The role of art dealer

[AlexanderG]

Сообщение от LCR

\r\n\r\nPresumably that's why he bought out Hurst Saatchi their work - better safe than sorry.

\r\n\r\nU nego seichas manager poluchshe, chem Saatchi. I zanimaetsia in odnim.

Added after 2 minutes

Сообщение от iside

LCR, Thank you!\r\n\r\nHmm, this example is very similar to the stock-market speculation - better in fact it is.\r\nSovershenno verno. Investitsii, oni i est 'investitsii.\r\n\r\n or still Saatchi disappointed in the artist and his paintings?

\r\n\r\nNe dumaiu, chto on, kogda libo ocharovyvalsia, prosto videl bizness vozmoznost '.

[iside]

Сообщение от AlexanderG

U nego seichas manager poluchshe, chem Saatchi. I zanimaetsia in odnim

\n\nAlexanderG, and you can name, to expand horizons?

[AlexanderG]

Сообщение от iside

AlexanderG, and you can name, to expand horizons?

 
Dunphy

The man who sold us Damien

He started his career as an accountant in the sleazier side of London showbiz, but for years has managed the world's biggest living artist and diamond geezer, Damien Hirst, who describes him as 'irreplaceable'. The loquacious, likeable Frank Dunphy explains how it came about ...

I meet Frank Dunphy in his house on Hyde Park a few days after Damien Hirst becomes the most expensive living artist in history. Meanwhile, a deal is being brokered for 'For the Love of God', Hirst's already iconic diamond-encrusted skull, with a price tag set at £ 50 million. Frank, perhaps unsurprisingly, is hungover.

Читать дальше... 

'I was up to all hours at George Michael's birthday party,' he says, gulping down a glass of water proffered by his wife, Lorna. 'Tracey [Emin] was there, too. I can't for the life of me figure out how she gets her boobs to sit like that. '

Oblivious to his wife's raised eyebrows, he leads me into the hall, where there is a makeshift Emin embroidery on one wall and a Gavin Turk signature painting on another, as well as another piece by Turk nestling by the stairs, an ultra-realistic black refuse sack cast in metal.

'That's pure genius, isn't it?' he says, rapping the sack as he passes less I mistake it for a load of rubbish. Before I can answer, he's pointing at a wonderfully twisted Picasso portrait. 'I paid a packet for the Picasso but I'm still not sure if it's real or not.' I'm sure it is.

For all his affability, and the childlike glee he exudes when he finds himself, as today, the centre of attention, it is hard to believe that Frank Dunphy would ever allow himself to be conned. The art on his walls, like the cut of his clothes, the company he keeps, and the famous names he drops shamelessly, exudes wealth, luxury, privilege. He is, after all, the power behind the world's most famous, most wealthy and most bankable living artist. His job description is business manager, but he is also Hirst's agent, deal cutter and empire builder. And possibly, as some describe, a father figure.

'One of the great things about Damien is that he is that rare thing, an artist who understands commerce,' says Hirst's London dealer, Jay Jopling of White Cube, where the diamond skull currently rests amid unprecedented security. 'And that is all down to Frank. Damien feels more comfortable with the market now, he's not frightened by it any more. Frank has enabled him not just to manage money, but to enjoy money. '

Dunphy leads me into his living room, which is dominated by a big, bright and beautiful butterfly diptych by Hirst, and, opposite it, a large medicine cabinet filled with small fish where one might expect the signature pills and vials. It is called, in homage to Dunphy, 2 gether 4 eva 2 stay - for frank. He stands beside me and stares at it in renewed wonder for a minute. His pride is palpable. Then he sits down. 'Fire away, Sean,' he says, 'ask me whatever you like'.

Dunphy is an amiable, garrulous Irishman of the old school whose energy belies his 69 years, and whose palpable aura of satisfaction at his own great good fortune is utterly contagious. Put simply, he is one of those rare individuals whom you imagine it is impossible to dislike.

'I really wouldn't be here now without Frank,' says Hirst when I ring him at his home in Devon later that evening. 'He's a pain in the arse sometimes but he's straightened me out about money. Basically, he taught me not to be afraid of it. ' How, exactly?

'Before he came along, I was like a punk, really. I didn't care about money. Or I pretended not to care. But when the figures start to get high, it's hard to pretend you don't care. It scares the shit out of you. He got me over the fear. I'd still be drinking and I'd probably would have found some way to fuck it all up if Frank hadn't come along. '

Hirst and Dunphy have been together for 12 years. In that time, the art market has changed dramatically, particularly in the past four years, when an influx of new money, new collectors, and a new - some would say vulgar and decadent - attitude to the acquisition of famous artworks has left even the most seasoned observers open-mouthed in astonishment at the figures: £ 52.7m for a Bacon, £ 87.2m for a Klimt, £ 95.2m for a Picasso.

Two weeks ago, history of a kind was made when the combined sales of artworks put up for auction in London in a single week reached an estimated £ 435m. During a marathon Sotheby's auction, which netted a total of £ 72.5m, a Hirst work entitled Lullaby Spring - a medical cabinet full of pills - fetched £ 9.7m, an unprecedented sum for a work by a living artist.

'It's utterly phenomenal,' elaborates Jopling. 'The record for a living artist belonged to Jasper Johns and had stood for over 20 years. Damien is only 42, his potential is immense and only matched by his ambition. With the skull, he has created a work of art which I am in no doubt will be one of the iconic works of the century. '

If one wanted to pinpoint the moment when the art market changed from big money to what Frank Dunphy calls 'mad money', that moment might well be another Sotheby's auction, which took place in 2004. Then, the artworks that once adorned the Pharmacy restaurant in Notting Hill, one of the few business ventures by Hirst that failed, caused bidding hysteria.

The sale was instigated by Dunphy. 'I heard the restaurant was folding on a Thursday night,' he told me when I first met him. 'And I went straight down there with a truck and bought up everything we didn't own - the doors, the lights, the sign, the ashtrays, the spoons, the egg cups. A lot of it was about to be burned as rubbish. ' The two-hour sale netted Hirst £ 11m, substantial parts of which came from the sale of those same fixtures and fittings. A pair of Martini glasses fetched £ 4,800.

'I always remember something that Frank said to me early on, just after my piece Hymn had sold for a million to Saatchi,' says an animated Hirst. 'He said, "You can't worry about the worth, Damien. An artwork is only worth what the next guy is going to pay for it." He was the first, and the only, person, I met who understood money at that level. And who was honest. '

Since then, Dunphy's relationship with Hirst has solidified into a kind of inseparable double act, which, when pressed, Dunphy describes as 'kind of paternal'. Surprisingly, Jopling agrees. 'They are very close. It may be a bit too personal to say this, but Frank is a kind of father figure to Damien in a way. Maybe the father he never had. '

Hirst was raised by his mother and stepfather until he was 12, when his stepfather left. He does not know who his real father is. When I mention the paternal aspect of his and Frank's relationship, he cracks up laughing. 'I'd agree with that all right as long as Frank knows that I'm the father. I'm the one who gets him home when he's had a few and is walking like a snake. ' When pressed, though, he admits there may be something of the overprotective parent to Frank. 'He can be infuriating in that way that parents are. I mean, he thinks everything I do is genius. I said to him once, "I do make shit paintings, too, Frank," and he just said, "You don't, Damien, you don't." '

Who exactly is Frank Dunphy, though? And where the hell did he come from? These are questions that both Jopling and Larry Gagosian, Hirst's New York dealer, must have been asking themselves 12 years ago when Big Frank burst on the scene seemingly out of nowhere. Back then he was a showbiz accountant, and an unknown entity in the art world.

'They can't place you, these posh English fellas,' he told me last year. 'You come up against people in the art world who never let slip a chance to remind you where they come from, class-wise. Jay's an old Etonian. Lovely manners. But I'm coming from a different place. The Christian Brothers for a start. And showbusiness. I worked for the likes of Peter Grant, who managed Led Zeppelin in the Seventies. You have to use what you've got. '

And use it he has. Depending on who you believe, Hirst now takes either a 70 or an 80 per cent cut of gallery sales at White Cube and Gagosian. Before Frank Dunphy came on board, the split was the usual 50/50. 'Sometimes,' he says, 'it's even 90/10 in Damien's favour.'

This upfront attitude is a Dunphy characteristic. A few weeks ago, at the press conference that attended the unveiling of Hirst's diamond skull, a journalist asked him how he could justify the £ 50m price-tag. He replied, 'You're right. I think we've definitely underpriced it. '

Dunphy's trajectory has, by any standards, been colourful. He was born and raised in Portrane, a nondescript village in County Dublin. His father was a male nurse, and his mother a political activist of some repute, a Tipperary woman who became a member of Cumann Na Mann, the women's wing of the old IRA, and fought the British alongside legendary Republican military leader Dan Breen.

'Me and my brother Paddy spent nights and nights folding pamphlets and delivering them door-to-door,' he says of his childhood, 'and I officiated over many an IRA military funeral as an altar boy, the lads firing off the old 303s over the grave, and me swinging the chasuble. '

At the O'Connell Christian Brothers' School he learnt Irish, Latin and mental arithmetic by rote. 'It was beaten into us, basically, but it has stood me in good stead,' he laughs. 'I can still do the long division and multiplication in my head at meetings. If somebody says, "I want 7.5 per cent off," I have the figures down on paper while the other fellas are still reaching for their calculators. '

His strict religious education has stood him in good stead, too. 'It's come in awful handy with Damien,' he says. 'When he starts up with the religious questions regarding his work, I have the answers.' He suddenly sits up straight in his chair, and says, 'Ask me what the five mysteries of religion are, Sean.' I oblige. 'The five mysteries of religion are ...' he recites, sounding like an overgrown Irish schoolboy from a bygone time, 'the Unity and Trinity of God, the Incarnation, and the Death and Resurrection of our Saviour. All that stuff goes in and it stays in. I mean, how many fellas would Damien know who could tell him who Dismas and Gestas were, eh? ' Not many, I say. There is a pause. 'Do you know who Dismas and Gestas are, Sean?' he says, sounding like a bloody Christian Brother. 'They were the two fellas on the cross beside Jesus. One sought his forgiveness and ascended to heaven, the other didn't and was sent down below. '

I suspect that, had we met of an evening and had drinks been taken, this sort of thing could go on all night. At one point, he starts pointing at his face and reciting the Irish words beal (mouth), shron (nose), suil (eyes) and smig (chin), the latter of which causes him to crack up laughing. 'Smig,' he says, 'that's a mad word altogether.'

When the young Frank Dunphy arrived in England from Dublin in the 1950s he was met off the train by the Legion of Mary, a religious organisation whose remit was to look after the moral and spiritual life of Irish emigres. It was the era of mass emigration from Ireland, and Frank ended up in a boarding house in Highgate, north London. Soon afterwards, he married the landlady's daughter (with whom he had two children; they later divorced). 'I've never forgotten that house,' he says wistfully. 'There were five daughters, and five Irish lads came in as lodgers and ended up marrying the five girls.'

Though he had arrived determined to join the British navy, he ended up answering a job ad in the Telegraph for an accountancy firm that specialised in showbusiness acts. 'Comedians and actors, mainly,' he says, 'the likes of Harry Worth, Roy Castle. And the Nitwits, of course, who no one remembers now, but who were huge back then. Came from Glasgow, ended up in Vegas. '

Soon Frank was looking after the speciality acts - jugglers, acrobats, clowns, circus dwarfs - most of whom he found by trawling the dressing rooms of the capital's theatres. 'It was the early Sixties, but it was still a Victorian world in many ways,' he says. 'I had Coco the Clown and all the top jugglers in Europe on my books. I'd go round the circus tents with my interpreter, a wee, small fella who spoke seven or eight languages. I'd have to lift him up onto a chair so he could translate for me. Next thing you know, I was knee deep in dwarfs all looking for their tax returns to be done. '

By then, Frank had also branched out into the world of exotic dancing, and had a lady called Peaches Page on his books. Fifty years on, her name still causes his face to light up. 'Peaches,' he sighs. 'The first nude dancer to tour Britain. She did the statuesque thing. You weren't allowed to move a muscle in those days. They'd have fellas standing in the doors of illegal strip joints in Soho who would whisper as you passed, "They're naked and they move." It was a very exciting prospect. '

His 'research' took him into all kinds of exotic, and now forgotten, corners of showbiz. He remembers one Soho strip joint where you were given a pencil and sketch pad at the door. 'You had to pretend to be sketching the girl in case the cops raided. Your man would pull back the curtain and say, "And now, Monique!" and there'd be this poor girl lying there starkers on a chaise-longue with a three-bar electric fire in front of her to keep her from shivering, and fellas wandering around trying to draw her from every angle. ' This, he tells me, laughing, was his only brush with the art world before Damien came along.

All of which prompts the inevitable question, how did a former showbiz accountant who once looked after Julie Mendez and Her Performing Python end up becoming the financial driving force behind Hirst's ongoing plan for world domination? The answer, unsurprisingly, is a long and colourful one, which has, one suspects, grown in the telling. By the time he met Hirst, Dunphy was already successful, with actors like Ray Winstone and Jimmy Nesbitt on his books, and was well known and well liked, as a Soho character. Approaching 70, he remains a great anecdotist, albeit one who never lets the facts stand in the way of a good story. Here, for instance, is his account of his initial meeting with Hirst.

'I'd seen Damien in the Groucho Club many a time back in the good old bad old days. Him and that mad fella, Keith Allen. Wild men altogether. Anyway, I'm sitting there having a few drinks one night and this woman sits down beside me, we got talking, and she says, "I hear you're an accountant. Well, my lad needs sorting out." It's Damien's mother, God bless her, that I have to thank for all this. '

When I mention this serendipitous chain of events to Hirst, he seems momentarily taken aback. 'Did it fuck happen like that,' he says after a moment. 'That's typical Frank, that is.'

What really happened, he says, is that the Inland Revenue turned up unannounced at White Cube one day, demanding a cheque for £ 32,000. 'Nobody knew what it was for,' he continues, 'not Jay, not me, not my accountant. I asked Keith Allen's then wife, Nira Park, if she knew anyone who could sort the situation out, and she said, "What about that Irish guy, Frank, you play snooker with?" I thought he was just this drunk guy who talked shite. But he wasn't. A few days later, I took a bin bag of my stuff around to him, and that's how it started. '

Whatever the exact circumstances of their meeting, the rest, as they say, is history. Together, Hirst and Dunphy have built an empire that embraces the making of art, the selling of art, the buying of art, and the acquiring of huge swathes of property in London, Mexico and Gloucestershire (Toddington Manor, the £ 3m Gothic pile set in 23 acres of prime countryside), some of which will eventually house Hirst's extraordinary collection of art. Hirst's personal fortune is reckoned to be worth somewhere in the region of £ 150m, though that is a conservative estimate.

'What really annoys me about these politicians, Tessa Jowell and David Lammy and that lot,' says Dunphy, suddenly sounding annoyed, 'is that I've never seen them near a Damien show. He is the highest dollar earner in the history of British art. There was an article the other day trumpeting the pop groups who bring so much money into this county. What a load of old bollocks. Jagger goes on about how he pays less than 2 per cent tax. It's all in the Bahamas or wherever. We pay full whack here. Nobody celebrates that, or Damien's charitable giving, which runs into millions, when they go on about his money. '

When I asked Hirst about the huge prices his work now commands, he replies, mock theatrically, 'Where will it end?' So, I ask Frank Dunphy the same question.

'Well, I'll be 70 this year,' he says, suddenly seeming subdued, 'And I'm now in the odd position of having to look around for a successor. My son, John, had a brush with cancer last year. He's come though it, thank God, but it brings home the big questions about mortality and all that. It made me think that it's time I was thinking of who will look after Damien after me '.

When I mention this to Hirst, he dismisses the very thought. 'There is no successor to Frank,' he says, 'How could there be? When a big man dies, he leaves a big hole. In Frank's case, that hole won't just be hard to fill, it will be impossible. He's irreplaceable. Everyone knows that. '

For the time being, though, their big adventure continues apace. And, who, indeed, knows where it will end?

Frank Dunphy: art market maestro

· Raised in Portrane, Co Dublin. Educated at O'Connell Christian Brothers' School. Came to England in the 1950s. Married his landlady's daughter and had two children. Now married to Lorna.

· Began in showbusiness looking after variety acts. Also represents Tracey Emin, the Chapman brothers and Ray Winstone. Helped to make Hirst 'more bankable than Picasso' and 'the most powerful man in art'.

· Owns a collection of small portraits drawn by Hirst every time the pair meet for breakfast.

[NATA NOVA]

Сообщение от Glasha

--- in my opinion, time and outer peace (and the internal" Trouble ")

\r\n\r\n

Сообщение от Zenia

As I wrote in another branch: the production of a masterpiece is an internal process or state. Often, in order for this process took place should be time and inner peace.

\r\n\r\n... Service, Moose can not stand the hustle "....( ASPushkin)

[Семен Семенович]

Сообщение от "

Message from LCR
But overall, I think everyone will agree with me that this pair of artist /gallerist force - on the side of gallerist

I think that in this pair, the force, as the truth is somewhere in between.
If initially, to take as its starting point the professional and honest relationship (the construction of a joint business), then any dictatorship, and issues from a position of strength can not be.
Artist - an individual who produces the light of creation, reflecting his talent, professionalism, vision, the essence and the state of mind .. His task in this bustling world of illusions and temptations - to create, with their eyes and ears and trust your eyes, ears, taste and opinion of the dealer ...
Dealer - an individual who has eyes, ears, taste, talent ... showing the world the talent of the artist.
And full confidence in the relationship ... And respect and tolerance for each other ...

[K-Maler]

Сообщение от Samvel

In the world of the spirit of all differently. Here reigns eternal divine order, there is not shed rain on the just and the unjust,

\r\n \r\nI especially thank you for that statement.

[Anna Bezoo]

Сообщение от Samvel

If he is an artist, he has nothing to anyone, he did so will be prolific. At the expense of the role of galleries, then you probably have a view of modern hudozhnikov.Iz this galaxy of artists I personally nobody znayu.Nastoyaschee art is done far away from the public \\ P. Wagner \\ artist is already suffering, he was alien to human happiness, whether it be picnics on the lawn, or family happiness. You just mean the people who consider themselves artists, but I'm talking about artists conductors, the anointed of God, but they could not be happier. For them to be courageous, much more important than being happy.

For them the main thing to be free, and this is happiness

Added after 4 minutes

Сообщение от AlexanderG

To DSF\r\n\r\nLichno - mozet byt 'interesno, no zadacha liubogo biznesa - poluchenie dohoda /pribyli.\r\n\r\nSkazem proizvesti katalog 32 stranitsy plius oblozka stoit primerno $ 16 - 20,000.\r\nZnachit daze pri 50%komissionnyh prodat 'nado na $ 30 - 40,000. Pri tsene kartiny (sredniia dlia nachinaiuschego hudoznika $ 3,000) nado prodat '10 -15 kartin. Dalee: plata za pomeschenie, priglasheniia, rassylka, itd, itp. Eto my eschio ne edim!\r\n\r\n\r\n

Alexander, are you writing about the Australian prices? and that, incidentally, is in demand on the continent?

[AlexanderG]

Da, eto tseny v Au.\r\nSprosom pol'zuiutsia mestnye raskruchennye hudozniki, raboty na bumage, v men'shei stepeni Old Masters i kolonial'noe iskusstvo.

[iside]

LCR,

She found little information on this subject, which I confess I was a beginner and interested layman.

Thus, the case of Sandro Kia was not the first in the history of Saatchi:

Charles Saatchi, the gallery Mogul of Britain had been accused of monopolizing the contemporary British Art by blind buying and selective dumping. In the nineties Saatchi bought the works of the Italian Neo-expressionist Sandro Chia's works for a whopping price and later on dumped them in the market for lesser price. Saatchi, in one his interviews, explained his position saying that he never bought the works from Sandro Chia. Instead, he bought it from an American collector and when he lost interest in them he decided to dump.

Perhaps, from the league of Clemente, Cucchi, Chia and Mimo Paladino, Chia is the only artist who is now known for his loss in the market place. Saatchi himself has stated that Chia is the artist who would be remembered for being dumped by him. Of late, another artist Peter Blake too has come out against Saatchi for dumping his works in the market. He accused Saatchi of buying some artists completely and dumping them selectively later on only to ruin their careers.
(http://www.artconcerns.net/2006/html...lesSaatchi.htm)

Here's what he said about Saatchi Sandro Kia:

CS: In fact, I only ever owned seven paintings by Chia. One morning I offered three of them back to Angela Westwater, his New York dealer where I had originally bought them, and four back to Bruno Bischofberger his European dealer where, again, I had bought those. Chia's work was tremendously desirable at the time and all seven went to big-shot collectors or museums by close of day. If Sandro Chia hadn't had a psychological need to be rejected in public, this issue would never have been considered of much interest. If an artist is producing good work, someone selling a group of strong ones does an artist no harm at all, and in fact can stimulate their market.

(http://www.saatchi-gallery.co.uk/charlesqa/qa.htm)

She found the only network interview with Sandra Kia, where he spoke about the case with Saatchi (my translation):

"Once I talked to him (Saatchi) on some of my work, part of his collection, which he intended to sell, must see, because he was not allowed to purchase new (pictures). Nothing special, we immediately agreed and split normally. A few hours later at dinner (definitely in that time, some sort of perversion began in my head) I was attacked verbally Saatchi, publicly insulting and arrogant manner. In this most unhappy moment in all the magazines and newspapers had published that Saatchi sold off blocks of my work, but it's not true, because he sold only four of my work, and with considerable profit.
Perhaps at that moment was enough for me to answer, clarify, but for some mysterious reason I have not felt it necessary to intervene. "

Personally, my opinion might well be true, having lived several years in Italy, nothing particularly unusual about the behavior not see. Wine in the head hit, someone from "Friends" he whispered and sent to the "correct" side, saw a lot of such scenes.

http://www.flashartonline.it/interno...lo=SANDRO-CHIA

Another found such an interesting book Economics of art auctions Gianfranco Mossetto, Marilena Vecco.

this link just leads to a page that also mentioned other artists Robert Ryman, Robert Mangold, Sean Scully, who had a similar problem with Saatchi.

here Link to the Italian site, similar topics with artinvestment, where you can see prices some of Sandro Kia, they do not like a DX.

[SAH]

Сообщение от Zenia

As I wrote in the other branch: the production of a masterpiece is an internal process or state. Often, in order for this process took place should be time and inner peace.

It seems the ancient Chinese saying that to do this: a good mascara shoroshaya paper is a good brush good weather, and the desire to write neozabochennost .