Sunday, October 15, 2006
ArtReview's Most Powerful
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This weekend, The Guardian published ArtReview's list of the 100 most powerful people in the contemporary artworld. Many of them were expected, there are a few surprises, and a handful might make you laugh out loud. It's easy to get lost in the numbers, but it becomes a little more interesting when you break it into categories. I'll break down the list into galleries/dealers, artists, and media and let you be the judge on who really is the most influential... First, the dealers:
2: Larry Gagosian, dealer, five galleries around the world
14: Iwan Wirth, Swiss dealer, part of Zwirner & Wirth
15: Marian Goodman, New York-based gallerist
16: David Zwirner, New York gallerist
18: Marc Glimcher, New York gallerist (Pace)
19: Jay Jopling, owner, White Cube gallery, London
24: Barbara Gladstone, New York, gallerist
26: Victoria Miro, gallery owner, London
35: Sadie Coles, London-based dealer
40: Jeffrey Deitch, New York gallerist
44: The Wrong Gallery, New York, conceptual gallery (hmm... this probably should fall into the artists category - but we'll try it in both places)
54: Harry Blain & Graham Southern, London-based gallerists (Haunch of Venison)
59: Javier Peres, Cuban-born dealer
64: Max Hetzler, Berlin-based gallerist
67: Gerd Harry Lybke, German dealer
69: Maureen Paley, London gallerist
70: Zach Feuer, New York gallerist
76: William Acquavella, New York gallerist
77: Matthew Marks, New York gallerist
82: Lorenz Helbling, Swiss-born gallerist
86: Gavin Brown, British-born New York gallerist
It's the second half that is most interesting. Do some of the young guns like Javier Peres and Zach Feuer belong ahead of more seasoned dealers like Maureen Paley and Matthew Marks? I'll let you be the judge. Now let's look at the artists:
9: Bruce Nauman, American artist
10: Jeff Koons, American artist
11: Damien Hirst, British artist
17: Gerhard Richter, German artist
20: Mike Kelley, American artist
22: Andreas Gursky, German photographer
36: Robert Gober, American sculptor
44: The Wrong Gallery, New York, conceptual gallery
45: Jeff Wall, Canadian photographer
51: Tracey Emin, British artist
52: Gilbert & George, British artists
66: Neo Rauch, German artist
71: Ai Weiwei, Chinese artist
73: Richard Serra, American sculptor
74: Paul McCarthy, American artist
88: Anselm Kiefer, German artist
89: Jean-Marc Bustamante, French artist
90: Matthew Barney, American artist
94: Anish Kapoor, Bombay-born London-based sculptor
96: Luc Tuymans, Belgian artist
98: Takashi Murakami, Japanese artist
99: Cai Guo-Qiang, Chinese artist
Where to begin here? First of all, thank God Tracey Emin made it in at number 51, otherwise women might have been underrepresented. I'm sure that fact will be the subject of numerous blog posts this week. And Nauman as the highest ranked artists confirms what I stated earlier - for you auctioin junkies, he is not a sell!!!
Finally and most important, the media:
55: Roberta Smith, senior art critic, New York TimesTake that Saltz!!! Better luck next year.
56: On the Cusp, contemporary art blog, Indianapolis
57: Jerry Saltz, art critic for the Village Voice
Related:
The 2004 list
The 2005 list
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3 Responses to “ArtReview's Most Powerful”
October 16, 2006 at 9:56 PM
I don't think I got the subtle joke. I didn't find onthecusp on the original list.
October 16, 2006 at 11:10 PM
It's hard to think of artists as powerful at all. What I find the most discouraging about being an artist is that curators and dealers have so much power and often have so little actual talent or imagination. (Triple Candie being an exception) Most artists are expected to be grateful for crumbs.
October 19, 2006 at 11:02 AM
The idea of a list today, let alone THAT list, shows nothing more than nostalgia for when magazines controlled the art world, and had vague "ultimate" lists of what amounts to hopeful "blue chip" old fashioneds. What is essentially friends of friends (mostly male and white) of whom certain friends with banks and capital feel good with. No uppities here - and so we learn, Power isn't about being uppity, right? Power is money? Or?
Only having Roberta Smith and Jerry Salz give the thing away. Seriously. This is why these lists are silly. The Legacy Press is... important?!...Reading Jerry Salz, let alone the village voice or any other new york paper of dinner-friends and circle-jerks for art crit or reviews, is a joke today - for provincials who come to NYC and want to pretend to live the 1980s again. Sure.. Power
The list that is missing is the connections between the galleries and the artists on the list. Neo-Rauch for Germany... haha, god that's a good one. Neo-Rauch! God, ha ha ha ha ha. Oh,no.. really I can't write more, but..hahaa..must...finish...oh god, Neo-Rauch!...hahahahahaha
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