Online Books by Questia Media America, Inc.
Landscape with Figures: A History of Art Dealing in the United States,
Book by Malcolm Goldstein; Oxford University Press, 2000

INTRODUCTION AND ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Roy Lichtenstein ( 1923-1997), the most popular living American artist of the late twentieth century, declared in the 1960s that the public for art was about as large as the public for chemistry. Perhaps with that ironic observation in mind, he twitted the art market in 1970 by cre- ating a large bronze relief titled Peace Through Chemistry and four equally large lithographs on the same subject. These camp extravaganzas, whose images were based on themes borrowed from social-realist art of the 1930s and decorative details of the buildings of the 1939 New York World's Fair, found ready buyers among art enthusiasts. It may even have been -- who knows? -- that some of the buyers were members of the public for chemistry. The public for art was in fact much greater than Lichtenstein's off- hand remark would suggest. The remark would not have been worth repeating here were it not for the fact that one of the individuals most responsible for the public enthusiasm for art even as Lichtenstein spoke was Leo Castelli, his own dealer. Although art as the ultimate luxury item is within the financial reach of only a relatively few fortunate individuals, the increased attendance at museums since the Second World War by all but the least sophisticated members of American society provides unquestionable evidence of the hold that art has gained on the con- sciousness of the nation.

In the interim between the end of the war and the opening of Castelli's gallery in 1957 came the displacement of Paris by New York as the capital of the international art market and the rise of members of New York's very own school, Abstract Expressionism, to status as world figures in their profession. The principal dealers who promoted this astonishingly strong art of broadly gestural strokes or, as with the work of Jackson Pollock, drips of paint onto canvas were Peggy Guggenheim, Samuel Kootz, Betty Parsons, Charles Egan, and Sidney Janis. To them first of all may be credited the newly charged, widespread interest in art and its creators. Castelli's embrace of Pop Art, the very likable, easy-to- take art of familiar objects as created by Lichtenstein and Andy Warhol, served even more strongly to alert the public to the pleasures to be derived from gazing with an open mind at the product of an artist's creative power. The chapters that follow will offer a close examination of the careers of these six and many other dealers of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Not as much information as we would like is available about the lives of the earliest entrants into the art trade in America. But to understand the rise of that trade to its position of eminence today, it is essential to examine the meager facts at hand about the pioneers as well as the abundance of information about modern-day dealers. It took a long succession of sellers of art to create the environment into which such a supersalesman as Leo Castelli stepped when he opened his gallery, and every piece of the available information has its value.

It is essential for readers to understand at the outset, however, that not every person receives mention in this book who at some time in his or her life set up a shop in America for the sale of art. Had I introduced the names of all the dealers I came across while looking into the past and present of the profession, the result would have been not a book but a data bank. Such a publication might be useful, but hardly readable. As for the many dealers I do take up, most were or are based in New York, which since the early nineteenth century has been the center of the art trade in the United States. There are many dealers active today in cities across the country whom I respect but whom I have found no opportunity to include. I hope that they and all other dealers currently on the scene who do not find their names in the index will not feel hurt for being left out. I also feel obliged to make clear at the outset that this book is not about every sector of the trade. Although the intense interest in art so much in evidence today has been fueled partly by the high prices major works of art have fetched at auction, this book is not about the auction houses. They are, to be sure, mentioned here and there in the chapters that follow, but only briefly. They deserve their own historians and of late have been attracting them. I should also make it clear that I have not included dealers in all categories of art. For present purposes, my concern is with dealers in American and European art as it has evolved over the many centuries of its creation. Surely that is enough for one book. Folk art and video art come in for very brief mention, and Asian art, despite its seductive beauty, is not mentioned at all. Nor do I deal with performance art, which, because it is impermanent and involves live participation, cannot be bought or sold in commercial galleries.