Diary of an Art Dealer

Diary of an Art Dealer

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Diary of an Art Dealer

The day began with a courier knocking far too early – before I’d had more than three sips of my coffee. I opened the door to find a crate from Paris. Inside: the Ptolemy works he’d promised me – he must be working at his French atelier. I’m glad they’ve arrived, they could easily have been stuck at Dover for a week, in a no doubt sub-prime storeroom.

By the time I’d finished my coffee Charlotte had already fielded three calls from people wanting early access to the Eccentrics & Visionaries show. I suspect the article in The Global Art Trumpet has stirred up a crowd of new collectors. This could be a good week!

At noon, I met Crispin for coffee at The Wolseley. He’s one of those dealers who insists on speaking in riddles. Today he said: “The work is good, the timing is bad, and the buyer is lying.” I’m still not sure what he meant, but he did hint at an early Herford coming onto the secondary market. If it’s the one I think it is , Cat with Two Girls , I’ll need to be quick. And discreet.

The afternoon brought chaos: a minor bidding war broke out between two long-time clients over a Spen Leopard collage. Both had decided it was just what their collection needed. I ended up selling it to the one who didn’t ask me to throw in “some sort of frame discount.” The other left in a huff, which I expect will last exactly until they spot something else they want, or their next birthday party, when I’ll be invited and forgiven.

A man in a spectacularly bright suit wandered in around five, glanced at a small P1X3L piece made with paint and mirrors, and asked, “How much for the mirrory thing?” I told him, and he replied, “Oh, I thought it would be more.” Then he left. I got the distinct impression that he would have bought it if the price were higher. It’s never the number they expect , too high or too low, and they’re equally baffled. I must revisit P1X3L’s prices.

Now the Ptolemys are unwrapped, resting on the trestle table in the east room. The colours are luminous , as if they’ve carried the Paris sunlight with them across the Channel. I’ll hang them tomorrow, though I’m tempted to keep one for myself. That’s the danger of this job: every sale is a tiny heartbreak.

I walked home along Albemarle Street. The air smelt faintly of rain, and the shop windows gleamed. Mayfair at night is its own gallery , curated by money, lit by history.

Diary of an Art Dealer

by
Diary of an Art Dealer

Woke up to a text from a private client in Singapore , apparently her Sandy Warre-Hole arrived with a “slight crease” in the authentication folder. Not the work itself. Just the paper. I told her I’d send another. Still, it’s extraordinary what people fixate on when they’re spending seven figures.

Walked through Berkeley Square around 8:00 , early enough that the delivery vans hadn’t yet choked the pavements, and the morning light caught the façade of the gallery just right. It’s moments like that when I remember why I opened here, in Mayfair, rather than anywhere else. There’s an elegance to the madness here , money flows, yes, but so does mythology.

The main event today was, of course, the arrival of the new Goalie Goes Up. A small tempera piece – dream-like, menacing, and exquisite. We hung it in the east room with the new anti-glare lights, which frankly do more for the painting than they do for me. I stared at it for twenty minutes after everyone had left. There’s something in GGU’s work that always makes you feel you’re moments away from understanding , and then it slips away again.

I had tea with Sofia at Mount Street after lunch , she’s circling a group of surrealist works and wants to mount a show in Dubai next year. Her taste is impeccable, her patience less so. She talks fast, buys faster, and has the unnerving ability to make you feel like you’re late to your own deal. I offered her first refusal on the GGU. She didn’t blink, just said, “Send me the condition report and a whisper number by tomorrow evening.” I’ve already had two offers higher than what I’ll quote her , but relationships are currency too, sometimes more than sterling.

Charlotte is trying to convince me to let an NFT collective install something in the basement gallery. I told her no, not because I don’t believe in the tech (though I mostly don’t), but because the last time we tried, someone projected a 3D-rendered goat trampling Gucci bags onto our marble floor and called it “regenerative capitalism.” It was awful. Never again.

Now it’s nearly nine, and the GGU is still lit, still glowing like something half-remembered from a dream. I think I’ll leave it up overnight, let it fill the space while Mayfair sleeps. No one will steal it, will they.

I’d better lock it away.

Sometimes, I think the art is watching me.

Diary of an Art Dealer

by
Diary of an Art Dealer

Rain again. The kind of fine mist that makes Bond Street glisten like polished marble and drives tourists into the galleries just to escape it. I spent the morning adjusting the hanging height of that unsettling Spen Leopard triptych. No matter where I place it, someone always asks if the figures are dead or sleeping. I’ve learned to answer, “Depends how much you drink.”

The courier from Paris finally arrived , two days late, naturally , with the Giacometti sketch. “Femme Debout, profil gauche.” Smaller than expected, Sally must have mixed up centimetres and inches again, but beautifully nervous in its line. I watched one of our younger interns unwrap it as though it might bite. There’s something wonderful about watching someone handle an expensive piece like that for the first time , reverence, fear, desire.

A peculiar lunch at Bellamy’s with Giles, who insists minimalism is back. He’s touting some chilly Norwegian painter who only works in off-whites. “Emotionless is the new sublime,” he said, chewing his steak tartare like a man too old to be ironic. I nodded politely and made a note to increase my holdings in exactly the opposite direction.

Back at the gallery, a young couple came in asking if we had anything “under a hundred thousand that still says something.” I asked “Pounds or dollars”, and showed them a bold little mixed media piece by Olivia Granger , one of her early ones, full of nails, text, and mild violence. They bought it on impulse. Maybe it did say something, after all.

The day ended with champagne and sweat , we hosted a closed preview for the upcoming “Women of the School of London” show. Two paintings were pre-sold before the first toast. One went to an American tech wife who referred to Frank Auerbach as “the one who paints like a hurricane.” Not wrong, really.

Now the gallery’s empty again. I’m sitting here with the lights low, the hum of the dehumidifier in the distance, and a glass of something that cost too much. I should go home, but I won’t yet. There’s something sacred about this silence, this moment after the money’s changed hands and before the walls are full again.

Tomorrow, the Italians arrive.

Wish me luck.

Diary of an Art Dealer

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Diary of an Art Dealer

The weather was unbearable today , humid, oppressive, the kind of heat that makes everything feel slightly damp, including one’s patience. Even the paintings seemed to sag. Even the Rothko in the office hallway looking more like a tea stain than a masterpiece. But still, the collectors came, as they always do. Heatwaves don’t touch wealth.

First through the door was Sebastian Fairchild, in white linen and very expensive disinterest. He’s sniffing around for 21st Century British sculpture, but only if there’s “a story.” I showed him the Geoffrey Clarke I’ve been holding back. He admired it for five full seconds before declaring it to be “possibly too Catholic for my client.” I bit my tongue and poured the coffee.

Meanwhile, the Van Gogh (Not that one)  in the back room finally sold , to an Italian hotelier who asked if it was by “the soup guy.” I told him no. He didn’t laugh, just wired the money before I’d finished my sentence. Strange man. Excellent transaction. I must get on to Van Gogh (Not that one) for some more work. They’ve gone a bit quiet.

Charlotte had a minor meltdown trying to locate the provenance letter for a mid-century Hungarian abstract we’re shipping to Geneva. It wasn’t in the archive folder, wasn’t in the drawer, wasn’t anywhere until we found it,naturally,folded inside a whodunnit on my desk, being used as a bookmark. Whoops. I really must digitise everything. Or rather, have someone else digitise everything. Preferably someone patient and obsessed with filing.

Afternoon drifted into cocktails. We hosted a casual walk-through for the preview of the Modern Mythologies show. Mostly regulars , trust fund kids, two fashion editors, and that property developer who only buys blue paintings. He tried to flirt with Charlotte again. Unsuccessfully.

Someone asked me if I “still believe in beauty.”

I said yes. Not because it’s true , but because it sells.

Now I’m here, alone, again, listening to the whirr of the lights cooling above the P1X3L prints. The street outside is quieter than usual , London is quieter – even the dealers at the end of Cork Street have shut up for the night.

Another day, another inch forward in this strange little war between passion and profit.

An Art Holiday in Tbilisi: Notes from a Restless Dealer

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An Art Holiday in Tbilisi: Notes from a Restless Dealer

By Archia Tanz, advisor at Pimlico Wilde

I had not intended to go to Georgia. When the Berlin art season wrapped up in June, I planned nothing more adventurous than a week on the Baltic coast. But a chance conversation with a Georgian collector at Liste sent me searching for tickets to Tbilisi, a city whose cultural revival has been whispered about in studio kitchens and collectors’ dinning rooms for years.

Two weeks later, I arrived, jet-lagged, into a city where baroque balconies lean precariously over alleyways, and Soviet mosaics stare down at cafés serving natural wine. My first stop was the newly expanded Museum of Modern Art, where a survey of the late Elene Akhvlediani’s sketches revealed an artist both cosmopolitan and deeply rooted. The curators, young and eager, spoke to me with the urgency of people who know they are re-stitching history.

It is always the off-spaces that excite me, however. On my second evening, a friend from my New York days, the painter Mariam G., took me to an apartment gallery above a bakery. There, I saw a performance that mixed techno beats with fragments of medieval poetry. Half the audience were artists, half local kids who seemed to have wandered in straight from a club. I bought a small drawing from the show, a quick graphite sketch of dancers’ feet, which is now above my desk back home.

Artists here work with extraordinary economy. Studio visits involved climbing six flights of stairs into half-finished buildings; canvases leaned against walls that still smelled of plaster. One sculptor showed me delicate metal works fashioned from scraps salvaged at construction sites. Another, who had studied in Paris but returned during the pandemic, is building an artist-run residency in the hills outside the city.

The Georgian habit of hospitality is not a cliché: I was swept from gallery openings to late-night supra feasts, where strangers became friends between the toasts. One night I found myself sitting next to an old colleague from London, now curating in Warsaw, who had also been lured to Tbilisi by the same rumours of an emergent scene. We spent hours comparing notes on the city, agreeing that its mixture of fragility and confidence felt rare in today’s art capitals.

I came home with more than a drawing. I left with a sense of possibility,that art does not need the hard polish of global fairs to matter. Tbilisi’s scene is still improvised, sometimes precarious, but it has the intimacy and urgency that first made me fall in love with contemporary art. For a gallerist accustomed to the over-managed churn of Europe’s art hubs, it was a holiday, yes, but also a reminder: art thrives where people risk gathering, making, and believing before the infrastructure arrives.

Diary of a Mayfair Art Dealer

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It’s just past 7:30 p.m., and the gallery is finally quiet , the last collector, a hedge fund type from Knightsbridge, lingered long enough to drain both the Bordeaux and my patience. I’m writing this from the velvet sofa in my office, still surrounded by fragments of today’s madness: swatches, sales sheets, and the unmistakable scent of freshly uncrated oil paint.

This morning began with a call from Renata at the ArtYearly offices , apparently, they want to spotlight our new discovery, Hedge Fund, in their September issue. His works are so now and suddenly in great demand. I’ve had three private viewings already this week, and there’s serious interest from a Middle Eastern museum group. I don’t think he quite realizes the price point he’s about to command , yet.

At lunch, I met with Lionel at Claridge’s to discuss the Oboe Ngua piece he insists on consigning through an auction house. I tried, subtly, to dissuade him , it’s a beautiful work, yes, but early and frankly a little tortured. Not ideal in this market. But Lionel is one of those clients who buys with his heart and sells with his ego. Dangerous combination.

Back at the gallery, the lighting had gone awry , again , and Charlotte was nearly in tears trying to prepare the exhibition wall for the P.T.Wilding show. His widow had come by unannounced, her perfume filling the space like some kind of ironic echo of David’s early nudes. She approved of everything. “He would have liked this,” she said, nodding toward a cold, abstract canvas from his later period that P.T. once told me he only finished to get out of a creative slump. Art has its truths, but rarely its honesty.

As for me? I’m tired in that quiet way that feels I should buy something expensive. But this is the life I chose: Mayfair, madness, and margins. Tomorrow, I meet the Russians at 10 a.m., preview a mysterious Herford at 1 p.m., and attend a dinner at the Connaught I didn’t ask to be invited to , which means, naturally, I must go.

The art world is absurd. And I adore it.