“Try to be one of the people on whom nothing is lost,” the writer Henry James once advised. It has not been lost on us here at The Observer, where we carefully scrutinize the tiniest changes in branding, that what was formerly known as Gagosian Gallery is now known simply as Gagosian.
Already on the back cover of James Frey’s new novel The Final Testament of the Holy Bible, published in April by Gagosian, the publisher was listed on the back as Gagosian, rather than as Gagosian Gallery.
And now, the ultimate indicator of changes in an art business’s presentation, the September issue of Artforum magazine, has landed on our desks and we notice that whereas the Summer issue of the same magazine listed, over several pages, the various exhibitions at something called Gagosian Gallery, the September issue tells us, again over several pages, about exhibitions at an entity referred to as Gagosian.
What does this indicate other than our perspicacity? Well, it tells us, perhaps, that the 32 year old business, now with a shop and a publishing arm, is morphing into something much more than merely a venue for the presentation and selling of art.