The genesis of this exhibition goes back more than forty years to a visit Joe Helman made to my studio in the early ’80s. There were many such visits those days, and dealers have continued to show up at the studio periodically ever since. I remember almost nothing about most of these visits—people tramping up the stairs, then back down again—but something transpired on this particular occasion that stayed with me, call it an insight tinged with a secret wish. Like much of what we want to say about art, it was a comment both obvious and counter-intuitive, the kind of thing—implying more than it said—that you might tell your analyst, but would certainly not wish to impose on your friends. Proving what an inconsiderate friend I can be, Dear Reader, I am now going to share the story with you.
People of a certain age will remember that Joe was partners with Irving Blum in the Blum/Helman Gallery on 57th Street, an enlarged version of Irving’s Los Angeles gallery, with its strong ties to Leo Castelli and his artists. The gallery showed Ellsworth Kelly as well as other luminaries of that generation. I’m writing about them in the past tense, though both Joe and Irving are thankfully still with us. But the time I’m writing about was all so long ago; memories of that time, fragmented and jumbled, have the feeling of a door opening suddenly onto the long suppressed meaning of a dream.
The two men were very different personalities. Irving possessed some measure of stage glamour: He was tall and good looking, with a resonant voice that carried across a room and a quick, teasing wit. As a young man he had modeled himself on Cary Grant, and the resemblance was undeniable. Joe was a midwestern type, soft spoken and not someone you would pick out in a crowded room. His dark suits did not have the bespoke flair of Irving’s camel hair blazers. But Joe was fluent in the language of the 1%, being himself of the class of self-made tyros who flourished in the 1960s and ‘70s. He had been an avid collector in his native St. Louis before opening a gallery there and was now ready for a bigger stage.
Every dealer develops a way of talking about art that suits their personality. There are almost as many different styles as there are dealers, but the basic premise is to point out what others have missed, to entice the collector with a promise to unlock hidden value. It’s essentially racing forum talk, the dealer as racetrack tout. There are long odds and short odds, and the occasional sure thing. Or, to use a different metaphor, from the overflowing supermarket aisles of contemporary art, dealers must be able to make the case for why this artist deserves our attention. A good dealer will craft a narrative that places a given artist in an art-historical continuum, and that also explains how the work is relevant to the way we live now (or the way we wish to be seen as living). Joe’s version of the pitch was uncommonly direct. He appealed to our notion of the great continuum of art, the belief that art comes out of other art. Joe placed the artist of today in a direct lineage with some unassailable precursor: This artist is just like that artist (iconic, historic), only reimagined for our time. As an example of this kind of patter, perhaps the most efficacious comparison in Joe’s repertoire was this: Ellsworth is our Matisse. On the face of it, the connection is thin almost to the point of absurdity. When we look at a painting by Ellsworth Kelly, with its unmodulated palette of two or three colors, its geometric shapes and hard edges, we do not immediately call up a dream of Matisse’s loose arabesques and complex color harmonies; even less so the view out his window in Nice, or his heavily patterned, erotically charged interiors. Nevertheless, Joe somehow made the comparison stick. Hadn’t Ellsworth hung around Paris after the war, breathing in the late School of Paris exhaust fumes? It wasn’t so much an actual art-historical comparison as it was the sprinkling of pixie dust.
The genesis of this exhibition goes back more than forty years to a visit Joe Helman made to my studio in the early ’80s. There were many such visits those days, and dealers have continued to show up at the studio periodically ever since. I remember almost nothing about most of these visits—people tramping up the stairs, then back down again—but something transpired on this particular occasion that stayed with me, call it an insight tinged with a secret wish. Like much of what we want to say about art, it was a comment both obvious and counter-intuitive, the kind of thing—implying more than it said—that you might tell your analyst, but would certainly not wish to impose on your friends. Proving what an inconsiderate friend I can be, Dear Reader, I am now going to share the story with you.
People of a certain age will remember that Joe was partners with Irving Blum in the Blum/Helman Gallery on 57th Street, an enlarged version of Irving’s Los Angeles gallery, with its strong ties to Leo Castelli and his artists. The gallery showed Ellsworth Kelly as well as other luminaries of that generation. I’m writing about them in the past tense, though both Joe and Irving are thankfully still with us. But the time I’m writing about was all so long ago; memories of that time, fragmented and jumbled, have the feeling of a door opening suddenly onto the long suppressed meaning of a dream.
The two men were very different personalities. Irving possessed some measure of stage glamour: He was tall and good looking, with a resonant voice that carried across a room and a quick, teasing wit. As a young man he had modeled himself on Cary Grant, and the resemblance was undeniable. Joe was a midwestern type, soft spoken and not someone you would pick out in a crowded room. His dark suits did not have the bespoke flair of Irving’s camel hair blazers. But Joe was fluent in the language of the 1%, being himself of the class of self-made tyros who flourished in the 1960s and ‘70s. He had been an avid collector in his native St. Louis before opening a gallery there and was now ready for a bigger stage.
Every dealer develops a way of talking about art that suits their personality. There are almost as many different styles as there are dealers, but the basic premise is to point out what others have missed, to entice the collector with a promise to unlock hidden value. It’s essentially racing forum talk, the dealer as racetrack tout. There are long odds and short odds, and the occasional sure thing. Or, to use a different metaphor, from the overflowing supermarket aisles of contemporary art, dealers must be able to make the case for why this artist deserves our attention. A good dealer will craft a narrative that places a given artist in an art-historical continuum, and that also explains how the work is relevant to the way we live now (or the way we wish to be seen as living). Joe’s version of the pitch was uncommonly direct. He appealed to our notion of the great continuum of art, the belief that art comes out of other art. Joe placed the artist of today in a direct lineage with some unassailable precursor: This artist is just like that artist (iconic, historic), only reimagined for our time. As an example of this kind of patter, perhaps the most efficacious comparison in Joe’s repertoire was this: Ellsworth is our Matisse. On the face of it, the connection is thin almost to the point of absurdity. When we look at a painting by Ellsworth Kelly, with its unmodulated palette of two or three colors, its geometric shapes and hard edges, we do not immediately call up a dream of Matisse’s loose arabesques and complex color harmonies; even less so the view out his window in Nice, or his heavily patterned, erotically charged interiors. Nevertheless, Joe somehow made the comparison stick. Hadn’t Ellsworth hung around Paris after the war, breathing in the late School of Paris exhaust fumes? It wasn’t so much an actual art-historical comparison as it was the sprinkling of pixie dust.
Continue reading in the full text below.