Elegy for a Gallery
This article is from the archive of The New York Sun before the launch of its new website in 2022. The Sun has neither altered nor updated such articles but will seek to correct any errors, mis-categorizations or other problems introduced during transfer.
The greatest gallery in New York has shut its doors, probably forever. On October 16, in the face of multiple lawsuits filed against the gallery’s principal, Lawrence Salander, by banks, dealers, collectors, business partners, an auction house, artists, and artists’ heirs, Salander-O’Reilly Galleries closed up shop. A judge ordered its locks changed, and the gallery declared bankruptcy. These are all signs that do not bode well for its recovery. The loss of Salander-O’Reilly signals not the end of just another New York gallery, but the end, perhaps, of an era — an era in which the demand “show me the art” has been officially displaced by “show me the money.”
Salander-O’Reilly Galleries’ rise and fall makes for fascinating gossip in both the art and business worlds. It is a story of colossal rents, colossal talents, colossal dreams, and colossal debt. In terms of folly and hubris, it may also turn out to be a story with Shakespearean dimensions. But it is also a sign — perhaps an omen — of the times.
Established in 1976, the Salander-O’Reilly Galleries rose to become one of the preeminent blue-chip venues in New York, if not the world. But its true merit lay below the surface. In an art world where many serious artists are being passed over because their work does not fit in with contemporary fashion, the Salander-O’Reilly Galleries stood out as a singular stronghold in an adverse climate: Among the very few venues in New York to stand behind serious contemporary painters and sculptors, it was the most important and dedicated. Salander-O’Reilly had the financial and aesthetic clout to give a whole community of artists the hope that the art world had not entirely gone to hell. Now, that hope is shrinking.
Although I did not support every artist the gallery represented (occasionally, it showed what felt like vanity projects, and it was weak on abstraction), Salander-O’Reilly mounted stellar, museum-quality shows and published beautiful catalogs of art with great historical importance. (Full disclosure: I contributed to some of the gallery’s publications.) Salander-O’Reilly also had one of the greatest combined stables of back room (or established masters) and front room (the contemporary artists whom the gallery backs and, by extension, connects to the lineage of those artists in its back room).
A close relationship between the back room and front room is important, if not essential, for a gallery and its artists. The front room/back room relationship generates an interest not just in the collection of art but, rather, in art’s traditions and language. This helps to maintain aesthetic integrity: It recognizes and respects the ongoing dialogue between the art of the past and that of the present. It shifts the emphasis away from buying and selling to that of developing one’s taste. And it fosters an understanding of art and of the intentions of artists.
At the Salander-O’Reilly Galleries, you were apt to see works by Louisa Matthiasdottir, Leland Bell, Paul Georges, Lennart Anderson, Stanley Lewis, Graham Nickson, Louis Eilshemius, or Robert De Niro Sr., alongside works by Matisse, Corot, Courbet, Constable, Delacroix, Rembrandt, El Greco, Turner, and Titian. Not all of these artists have a large following as far as collectors are concerned (some of them you may never have heard of); but they represent a small sampling of some of the talented artists behind whom, despite sales, Mr. Salander fervently stood. And his gallery, which mounted shows unavailable, if not unthinkable, elsewhere, was a continual draw for artists and art students alike.
No other venue in New York was willing, in the 1990s, to mount a Jean Hélion retrospective. That show, which brought to America the artist’s 1930s abstractions, as well as his large triptych “The Last Judgment of Things,” firmly established Hélion’s reputation, outside of his native France, as a 20th-century master. And there were also sublime exhibitions of Elie Nadelman, late Turner, Constable’s oil sketches, Bernini’s sculpture, and Courbet’s seascapes, as well as shows of paintings by Matthiasdottir, Bell, Anderson, Mr. Lewis, and Georges.
But we have seen a definite shift in the art world. And who knows what effect this has had on Salander-O’Reilly. We are in a climate where money doesn’t just talk; it drowns out all reason: The main focus of the recent New Yorker profile of art dealer Jeffrey Deitch, written by Calvin Tomkins, is all that wonderful money surrounding the art. Some people are probably just as apt to go see the Klimt portrait at Neue Galerie, or the Duccio at the Met, because of their multimillion dollar price tags, as they are for any other reasons. Many art students, especially those at Columbia — where prominent dealers and critics peruse and laud their wares long before graduation — know full well that the M.F.A. is the new M.B.A. And anyone following the recent record sales of contemporary art at Sotheby’s and Christie’s knows that a work by Damien Hirst, Jeff Koons, or John Currin is a surer bet right now than either real estate or the stock market.
Around the world, there continues to be a flurry of expansion and renovation in galleries and museums. But the majority of these projects have more to do with money, status, and ego than with art. Does the Morgan Library & Museum’s expansion really serve its collection? Are the Gothic proportions of MoMA’s atrium really necessary? Does New York need a downtown Whitney satellite?
Some of us in the art world felt a mix of awe and trepidation when, in the fall of 2005, Salander-O’Reilly expanded and then moved from its posh townhouse on 79th Street to its palatial mansion on 71st Street. An artist asked me: “Did someone win the lottery?” I was not the only one who wondered if the gallery had bitten off more than it could chew. I worried also that the tone of the gallery had shifted to being more about appearances than serving art, especially since more than once I had witnessed gallery-goers walk into its magnificent entranceway and, apparently intimidated, turn right around and walk out. I was also aware that, having had to pass by medieval gargoyles, opulent rugs, Bernini benches, and Rembrandt portraits, I was often artistically spent by the time I reached whatever contemporary show was on the third floor. But I knew that Mr. Salander had been dealing not only in Corot, Courbet, Constable, and Delacroix but, lately, also in Fra Angelico, Tintoretto, Titian, Rubens, Caravaggio, and Bernini — big-ticket names with big-ticket prices.
How much Mr. Salander’s move to 71st Street, and his increasing expansion into the Old Master market, impacted his gallery’s ability to pay its bills and to focus on its contemporary artists is uncertain; but the prospects of those artists who showed there, or who hoped one day to show there, have been set back considerably. Some will find other venues. Others will not. Either way, a huge hole has been created.
Admittedly, other galleries in New York can do what Salander-O’Reilly never understood or attempted: Larry Gagosian, for example, can give any artist a fulldress treatment fit for a prince: This includes royalty, such as David Smith, and court jesters, such as Mr. Hirst.
But the difference between Mr. Gagosian, the most powerful art dealer in the world, and Mr. Salander is that the former would never mount a show of Stanley Lewis (one of the best living landscape painters), unless his pictures were demanding six or seven figures. On the other hand, Mr. Salander — who is the only professional New York dealer to represent Mr. Lewis — would probably never have mounted a show of Mr. Hirst, no matter how many millions of dollars he owed his creditors. This practice may be bad for the art of business — especially when Mr. Hirst is outselling Bernini — but it is good for the business of art.