Last Thursday evening at New York’s perch of power dining, the Four Seasons Restaurant, billionaires could be found clinking glasses with politicians, actors could be seen rubbing shoulders with news correspondents, and throngs of notable wordsmiths quaffed copious amounts of liquor at The New York Observer’s 25th anniversary soiree.
“I think this is the best Read More
Happy Birthday to us! The New York Observer is a quarter of a century old, and publisher Jared Kushner and CEO Joseph Meyer have assembled a bonzo boldfaced lineup of NYC’s most fabulous hosts to fête the glorious occasion. Think NYO founder Arthur Carter, Marchesa designer/knockout Georgina Chapman, art kingpin Larry Gagosian, Carolina Herrera, Katie Holmes (Suri will be in bed—sorry, tabloids), Commissioner Ray Kelly, style icon Lauren Santo Domingo, Matt Lauer Read More
Tom Wolfe’s new novel, the Miami-set Back to Blood, has not been particularly well-received by book critics, but at the balmy, prosecco-soaked doorbuster sale and glad-handing jubilee known as Art Basel Miami Beach in early December, attendees armed with e-readers passed around one brief passage with gleeful approval. The scene, which comes midway through the book and is set at the same fair, introduces a character in whom many see an eerie resemblance to dealer Larry Gagosian—the art world’s widely admired, widely feared and widely resented top dog. The character, a gallery dealer named Harry Goshen (the name is perhaps a tip-off) is described as “a tall man with gray hair, although he doesn’t look all that old, and eerie pale-gray eyes like the slanted eyes of a husky.”
A bit mesmerized, Mr. Wolfe’s narrator circles back to Goshen’s eyes a few lines later: “So pale, those eyes … they look ghostly and sinister …”
Several fairgoers who encountered Mr. Gagosian in his booth in the Miami Beach Convention Center took note of his eyes as well. Not sinister, they said, just tired.
“Maybe it’s getting to him,” one art adviser surmised. “The travel, the expansion. At some point, it hits you the wrong way. It’s hard to satisfy everyone and keep all the balls in the air, and when you go to the top like that you become a target. People love to get the giant.”
It’s been an unusually challenging period for Mr. Gagosian, the art world’s silver-maned dealer-emperor, whose sharp eye for talent, business prowess and aggressive style of deal-making propelled an ascendancy from modest beginnings as a Los Angeles street peddler—hawking cheap posters in Westwood—to a position of unrivaled dominance in the international art trade, a sovereignty that some are predicting, a tad eagerly, may soon come to a close. Read More
For five years, the Harkness Mansion lay vacant, a shell of its former record-setting self. Built in 1896 by shipping magnate Nathaniel McCready, it would change hands over the years among the city’s industrial elite. IBM president Thomas Watson bought the home in 1939 and sold it years later to the Harknesses, Standard Oil investors who also owned a mansion across the street. It was turned into a studio and school for the Harkness ballet company in the 1960s. In 1987, Jacqui Safra, the Swiss banking heir and Woody Allen investor, bought the rare, 50-foot-wide limestone mansion for $6.9 million. Two decades later, just as the real estate bubble was on the verge of bursting, private equity impresario J. Christopher Flowers dropped a staggering $53 million on the 20,000-square-foot home, the highest price ever for a residential property in the city.
Shortly after taking over the home, he began demolishing the interiors, preparing for a top-to-bottom gut renovation that would cost millions of dollars more. Instead, it was Mr. Flowers who got hit in the gut, when his wife asked for a divorce. For two years, the manse went wanting because buyers tend to prefer a move-in-ready home. “It was a black hole,” Mr. Flower’s broker, Brown Harris Stevens’s Sami Hassoumi, told The Observer last Thursday. “What I was showing wasn’t a house, it was a construction site. I had a temporary construction staircase that was scary. We had to wear hard hats.”
For most buyers, this would have been a nightmare. Not for Larry Gagosian, proprietor of the eponymous gallery empire, which is headquartered two short blocks away at 980 Madison. Not only does he pick up one of the most coveted properties in the city, but like the art he swaps on a regular basis, it was achieved through a deal that almost no one else could have expected or achieved. “They said they weren’t taking a penny less than $40 million,” broker A. Laurence Kaiser said. “And look what he got it for.” He got it for $36.5 million.
Mr. Gagosian’s purchase of the home is in some ways no different from his approach at auction. He knows how to spot value, an opportunity. Witness his purchase, last November, of a 1980 painting by Roy Lichtenstein for $2 million at Christie’s. Mr. Gagosian stayed until the bitter end of the auction to pick up the picture—it did not have many other bidders. In his booth at the Art Basel fair in June, the painting was on offer for $5 million. Read More
While The Observer would never attempt to divine what goes on in Larry Gagosian’s head, based on discussions with real estate and art world experts, we feel safe to say that the Harkness Mansion is more than a home. It could also serve, in some capacity, as gallery, showroom, salon.
“The answer is, yes, it’s been done,” an attorney who specializes in zoning told The Observer. “It’s a residential district, which precludes any commercial use, but there is nothing stopping him from putting a gallery in the first few floors.” Read More
This morning it was revealed that Larry Gagosian got maybe the deal of this young decade, paying $36.5 million for the Harkness Mansion. Five years ago, it sold for a record-setting $53 million, and it has quietly been sitting on the market for a good bit less than that.
Broker Sami Hassoumi told Read More
It seems that Larry Gagosian has been quietly looking for a new place to throw his raucous parties. And found one he has. Read More
The swans in Town Pond paddled on serenely, unfazed by the crowds filing up James Lane toward Guild Hall. The birds, evidently, are accustomed to such revelry. The event, last Saturday, was a celebration of Richard Prince’s exhibition “Covering Pollock,” currently on display at the Hall’s gallery. The work, Mr. Prince’s latest, consists of black-and-white photographs of Jackson Pollock obscured by images of models, ’80s punk stars and various forms of old-school erotica. Inside, groups of curious viewers—some of them peering over their spectacles at the prints—made polite banter about the graphic images. Read More
Friday night, East Hampton’s finest gathered to celebrate the art of Richard Prince, whose collection “Covering Pollock” is currently on exhibition at the town’s cultural center, Guild Hall. The evening went on to honor Martha Stewart and her contributions to the institution.
The event was emceed by Alec Baldwin and deejayed by Alexandra Richards, the Read More
The Observer has learned from a source who spoke on condition of anonymity that Gagosian Gallery will present an exhibition of Bob Dylan’s paintings in New York in September.
Artnet reported this morning that the gallery has added Mr. Read More
