George Lindemann Journal by George Lindemann - "Marianne Boesky: In Search of Art Stars" @wsj by Alexandra Wolfe
When gallerist Marianne Boesky first showed the works of Takashi Murakami —the Japanese artist renowned for work that combines traditional Japanese style with contemporary Pop, whose career she launched in 1997—the art world thought she was crazy. "I couldn't even give his work away," she says. "I could even go so far as to say I was mocked for showing it." One of his pieces recently sold for over $15 million at auction. And Ms. Boesky has had her own success, introducing art stars such as Lisa Yuskavage, Yoshitomo Nara and Barnaby Furnas.
In a few weeks, Ms. Boesky, 46, is taking another risk. At this year's Armory Show, a New York art fair that runs from March 6 to 9, she will showcase the work of emerging South African-based artist Serge Alain Nitegeka. While Ms. Boesky has never devoted her entire booth to one artist at the Armory, she is reserving all her space for him—not bad for an artist who's never been seen in the U.S.
With the contemporary art market booming, fairs such as the Armory Show—in which booths often cost galleries at least $100,000—have become increasingly influential. They're a one-stop shop for global collectors looking to buy more efficiently than ever before. Some collectors forgo in-person shopping altogether. These days, Ms. Boesky never even meets some of her clients, who often buy the works of recognized artists based just on seeing photos of them. "An email comes in, and you Google the person, and it's the 14th-richest person in Japan or something," she says.
But while she thinks collecting is now "a lot less personal" than it used to be, one motivation for buying remains the same. "Art is a status symbol and always has been," she says. "People arrive at a certain level of wealth, and they've bought their umpteenth car, and art is that great equalizer of having arrived."
On this day, Ms. Boesky is sitting in her white minimalist office in her spacious Chelsea gallery in Manhattan. She has a second gallery in a rental space on the Upper East Side, opened in 2010. Now she is planning to announce the creation of another gallery, on the Lower East Side of Manhattan, where she will showcase the emerging artists she has increasingly represented in recent years.
Ms. Boesky has come a long way from the first space she opened 18 years ago in Manhattan's SoHo neighborhood. She grew up around the art owned by her father, Ivan Boesky, the investment banker convicted of insider trading in 1986. Even then she had dreams of opening a gallery one day, she says.
Ms. Boesky spent her childhood in and around New York City, and her father often took her to galleries and auctions, where he let her raise the paddle. Her mother liked "pretty" art while her father "tended toward dark and tough art, and that's really what I related to, too." Together her parents built a collection of blue-chip artwork, including works by Auguste Rodin and Édouard Vuillard. "It was great art for somebody who grew up with nothing," she says, referring to her father.
But he tended to buy work by more established artists. Mr. Boesky met Andy Warhol and was offered works by Willem de Kooning, but she says he had no interest. "If he was going to be a successful, rich man, he was going to have a Renoir and a Monet, but he also liked the really tough stuff." Ms. Boesky was especially interested in her father's sculptures by Alberto Giacometti. "To me, their raw, ugly, roughness was relatable and sad and beautiful," she says. "But that's all gone and in the past."
When Mr. Boesky was convicted, she says, "everything sort of imploded." She was then in college—first at Duke University, then at Middlebury College. After graduating, Ms. Boesky supported herself working for a few private dealers and interning at Sotheby's before she realized that she needed to make more money if she wanted to amass her own collection. During a brief stint in law, while working for the American Civil Liberties Union, she met her first artist, Lisa Yuskavage, through an art dealer.
She got a loan to rent a space on Greene Street and continued to add artists, eventually selling her apartment to open her current gallery in Chelsea. "I borrowed money to get started, and I've continued borrowing money to grow, and I just keep borrowing money," she says, laughing. "I am a risk taker, but I have never defaulted on a single loan." Her parents didn't help finance the gallery. "It was not something that my parents were going to be in a position or have an interest in supporting and bankrolling," she says.
Now, Ms. Boesky lives with her husband and daughter above the Chelsea gallery in an art-filled apartment. "My hope was just to be able to feed myself and keep the doors open," she says. "It never occurred to me I'd be able to buy a house and a boat and all these things…but it's a nice incidental benefit, no doubt about it." She's also glad to have been able to help artists have the same opportunities. "I like that artists don't need to be burned-out hippies anymore."
With recent artwork drawing high prices—such as the record sale of a 1969 Francis Bacon triptych for $142.4 million last fall—some are asking whether there could be an art bubble. Ms. Boesky says she doesn't believe so because prices aren't high across the board. "People are chasing young, hyped, hip, and they're chasing the rarefied blue-chip, hard-to-get art and paying whatever it takes to get it, but the middle remains to be seen," she says.
Since the contemporary art market weathered the economic downturn better than assets like homes, Ms. Boesky thinks art is now considered a less volatile asset than it once was. "Late 2009 and 2010 wasn't easy for anyone, but it's kind of incredible," she says. "The richest people…even in the worst of times are still rich, and they need to put their money somewhere." Unlike stock in a tech company, art is a physical asset. "Things go up and down, but they don't go to zero…and at least I have a storage facility in Delaware I could visit," she quips.
In the past few years, the art market has come under fire for its lack of oversight. Art-fair transactions are not public, and auction houses rarely disclose buyers or sellers of works they bring to market. Most galleries don't post the prices of their artwork, in defiance of a decades-old law that mandates they do so.
And groups of speculators can buy a large amount of work by a particular artist, put the pieces up for sale at auction and then enlist their friends to bid up the prices. If the works sell well, the speculators can reap tidy profits. "You can call that collusion, but it's not illegal, and I don't even know if it's unethical," she says. She admits there is a fine line. "You could compare it to insider trading in that…all the little people who don't get access get hurt by losing opportunity," she says, "but it's all very gray."
Ms. Boesky does think the art world, traditionally a handshake business, would be better served by embracing written contracts, which would avoid many of the legal spats over payments that have plagued countless deals. In the end, though, she says most people buy art because they love it. "We're talking about art," she says. "Nobody gets hurt."
Write to Alexandra Wolfe at alexandra.wolfe@wsj.com
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