YouSaid · the spoken record

Larry Gagosian

lines on the record
19
first
2023-10-29
most recent
2023-10-29
sittings or episodes
1
sources
podcast

Every line below is reproduced as it was said and linked to the record it came from. Nothing here is summarised or generated. Directory · Search · Corrections

  1. “Skills and traits that Gagosin had was the fact that he knew how to deal with very rich people. And this is why he wants to deal with very rich people because he's like, well, who owns all the art? If I build relationships with people that already own the art, I can convince them to sell it. And in doing so, I'm creating my own market. In pursuing a very rich clientele, Gagozian carved out a very different niche from Castelli's, one that hark back to Duvine, that Joseph Duvine's relationship with the robber barons. Remember, he's reading the biographies as well. He's essentially going to run Duvine's playbook. The secondary market involves the buying and selling of previously owned work. Castelli had little interest in it. And this is why it was seen as a low status thing. This sounds crazy to us today, but at this time, the secondary business was perceived as a backwater by dealers. It was considered a bit distasteful.”

    2023-10-29 · Founders · #325 Larry Gagosian (Billionaire Art Dealer) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  2. “To the art dealer like a Castelli, right? But what Gogozian realizes is like, well, you have to do what you can, where you are with what you have. And he's like, I can't do that because I don't have any relationships with artists. So his niche is going to be the secondary market and he's going to drastically expand in this market's going to explode. And this is where the base of his wealth is going to come from. Gagozian had no relationships with artists, so he couldn't be a primary dealer. What he did have was a gallery in Los Angeles access to an untapped ecosystem of West Coast collectors, so collectors in their parlance, you and I would call that customers, okay? And Gagozian had Hutzpah. Costelli was aristocratic and civilized. Gagosian was a tiger. And then the other difference between Gagosian and Castelli is Gagosian wanted to build a business around the richest people in the world. Castelli said that one of the best”

    2023-10-29 · Founders · #325 Larry Gagosian (Billionaire Art Dealer) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  3. “Go back to disinhibition. Good gozine immediately doubles back and introduces himself and says, give me your number without an ounce of blah, blah, blah. It was one of the most fateful introductions of his life. And so Sign Newhouse will appear again. I want to go into another genius thing that Gagozian did. And essentially, he created his own niche. And it's completely different what his mentor, Leo Castelli, was doing. So think about this. It says Leo Castelli specialized in what is known as the primary market. He guided the careers of living artists and sold their new work in exchange for commission. He took pride in spotting talent. And so Castelli would find an unknown artist say, hey, I want to represent you. percentages you know vary but for the primary market right a piece of art that has never been sold before it's kind of crazy but the artists will give up about 50”

    2023-10-29 · Founders · #325 Larry Gagosian (Billionaire Art Dealer) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  4. “Direction. And Gagosian says, Who was that? And he says, That is Sy Newhouse. He can buy anything he wants. Sci Newhouse actually owned, or I think he used to, I don't know, he's passed away now, but he had a media empire and he actually used to own the New Yorker. In fact, I'm doing some research on this Anna Winter episode.”

    2023-10-29 · Founders · #325 Larry Gagosian (Billionaire Art Dealer) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  5. “Understand. He makes himself unbelievably easy to interface with, just like Steve Jobs did. Steve Jobs did it in three words. Insanely great products. You're interested in building insanely great products. Come work with me. If you're interested in buying insanely great products, buy my products. He's so easy to understand. And so Gogozian says that his impatience with the art world pretense may have endured him to Leo Castelli. I did not do a lot of blah, blah, blah. I think my bluntness appealed to him. So they start building a relationship. Gogosian got on the plane. That is so important. Get on the plane. Gets to New York. So now he's building this relationship. He eventually moves. He moves his entire operation to New York. I think he's 40 when he does that. And so he's spending a lot of time in New York with Leo Castelli. And they're walking down the street. This is going to be a new, like another very, very important relationship. And he notices that Costelli says hi to this guy walking.”

    2023-10-29 · Founders · #325 Larry Gagosian (Billionaire Art Dealer) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  6. “My time. And so Gozine does something very smart. He immediately gets on a plane, goes to New York with a check in hand to meet Gibson in person. This changes his life. A cold call changes his life because Gibson at the time was represented by maybe the most legendary or one of the most legendary art dealers in New York at the time. This guy named Leo Castelli. A description of Leo Castelli in those days in the art world. They called him the Pope, the Pope of art dealers, and then immediately, because Guggosian knows that building relationships run everything. You have to build relationships. He starts building a relationship with a much older art dealer, and Leo took a liking to him. And so Gagosian talks about like, why, like Leo could, you know, build relationships with any young art dealers. Like, why is he doing that with you? And then this goes back to the main theme. What got me interested in reading this profile to begin with. Genius is easy.”

    2023-10-29 · Founders · #325 Larry Gagosian (Billionaire Art Dealer) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  7. “Gregarious proprietor. Gugosian had no training in art history, but he was a quick learner, and so this woman that he was dating at the time said, Next to his bed, he had all these stacks of art books. He was really studying. And so in addition to books, he's also reading all the trade magazines, trying to familiarize himself and try to teach himself this industry. And this is actually really important because as he's looking through a magazine one day, he comes across a series of photographs he liked. This goes back to his disinhibition. So he's like, oh, I'm just going to cold call this guy. So he calls, he looks up who the photographer is. It's this photographer in New York named Ralph Gibson. And Gogozin gets Gibson on the phone and says, hey, I've got a gallery in the West Coast. Your stuff's only available in New York. Why don't we do an exhibition, a West Coast exhibition of your photographer, and we do it at my gallery. And so at the time, Gibson is selling prints to his work for like $200 a pop. And he says, okay, I guess we can do this. What's the downside? But you have to buy three or four of these as a guarantee to make sure it's worth.”

    2023-10-29 · Founders · #325 Larry Gagosian (Billionaire Art Dealer) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  8. “He's got creditors chasing him down. He almost had his car repoed one time. The few employees that does have, they know that when he issues paychecks, they literally have to run to the bank. And whoever gets there first is the one that actually gets paid before those other checks bounce. So he didn't know what he was doing, but he's a very quick learner, and soon he learns how to run a business. And so then he's like, okay, I don't want to just sit here and sell cap posters all day. Like, what else can I do? And he figures out this is how he becomes a very, very novice art dealer. And so his interest in define art, he starts carrying mostly prints and photographs. And he's doing this at a time where there's, in the early 1970s, in LA, there's a lot of young, they call him young Hollywood types who were starting to collect art, and they would get drawn in by something in the window outside of Gagosian's gallery, if you want to call it a gallery at this point. And then they find themselves in conversation. It says they find themselves in conversation with the eager.”

    2023-10-29 · Founders · #325 Larry Gagosian (Billionaire Art Dealer) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  9. “He started charging $15. He starts making so much money, he's able to lease a little patio, and he starts to sell these frame posters to passerbies on this avenue. Then he began letting local craftspeople sell leather goods and other trinkets on his patio in exchange for six dollars a day in rent and ten percent of their gross sales. He called this the open gallery. He's doing this in the year nineteen seventy two. That would make Gagozian 27 years old all the time and 51 years later, he is still in the art dealing business. And it's important to note that he starts a business without knowing how to run a business. So he starts hiring people when he's just a one-man shop. He's making a bunch of money. Then he leases the patio and the real estate. Then he hires a bunch of other people and he's just having trouble. He's unpredict. Like his revenue sources are unpredictable. So he's got a bunch of unpaid bills.”

    2023-10-29 · Founders · #325 Larry Gagosian (Billionaire Art Dealer) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  10. “Words copy this guy's business. Gogozian started buying directly from the firm because he found out where the poster, who's the supplier of the posters, figured out who the supplier of the posters for. He said, okay, I'll buy directly and I will start doing this because this is a way to make money and I can do this outside. I don't have to be inside in an office. So he starts buying directly from the firm and selling on his own. Art was an arbitrary choice. This is very important. Art was an arbitrary choice. If the guy had been selling belt buckles, Gagozian said, I might have tried to sell belt buckles. He just wanted a product that one he knew was already selling and two, then he would just sell it. But the difference between Gogosian and this guy that he found at the edge of the parking lot is the guy at the edge of the parking lot stop there. Gagozian is relentless. He's focused on one thing and he relentlessly improves that. So what does he do? He adds a cheap frame to the kitten poster playing with a ball of yard. Why does he do that? By adding a cheap frame, he discovered he could sell a $2 poster at a considerable market.”

    2023-10-29 · Founders · #325 Larry Gagosian (Billionaire Art Dealer) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  11. “Are buying and selling. And so he's parking cars. He notices a street vendor that's selling posters at the edge of the parking lot that he's at. If Gagozian possesses one secret weapon that has equipped him for success, it might be his dis inhibition. That is not a common, you probably know what it means. That is not a common word. So I went and looked it up. Disinhibition. The inability to withhold an inappropriate or unwanted behavior, the inability to withhold an inappropriate or unwanted behavior. Gosian is going to be a very, very polarizing figure. You either love him or you hate him, but you are compelled to have some kind of opinion about what's going on. And so this is what they mean about disinhibition and why it is probably a weapon that he has wielded for amazing success because this is like 40 years later. He's still in this business. So he goes over to the vendor and he's just checking out what he's selling. It's a kitten, a picture of a kitten playing with a ball of yarn. So Gogozian proceeded to, in his”

    2023-10-29 · Founders · #325 Larry Gagosian (Billionaire Art Dealer) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  12. “Assistant at the William Morris Agency, it's amazing how all these stories connect together. I've done many, many years ago. I did a podcast on Michael Ovitz. I'll eventually reread that book. And there's a second book about the founding of CAA, the firm that Ovitz started that I'm going to read and make a podcast on as well. But he is actually, Mike, at this time, Gogosian is working as Michael Ovitz assistant. I think he's working like 60 hours a week for like 90 bucks. And it was working in this office environment. He's like, oh, I'm never going to work in an office environment ever. He hated the airless corporate environment and the jocking of his colleagues, likening the experience to a knife fight in a phone booth. And Ovitz was interviewed for this piece too. And he says something was fascinating. He says that he believed that Gagozian could have made a formidable agent because he said that art dealing and being an agent, the vocations are similar.”

    2023-10-29 · Founders · #325 Larry Gagosian (Billionaire Art Dealer) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  13. “Gogozian's talking about his dad. His dad's name is Aura. Aura liked to gamble more than he should. He drank more than he should. Still describing his dad, his life didn't seem particularly disciplined. Most of his stockbroking consisted of trying to talk his relatives into buying securities from him. His dad dies of lung cancer at the early age of fifty nine years old. At that time Gagosian is only twenty four, and this is really interesting that Gagozian, anybody describes him now as like super ambitious. He's working all the time. He knows what he wants and he's chasing after, but in his early life, he did not have that. His early years, meaning his early 20s, had a notable deficit of the quality that has now come to define his life, ambition. He dropped out of college twice, and it took him six years to finally graduate. He held down a string of menial jobs. He worked a graveyard shift at a gas station, then he became an”

    2023-10-29 · Founders · #325 Larry Gagosian (Billionaire Art Dealer) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  14. “Direct quote from Gagozian, but that does describe him. So let me say it again a true dealer knows that everything has a price and the best way to raise the price of something is to say that you would never sell it.”

    2023-10-29 · Founders · #325 Larry Gagosian (Billionaire Art Dealer) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  15. “Gagausian. This tech founder has more money than Gagosian, even though they're both very wealthy, right? But Gagosian has something that he lacks. He has this social status. He's in the right quote unquote circles. And so this is the crazy part. He inverted, talking about Gogosian, he inverted this thing where normally the art dealers were trying to emulate their clients. Larry's clients are trying to emulate him, and of course, this next section is so important. Of course, there is always a blueprint. There is a blueprint. There is always a blueprint. And of course, Larry Gagozian reads biographies. Gagosian is running the playbook of this guy that lived a long time before him that had his same job named Joseph Duvine. This is incredible. Gagosian isn't the first to pull off this transposition. He is a big reader and one of his favorite subjects is the life of Joseph Duvine, the great art dealer who helped assemble the art collections of Andrew Mellon, JP Morgan, and others.”

    2023-10-29 · Founders · #325 Larry Gagosian (Billionaire Art Dealer) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  16. “Another surprising aspect that could go see and build his business around, and it's the fact that there is status anxiety. Think about it, he built a business around the person who already has it all. They have all the money. They have all the toys, yet they're still, even at that level, status anxiety that is not spoken about. Listen to this part. Gagozi maintains his influence by attending to the discrete status anxiety of the buyer who already has everything. People in the art world are incredibly insecure. The richest guy walks into the room. He wants a certain painting, but he cannot get it. Immediately he becomes insecure. This is part of what Larry does. He exploits that. A friend of Gossian's describes attending a dinner party at his Manhattan Townhouse, along with a fabulously wealthy tech founder and witnessing a look of real consternation on the young man's face as it dawned on him that, for all his money and power, he was not as connected as”

    2023-10-29 · Founders · #325 Larry Gagosian (Billionaire Art Dealer) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  17. “Important insight that he understood really, really early. The entire world runs on relationships, the entire art world runs on relationships. He really, he literally builds a treasure map of where all these assets are. There's no centralized directory on where the great masterpieces are. And so he'll just call, he'll make 100 cold calls a day, mapping out who owns what, where it's at, and who I connect and who will sell what to this other person. It's fantastic. And of course, he's sitting in the middle creating the market and makes money on both sides. It's insane. So it says lead dealer like a Gozian can sometimes rest away a treasure by offering the owner. Ideally, someone who knows a whopping premium. If you want a specific art piece, you call Gogozian to help you find one hanging on someone else's wall. And then you make the owner and offer that he can't refuse. If the owner does refuse, you then double the offer. And then if he refuses again, you double it again. It is the super rich equivalent of ordering off the menu.”

    2023-10-29 · Founders · #325 Larry Gagosian (Billionaire Art Dealer) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  18. “Really transformed himself. He says, Gagozian has been so successful selling art to the masters of the universe that somewhere along the line he stopped being their servant and now he is one of them. And one thing that Gagozian understands is that outside profits flow to people that are selling things where there isn't a substitute. He sells things that aren't even for sale. Listen to this. Unlike many luxury items, artworks tend to be unique objects. They're one of one in the parlance of the trade, so then Mark Jacobs is being interviewed for this and he's telling the writer a story about Gagozian. Mark Jacobs told me, Larry sells things that aren't for sale. Typically the most coveted items become available only when the previous owner dies or gets divorced or goes bankrupt. An elite dealer like Gagozian can sometimes rest away a treasure by offering the new owner ideally someone he knows.”

    2023-10-29 · Founders · #325 Larry Gagosian (Billionaire Art Dealer) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  19. “Larry Gagosian is not a household name for most Americans, but among the famous and the wealthy, and particularly among the very wealthy, he is a figure of colossal repute. He is dubious of art dealers who refer to themselves as gallerists, which he regards as a pretentious euphemism that obscures the mercantile essence of the occupation. He is always favored a certain macho bluntless and calls himself a dealer without apology. With nineteen galleries that bear his name from New York to London to Athens to Hong Kong, generating more than a billion dollars in annual revenue, Gagosian may well be the biggest art dealer in the history of the world. The business which he owns without a partner are a shareholder or really anyone to answer to controls more than two hundred thousand square feet of prime.”

    2023-10-29 · Founders · #325 Larry Gagosian (Billionaire Art Dealer) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source