A couple of weeks ago I saw A Foreigner Called Picasso, an exhibition at the Gagosian Gallery, a commercial dealer, that was so good I wrote two stories about it. The art was fantastic. The exhibition was provocative, succinct, intellectually sound, and empowering, and by “empowering,” I mean it promoted a one-on-one experience with art unburdened by curatorial blather.
Why, I thought, haven’t I written more about dealer exhibitions? I certainly write plenty about art fairs and auctions. I adore dealers, who shepherd careers and collections and influence public taste. They’re often connoisseurs. They suffer fools, some grudgingly but almost all diplomatically. With the exception of big corporate dealers, or a dealer who grabs a booming artist’s secondary market, they don’t strike oil every day. Dealers sell art, but they deal with artists, who are often fun and entrancing but sometimes not.
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