Larry Gagosian
Encyclopedia
Lawrence Gilbert "Larry" Gagosian (born April 19, 1945) is an American art dealer
who owns the Gagosian Gallery
chain of art galleries, with three locations in New York City
(on Madison Avenue, West 24th St. and 21st St.), two locations in London
(on Britannia and Davies Streets), one location in Los Angeles
expanded in 2010 by architect Richard Meier
(in Beverly Hills), one in Rome
and one in Athens
. In 2010, two more branch galleries were opened in Paris
and Geneva
. A Hong Kong
gallery location opened in 2011. Working in concert with collectors including Douglas Cramer, Eli Broad
and Keith Barish he developed a reputation for knowing how to push prices upwards as well as for staging museum quality exhibitions.
In 2011, the British
magazine ArtReview
placed Gagosian fourth in their annual poll of "most powerful person in the art world".
Among the artists and estates currently represented by Gagosian are Joseph George, Richard Artschwager
, Cecily Brown
, Chris Burden
, Francesco Clemente
, John Currin
, Walter de Maria
, Bob Dylan
, Ellen Gallagher, Douglas Gordon
, Damien Hirst
, Howard Hodgkin
, Neil Jenney
, Mike Kelley, Anselm Kiefer
, Maya Lin
, Vera Lutter, Anselm Reyle
, Yayoi Kusama
, Edward Ruscha
, Jenny Saville
, Richard Serra
, David Smith
, Philip Taaffe
, Mark Tansey
, Robert Therrien, Cy Twombly
, Andy Warhol
, Jeff Koons
and Richard Wright. He also represents the Alberto Giacometti
estate in the United States.
to Armenian
parents. He got his start in business by selling posters near the campus of UCLA in Los Angeles. In the early 1980s he developed his business rapidly by exploiting the possibilities of reselling works of art by blue-chip modern and contemporary artists, earning the nickname "Go-Go" in the process. After establishing a New York gallery in the mid-1980s Gagosian began to work with a stable of super collectors including David Geffen
, Charles Saatchi
, David Ganek and Samuel Newhouse Jr. Bidding on behalf of Newhouse in 1988, Gagosian paid over $17 million dollars for "False Start" by Jasper Johns
, a then-record price for a work by a living artist. That record was beaten in 2008, when Gagosian paid $23.5 million dollars at Sotheby's in November 2007 for Jeff Koons's "Hanging Heart" (an artist who happens to belong to the Gagosian gallery's stable).
It has been alleged that, in 1990, Gagosian and Peter M. Brant
, formed the Contemporary Art Holding Corporation (CAHC) to buy 62 works of art, "All but four of these were sold immediately, earning $17m, on which $6.7m tax should have been paid."
In 2003, the US government took out a lawsuit against Gagosian and three others for $26.5 million in taxes.
In 2011, photographer Patrick Cariou prevailed against Gagosian, his gallery, and Richard Prince
in a major lawsuit over copyright infringement.
Gagosian is also in a Relationship with Fashion Editor and Creative Director of Garage Magazine, Shala Monroque.
Art dealer
An art dealer is a person or company that buys and sells works of art. Art dealers' professional associations serve to set high standards for accreditation or membership and to support art exhibitions and shows.-Role:...
who owns the Gagosian Gallery
Gagosian Gallery
Gagosian Gallery is a contemporary art gallery owned and directed by Larry Gagosian. There are currently eleven gallery spaces: three in New York; two in London; one in each of Beverly Hills, Rome, Athens, Paris, Geneva, Hong Kong and Moscow.-1980s:...
chain of art galleries, with three locations in New York City
New York City
New York is the most populous city in the United States and the center of the New York Metropolitan Area, one of the most populous metropolitan areas in the world. New York exerts a significant impact upon global commerce, finance, media, art, fashion, research, technology, education, and...
(on Madison Avenue, West 24th St. and 21st St.), two locations in London
London
London is the capital city of :England and the :United Kingdom, the largest metropolitan area in the United Kingdom, and the largest urban zone in the European Union by most measures. Located on the River Thames, London has been a major settlement for two millennia, its history going back to its...
(on Britannia and Davies Streets), one location in Los Angeles
Los Ángeles
Los Ángeles is the capital of the province of Biobío, in the commune of the same name, in Region VIII , in the center-south of Chile. It is located between the Laja and Biobío rivers. The population is 123,445 inhabitants...
expanded in 2010 by architect Richard Meier
Richard Meier
Richard Meier is an American architect, whose rationalist buildings make prominent use of the color white.- Biography :Meier is Jewish and was born in Newark, New Jersey...
(in Beverly Hills), one in Rome
Rome
Rome is the capital of Italy and the country's largest and most populated city and comune, with over 2.7 million residents in . The city is located in the central-western portion of the Italian Peninsula, on the Tiber River within the Lazio region of Italy.Rome's history spans two and a half...
and one in Athens
Athens
Athens , is the capital and largest city of Greece. Athens dominates the Attica region and is one of the world's oldest cities, as its recorded history spans around 3,400 years. Classical Athens was a powerful city-state...
. In 2010, two more branch galleries were opened in Paris
Paris
Paris is the capital and largest city in France, situated on the river Seine, in northern France, at the heart of the Île-de-France region...
and Geneva
Geneva
Geneva In the national languages of Switzerland the city is known as Genf , Ginevra and Genevra is the second-most-populous city in Switzerland and is the most populous city of Romandie, the French-speaking part of Switzerland...
. A Hong Kong
Hong Kong
Hong Kong is one of two Special Administrative Regions of the People's Republic of China , the other being Macau. A city-state situated on China's south coast and enclosed by the Pearl River Delta and South China Sea, it is renowned for its expansive skyline and deep natural harbour...
gallery location opened in 2011. Working in concert with collectors including Douglas Cramer, Eli Broad
Eli Broad
Eli Broad is an American businessman from Detroit, Michigan who resides in Los Angeles, California.-Life and career:An only child, Broad was born in the Bronx to Lithuanian Jewish immigrant parents. His father was a housepainter, his mother was a dressmaker. His family moved to Detroit when he...
and Keith Barish he developed a reputation for knowing how to push prices upwards as well as for staging museum quality exhibitions.
In 2011, the British
United Kingdom
The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern IrelandIn the United Kingdom and Dependencies, other languages have been officially recognised as legitimate autochthonous languages under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages...
magazine ArtReview
ArtReview
-Publication:ArtReview covers established and emerging artists in a mixture of international exhibition reviews, artist profiles, city art tours and artist commissions, including artist projects published as supplements to the regular edition of the magazine...
placed Gagosian fourth in their annual poll of "most powerful person in the art world".
Among the artists and estates currently represented by Gagosian are Joseph George, Richard Artschwager
Richard Artschwager
Richard Artschwager is an American painter, illustrator and sculptor, born in 1923 in Washington, D.C.. Artschwager is best known for his stylistic independence; although he has associations with the Pop Art movement, Conceptual art and Minimalism....
, Cecily Brown
Cecily Brown
Cecily Brown, born 1969 in London, is a British painter. She has a great respect for art history and her works reveal her reverence and high regard for artists such as Francisco de Goya, Nicolas Poussin, Willem de Kooning, and Joan Mitchell while incorporating into her works her distinct female...
, Chris Burden
Chris Burden
Christopher "Chris" Burden is an American artist working in performance, sculpture, and installation art.-Education:Burden studied for his B.A...
, Francesco Clemente
Francesco Clemente
Francesco Clemente is an Italian and American contemporary artist. Influenced by thinkers as diverse as Gregory Bateson, William Blake, Allen Ginsberg, and J Krishnamurti, the art of Francesco Clemente is inclusive and nomadic, crossing many borders, intellectual and geographical.Dividing his time...
, John Currin
John Currin
John Currin is an American painter. He is best known for satirical figurative paintings which deal with provocative sexual and social themes in a technically skillful manner. His work shows a wide range of influences, including sources as diverse as the Renaissance, popular culture magazines, and...
, Walter de Maria
Walter De Maria
-Early life and career:De Maria was born in Albany, California on October 1, 1935. He studied history and art at the University of California, Berkeley from 1953 to 1959. Although trained as a painter, De Maria soon turned to sculpture and began using other media...
, Bob Dylan
Bob Dylan
Bob Dylan is an American singer-songwriter, musician, poet, film director and painter. He has been a major and profoundly influential figure in popular music and culture for five decades. Much of his most celebrated work dates from the 1960s when he was an informal chronicler and a seemingly...
, Ellen Gallagher, Douglas Gordon
Douglas Gordon
Douglas Gordon is a Scottish artist; he won the Turner Prize in 1996 and the following year he represented Britain at the Venice Biennale...
, Damien Hirst
Damien Hirst
Damien Steven Hirst is an English artist, entrepreneur and art collector. He is the most prominent member of the group known as the Young British Artists , who dominated the art scene in Britain during the 1990s. He is internationally renowned, and is reportedly Britain's richest living artist,...
, Howard Hodgkin
Howard Hodgkin
Sir Gordon Howard Eliot Hodgkin CH, CBE is a British painter and printmaker. His work is most often associated with abstraction.-Early life:...
, Neil Jenney
Neil Jenney
Neil Jenney is a self-taught artist born in 1945. He attended Massachusetts College of Art in 1964. In 1966 he moved to New York City where he currently resides....
, Mike Kelley, Anselm Kiefer
Anselm Kiefer
Anselm Kiefer is a German painter and sculptor. He studied with Joseph Beuys and Peter Dreher during the 1970s. His works incorporate materials such as straw, ash, clay, lead, and shellac...
, Maya Lin
Maya Lin
Maya Ying Lin is an American artist who is known for her work in sculpture and landscape art. She is the designer of the Vietnam Veterans Memorial in Washington, D.C.-Personal life:...
, Vera Lutter, Anselm Reyle
Anselm Reyle
Anselm Reyle is an artist based in Berlin. He is known for his often large-scale abstract paintings and found-object sculptures.-Biography:...
, Yayoi Kusama
Yayoi Kusama
is a Japanese artist whose paintings, collages, soft sculptures, performance art and environmental installations all share an obsession with repetition, pattern, and accumulation...
, Edward Ruscha
Edward Ruscha
Edward Joseph Ruscha IV is an American artist associated with the Pop art movement. He has worked in the media of painting, printmaking, drawing, photography, and film. Ruscha lives and works in Culver City, California...
, Jenny Saville
Jenny Saville
Jenny Saville is a contemporary British painter; best known as one of the Young British Artists. She is known for her large-scale painted depictions of naked women.-Life and career:Saville works and lives in Oxford, England...
, Richard Serra
Richard Serra
Richard Serra is an American minimalist sculptor and video artist known for working with large-scale assemblies of sheet metal. Serra was involved in the Process Art Movement.-Early life and education:...
, David Smith
David Smith (sculptor)
David Roland Smith was an American Abstract Expressionist sculptor and painter, best known for creating large steel abstract geometric sculptures.-Biography:...
, Philip Taaffe
Philip Taaffe
Philip Taaffe is an American artistTaaffe was born in Elizabeth, New Jersey and studied at the Cooper Union in New York, gaining a Bachelor of Fine Arts in 1977....
, Mark Tansey
Mark Tansey
Mark Tansey is an American postmodern painter best known for monochromatic works, elaborate paintings incorporating hidden text, images and symbols and his invented "color wheel" approach to painting, in which a large, wooden wheel consisting of three rows of ambiguous words is spun—the results...
, Robert Therrien, Cy Twombly
Cy Twombly
Edwin Parker "Cy" Twombly, Jr. was an American artist well known for his large-scale, freely scribbled, calligraphic-style graffiti paintings, on solid fields of mostly gray, tan, or off-white colors...
, Andy Warhol
Andy Warhol
Andrew Warhola , known as Andy Warhol, was an American painter, printmaker, and filmmaker who was a leading figure in the visual art movement known as pop art...
, Jeff Koons
Jeff Koons
Jeffrey "Jeff" Koons is an American artist known for his reproductions of banal objects—such as balloon animals produced in stainless steel with mirror finish surfaces....
and Richard Wright. He also represents the Alberto Giacometti
Alberto Giacometti
Alberto Giacometti was a Swiss sculptor, painter, draughtsman, and printmaker.Alberto Giacometti was born in the canton Graubünden's southerly alpine valley Val Bregaglia and came from an artistic background; his father, Giovanni, was a well-known post-Impressionist painter...
estate in the United States.
Life and career
Gagosian was born in Los AngelesLos Ángeles
Los Ángeles is the capital of the province of Biobío, in the commune of the same name, in Region VIII , in the center-south of Chile. It is located between the Laja and Biobío rivers. The population is 123,445 inhabitants...
to Armenian
Armenians
Armenian people or Armenians are a nation and ethnic group native to the Armenian Highland.The largest concentration is in Armenia having a nearly-homogeneous population with 97.9% or 3,145,354 being ethnic Armenian....
parents. He got his start in business by selling posters near the campus of UCLA in Los Angeles. In the early 1980s he developed his business rapidly by exploiting the possibilities of reselling works of art by blue-chip modern and contemporary artists, earning the nickname "Go-Go" in the process. After establishing a New York gallery in the mid-1980s Gagosian began to work with a stable of super collectors including David Geffen
David Geffen
David Geffen is an American record executive, film producer, theatrical producer and philanthropist. Geffen is noted for creating Asylum Records in 1970, Geffen Records in 1980, and DGC Records in 1990...
, Charles Saatchi
Charles Saatchi
Charles Saatchi is the co-founder with his brother Maurice of the global advertising agency Saatchi & Saatchi, and led that business - the world's largest advertising agency in the 1980s - until they were forced out in 1995. In the same year the Saatchi brothers formed a new agency called M&C...
, David Ganek and Samuel Newhouse Jr. Bidding on behalf of Newhouse in 1988, Gagosian paid over $17 million dollars for "False Start" by Jasper Johns
Jasper Johns
Jasper Johns, Jr. is an American contemporary artist who works primarily in painting and printmaking.-Life:Born in Augusta, Georgia, Jasper Johns spent his early life in Allendale, South Carolina with his paternal grandparents after his parents' marriage failed...
, a then-record price for a work by a living artist. That record was beaten in 2008, when Gagosian paid $23.5 million dollars at Sotheby's in November 2007 for Jeff Koons's "Hanging Heart" (an artist who happens to belong to the Gagosian gallery's stable).
It has been alleged that, in 1990, Gagosian and Peter M. Brant
Peter M. Brant
Peter M. Brant is an American industrialist, businessman and entrepreneur, worth an estimated $2.4 billion. He is also a major art collector, movie producer, and avid horseman...
, formed the Contemporary Art Holding Corporation (CAHC) to buy 62 works of art, "All but four of these were sold immediately, earning $17m, on which $6.7m tax should have been paid."
In 2003, the US government took out a lawsuit against Gagosian and three others for $26.5 million in taxes.
In 2011, photographer Patrick Cariou prevailed against Gagosian, his gallery, and Richard Prince
Richard Prince
Richard Prince is an American painter and photographer. Prince began appropriating photographs in 1975...
in a major lawsuit over copyright infringement.
Gagosian is also in a Relationship with Fashion Editor and Creative Director of Garage Magazine, Shala Monroque.