On any night, he can have art openings in Paris, in London, or at his flagship gallery in New York.With 18 galleries around the globe, Larry Gagosian has more exhibition space than most museums.
His annual revenues are estimated at over a billion dollars, which (as The New Yorker put it) may make Gagosian "the biggest art dealer in the history of the world."In 2022, when Andy Warhol's "Shot Sage Blue Marilyn" set an auction record for a 20th century artist at Christie's, the winning bidder was Larry Gagosian.The final price, with fees: $195 million.I asked, "That must have been a crazy moment?""When you're bidding at that level," Gagosian said, "your adrenaline is … it's very exciting.""It's a brutal business." "It's a blood sport.""What do you love about this most?" I asked.
"I love the challenge," Gagosian smiled."I love winning."Gagosian represents more than 100 artists, and shows the works of Picasso, Warhol, and de Kooning.
His clients include billionaire mega-collectors like New York Mets owner Steve Cohen, music mogul David Geffen, and cosmetics heir Leonard Lauder.Gagosian said, "That's why New York is such a great city for an art dealer, because you have all these super-competitive rich guys trying to (you know, in a certain way) outdo each other – 'I got one.' 'Oh, I got one better.'" Gagosian, who grew up in an Armenian family in Los Angeles, never had any formal art training.
In the 1970s, he was working as a parking attendant.Then he saw somebody selling posters on the street.
"I saw that and I said, 'Jeez, I could do that.' And so, I bought basically the same posters, I literally paid a dollar apiece, and then put a little aluminum frame on them and put 'em on a peg board and tried to get as close to twenty bucks as I could, which is a pretty good profit margin."He built it into a business, and started having shows.In 1981, a young New York artist caught his eye: Jean-Michel Basquiat.
Gagosian bought three of his ...