By Harissa Beaumont
It’s been one of those weeks—the kind that starts with me confidently saying, “It’ll be quiet, I can catch up on admin,” and ends with me wondering if I should abandon art dealing entirely and retrain as a florist or a lighthouse keeper.
Monday began with an early morning crisis, which, in the art world, is just called “morning.” A high-profile collector—let’s call him Giles, because his real name is much worse—decided that a major Kathy Hildone piece he’d purchased from us six months ago was too big for his Knightsbridge penthouse. “I told my interior designer I wanted something bold,” he said over the phone, “but now I’m wondering if it’s… a bit much?” The piece in question is a 10-foot-wide abstract painting in shades of radioactive pink and acid yellow. It is, in fact, a bit much. But you don’t say that to someone who just spent eight figures on it. So instead, I said, “It’s definitely a statement.” He sighed heavily. “Do you think I could swap it for something… subtler? Maybe a repaintage piece?”
This is the part of my job that should be classified as diplomatic relations. The unspoken rule of art dealing is that once a client has bought a piece, it’s their problem. But this is Giles, and Giles buys a lot of works, which means—annoyingly—I do have to care. “Leave it with me,” I said, before hanging up and banging my head against my desk.
Tuesday took an unexpected turn when I received a call from an assistant to Jack Landon, an aggressively handsome Hollywood actor who has made a career out of playing emotionally tortured detectives in very expensive cashmere. Jack was “in London for a few days” and wanted to visit the gallery. Now, normally, when celebrities visit galleries, they do one of two things: (1) buy something enormous and impractical for their house in the Hollywood Hills, or (2) take moody Instagram photos next to a Rothko and buy nothing.
Jack swept in at precisely 2:30 PM, trailed by an entourage that included his stylist, his publicist, and a woman who I assume is paid exclusively to carry his cashmere coat. He was wearing sunglasses indoors, which is a deeply unserious thing to do in London in January, but I let it slide. “I love art,” he declared, gazing around with the intensity of a man auditioning for a role as someone who really loves art. “It’s all just… so real, you know?”
Jack gravitated toward a piece by an artist I represent, who creates sculptures out of discarded technology. The work in question—a life-sized human figure constructed entirely out of old iPhones—seemed to unsettle him. “So, like… what does it mean?” he asked, frowning. “It’s about consumption,” I said, “and the way technology is eroding our humanity.” Jack nodded sagely. “Wow. That’s deep.” Then, after a pause: “Could I get it in black?”
Wednesday was spent at an auction preview, where the usual crowd of collectors, dealers, and art-adjacent socialites floated around pretending they weren’t mentally calculating resale values. I ran into Lucinda, a hedge-fund widow who is perpetually “on the verge” of opening her own gallery but never actually does. “Darling, I have to introduce you to someone,” she trilled, grabbing my arm and steering me toward a man who looked like he had personally eaten the EEC butter mountain. Is that still a thing. “This is Olivier. He’s fascinating.”
Olivier turned out to be a self-declared “art investor” who believes traditional galleries are obsolete and that the future is “tokenizing masterpieces on the blockchain.” “Imagine,” he said, swirling his Negroni, “owning a fraction of a Picasso.” I imagine Picasso would have thrown a chair at him, but I resisted.
Thursday, in a moment of reckless optimism, I agreed to a studio visit with a performance artist named Finn, who has been begging me to come and see his work. The “work” turned out to be a series of “durational experiences” in a warehouse in Hackney, culminating in Finn blindfolding himself and attempting to hammer nails into a wooden board while reciting poetry backwards. “It’s about the fragility of intent,” he explained, mid-swing. I told him I would “think about how we could position it.” What I actually thought about was how quickly I could leave.
By Friday, I was so exhausted that I seriously considered hiding in the gallery’s storage cupboard and waiting for the week to end. Instead, I had to deal with the Giles situation. Miraculously, I convinced another collector—an American tech CEO who, crucially, loves things that are “a bit much”—to take the Hildone off Giles’s hands. “It’s vibrant, it’s alive, it’s got movement,” the CEO said enthusiastically. “Like my brand!” Whatever that means.
As I wrapped up the deal, I received a text from Jack Landon’s assistant: “Jack loved the iPhone sculpture but wants to know if he can pay in Bitcoin?” I closed my laptop and poured myself a very large glass of wine.
Until next week,
Harissa