright, “an opportunity for engagement.” To a young couple, about a small Chris Ofili painting of a stately black woman with what the artist might call “Afrodisiac” hair, Scott Wright explains, “The Tate owns a group of these watercolors. They’re also collected by MoMA and MOCA Los Angeles. In fact, they’re incredibly popular with museums.” Of course, this one is already reserved, but it could become available. He leans over and, in a hushed voice, shares the price. “I’ll give you an extra twenty percent,” says the husband. Scott Wright looks mortified. Only neophytes offer more than the asking price. “Please excuse me,” he says as he hotfoots it over to a collector who is admiring a punk-rococo vase by Grayson Perry. When gallerists are confident about demand for an artist’s work, they wouldn’t dream of surrendering it to the first comer or the highest bidder. They compile a list of interested parties so they can place the work in the most prestigious home. It’s an essential part of managing the perception of their artists. Unlike other industries, where buyers are anonymous and interchangeable, here artists’ reputations are enhanced or contaminated by the people who own their work.

  Scott Wright glances up. It’s the Rubells. The family roams through the stand without lingering in front of any particular work, then forms a tight huddle. Mera stands tall, with her arms behind her back. Don stoops, with his arms folded across his chest. Jason looks over his shoulder, then whispers. On another occasion Mera told me, “How do you know when you need to acquire a piece? How do you know when you are in love? If you listen to your emotions, you just know.” On a more rational note, Don added, “We meet the vast majority of artists, because when you’re acquiring young work, you can’t judge it by the art alone. You have to judge it by the character of the person making it.” And Mera elaborated: “Occasionally meeting an artist destroys the art. You almost don’t trust it. You think what you’re seeing in the work is an accident.” Then Don wrapped it up: “What we’re looking for is integrity.” All three Rubells peek over their shoulders and confer one last time. Jason goes over to Scott Wright, shakes with one hand and hugs with the other. Such behavior may appear peculiar, but it is typical of those who don’t want anyone to know where their acquisition interests lie for fear of attracting competition and sending up prices.

  Victoria Miro herself has not yet arrived. I once heard a rival dealer refer to her absence as an “artistic act.” Miro is perceived as aloof, or even shy, which is unusual in one who puts her name over the door. She claims not to enjoy the fairs, so she often arrives late and leaves early. Like many dealers, she sees her primary role as choosing, mentoring, and curating her artists. Collectors may come and go, but a strong stable of artists with developing careers is essential to a gallery’s success. In the business of museum-caliber art, supply is more delicate and dicey than demand.

  Scott Wright sees the Basel stand as an “interactive advertisement, which costs about the same as a year of full-page ads in Artforum.” On the coffee table in the center of the Miro stand is a copy of the extra-thick summer issue. Knight Landesman, one of Artforum International’s three publishers, just dropped it there. He’s five-foot-six but, dressed in a bright yellow suit and yellow-and-white check tie, he’s impossible to miss. All of his suits are made by a Hong Kong tailor in red, yellow, royal blue, or plaid fabric. Everyone knows Knight. Not only has he worked at the magazine for almost thirty years, he treats advertising sales as if it were performance art. “Twenty-five years ago, most galleries were national,” he tells me in sober contrast to his attire. “Nowadays there is hardly a gallerist anywhere that just shows the artists of his or her country. It would mean they were provincial and limited.” I follow Landesman as he talks. “Lately the globalization of the art world has accelerated. And art fairs have been good for our business,” he says. “For example, a Korean gallery took out an ad for the first time to tell everyone it’s in Basel.” Distracted by a pair of beautiful women, Landesman pauses for a moment of aesthetic appreciation, then concludes, “Both Art Basel and Artforum were prescient in defining themselves as international.”

  I find myself on the corner stand of another London gallery. In contrast to Miro’s colorful, painterly booth, Lisson Gallery’s is minimal and sculptural. Its owner, Nicholas Logsdail, was introduced to art by his uncle, Roald Dahl, who used to take him gallery hopping in London’s Cork Street in the 1950s. The first American whom Logsdail ever met was Walt Disney, who had come to their English country house to buy the rights to Dahl’s Gremlins. The imposing dealer boarded at Bryanston, then studied art at the Slade School of Fine Art in London. He’s never been a flashy dresser, and despite his wealth he lives in a studio apartment above one of his two gallery spaces. He is smoking a cigarette and studying a deep red Anish Kapoor wall sculpture with a slightly off-center hole. The stand is busy, but he ignores the mayhem. He laments the “hurry-hurry collectors who go to the hurry-hurry galleries to buy the hurry-hurry artists.” He likes artists “who are on a slow burn, very good, very serious, not in the fast track, but pursuing their own artistic interests with tenacity, quirkiness, and confidence.”

  In business since 1967, Logsdail first took a stand in Basel in 1972, when he was twenty-six, and he has never missed a year since. “It’s almost like science fiction, the déjà vu feeling of being in a time warp, returning to the same place at the beginning of June every year,” he says. In the early seventies there were only two fairs with international ambitions—Cologne, which started in 1969, and Basel. In the past fifteen years, however, international art fairs have proliferated. Now Lisson Gallery shows at an average of seven fairs a year, exhibiting different kinds of work in different places—placing an accent on its Spanish and Latin American artists at ARCO in Madrid or an emphasis on younger American work in Miami (where Art Basel runs a sister fair). The footfall at the combined fairs is such that 50 percent of the gallery’s turnover is done through these events.

  Logsdail distinguishes between galleries and what he disparages as “dealerships.” The former discover and develop artists; the latter trade in art objects. “The art world has no rules,” he explains. “So I attribute the longevity of the gallery to the fact that I wrote my own.” Many successful gallerists see themselves as mavericks. Some are artist-oriented dealers—they generally go to art school and give up being an artist when they discover they have an aptitude for organizing exhibitions. Others are collector-focused dealers—they tend to apprentice at Sotheby’s or Christie’s and often start out as collectors themselves. A third set might be called curators’ dealers—they study art history and excel at scholarly justifications of their artists’ work. In any case, there is no set training or certification. Anyone can call himself or herself a dealer or gallerist.

  Logsdail entertains me by cataloguing the less credible collecting types. “Speculators are like gambling addicts. They study the form, they read the magazines, they listen to the word on the street, they have hunches,” he asserts. “We complain, but the art world couldn’t function without them.” Then there are the trawlers. “It’s like the fishing industry,” he explains as he wrinkles his nose. “They are out there with a big net, so they don’t miss a thing and they can always say, ‘I was there, I have one, I bought that in 1986.’” By contrast, “buying in depth,” or the practice of acquiring many works by the same artist, is often cited as a very respectable way to collect.

  “A collection is more than the sum of its parts. It creates something unique,” says Logsdail. The worst collections are scrambled, disjointed, and fickle. The best have “a driving force.” Logsdail leans in mischievously and mentions the name of a collector. “He buys with his groin,” he says. “It isn’t my kind of collection, but it’s a great collection. Very coherent!” he adds with a smirk.

/>   2:00 P.M. Time to meet an Italian collector for lunch. Upstairs, in the VIP room, the horde is intent on getting its sushi now. After a lot of insistent finger-raising and intense eye contact, we finally order our food. Sofia Ricci (not her real name) is a full-time collector. She spends her days in galleries and museums, managing the arrival and departure of works to and from her collection, sorting out the insurance and the conservation. Still, because she and her husband own only about four hundred major works (as opposed to a couple of thousand) and because they don’t usually spend more than 300,000 euros (rather than several million) on any given piece, she does not always find herself at the top of the international pecking order.

  How’s it going? I ask.

  “Va tutto male,” she replies. “Everything is so expensive and every deal is so exhausting. We have bought some good art, but there is one artist—I cannot tell you who—that we really want to buy. On one stand there is an A-plus work, but it is on reserve and we don’t find out whether we can have it until five o’clock. On another stand there is a B-minus work by the same artist. It represents a point in the development of the artist’s oeuvre. It would complement what we already have, but it is not an iconic piece. The problem is that the B-minus dealer will hold the reserve only until four o’clock. We have got to slow down one dealer whilst we hurry up the other. È terribile!”

  How likely are you to get the A-plus work? I ask.