Total Recall

Damien Hirst Pablo Picasso James Rosenquist Charles Eames Frida Kahlo The Appendix: Tracey Emin, Damien Hirst, Pipilotti Rist, and Paul H-O Phillips de Pury Makes Its (Small) Mark The Second Sex (at Auction, Anyway)

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The best moment was when Stephen Lash and I won the sale of the Florence Gould jewelry collection. The auction took place on April 11, 1984, and realized $7.3 million and was 100 percent sold. Jewelry sales until then were bringing $2 million to $3 million, at most. We decided to organize an evening sale, a first for jewelry in the U.S., but encountered a problem, as we discovered an old law in New York preventing the sale of jewelry at auction after sundown. The reason was that prospective buyers should be able to examine precious stones in daylight. We obtained a special permit, and the sale, a black-tie, standing-room-only event, was a resounding success. For me, it was that auction that started the era of Important jewelry sales in the U.S. —François Curiel, chairman, Christie’s Europe

We started Art+Auction in 1979 because at that moment no American magazine focused on the auction market. At that time there was seismic activity: Sotheby’s had had New York to itself, and then Christie’s and Phillips came in. I got huge help from William Doyle and from François Curiel, of Christie’s, getting the magazine off the ground, and I helped them, too. All of a sudden there was a tremendous interest in auctions. They became more mainstream. Dealers started to feel they were being crowded out, so they were quite reluctant to take Art+Auction seriously at first, because we publicized the auctions. But by our second year, we’d gotten increasingly recognized and accepted. We had the right resonance with the moment. We were here to stay. —Daniel Zilkha, founder, Art+Auction

After working for almost 10 years with my first gallery, in Salzburg, I opened my Paris gallery in October 1990, which coincided with the beginning of a major economic crisis. But for me, as a very young gallerist, it felt like an amazing opportunity because I had access to works that in a better climate would not have been possible. —Thaddeus Ropac, dealer, Paris and Salzburg

The first auction I conducted was an all-Eames sale of about 100 lots in 1999, the year before I founded Wright. It made around $600,000 and was a watershed moment for the Eames market. It also had personal significance. I stumbled into this business right out of college, through a girlfriend whose father was an architect. I was intrigued by how you could buy something for not very much and resell it for much more. But when I convinced my girlfriend to drop out of college, her father asked me, "Do you even know who Charles Eames is?" And I didn’t. That’s when I realized I had to study. —Richard Wright, founder, owner, director, Wright, Chicago

Everyone talks about the economic crisis, but there is still a community around art. Over the past couple of years, many people, especially in the media, said that the art world was all about people looking for the next party, or about speculators, or investors. Now the hype is gone and the investment boom is gone, but there is still the same number of people coming around. The opening of the Venice Biennale didn’t feel like a depression. And that’s a very good sign. It’s a sign that we shouldn’t just look to the Dow Jones for orientation. —Sam Keller, director, Fondation Beyeler, and former director, Art Basel

My best moment was my first fall antiques show, in 1979. It was the second week of September and it was 90 degrees, and I had 90 American dealers packed in the Armory for five days with no air-conditioning. The booth rent was $1,200. And the dealers never stopped selling. It was the greatest assemblage of American antiques anyone had ever seen. You could buy a weather vane for $500 that would now be $50,000. Afterward a dealer came over to me and said, "I want to buy my booth forever." —Sanford Smith, founder and director, Sanford L. Smith & Associates

One of the real thrills is that we were the first gallery to show Picasso’s late works, in our 1981 show "Picasso: The Avignon Paintings." At the time, those paintings were absolutely unacceptable. They sold for around $250,000 apiece or less. John Richardson, the Picasso biographer, had come to me and said, "These are really not very good." But then he came to me at the show and said, "You were absolutely right. You saw something I didn’t." —Arne Glimcher, founder and director, PaceWildenstein gallery, New York

My most pivotal experience was at an auction in 1990. The Chicago collector Sam Williams was selling a [small] self-portrait by Frida Kahlo called Diego y yo. The estimate was $800,000 to $1 million. There had never been a $1 million picture in this field. I hoped I’d get it for the low estimate. As the bidding passed [the high], I kept going. When the auctioneer knocked it down for $1.3 million, he announced, "To Mary-Anne Martin." People clapped; my heart pounded. I started the Mexican and Latin American sales at Sotheby’s, so to be the person who bought the field’s first $1 million-plus painting seemed poetic. —Mary-Anne Martin, Latin American-art dealer, New York

We deal in the secondary market, spanning all the way from 1300 to now and overwhelmingly with museums. Thirty years ago our business began to change, because it was then that art first became monetized. People started to perceive it as an asset class. So our sales increased, but the availability of the materials decreased. Recently we have also had museums proliferating all over the world: Shanghai, Beijing, Abu Dhabi, Qatar and across the U.S. Right now, the demand is almost unlimited for things of museum quality, and yet we can’t lay our hands on them. —Richard Feigen, Old Master and modern-art dealer, New York

My best moment was meeting James Rosenquist when I came to New York in the mid-1960s. I admired him as an artist, and we became good friends. I went to all his early shows at Castelli, as well as his first Whitney retrospective. Over the years we stayed more or less in touch. In 2006 I was able to welcome him to Acquavella as one of the artists we represent worldwide. Working with an artist of his stature, a pioneer who is still painting today, has been the most gratifying and significant thing for me. —Michael Findlay, director, Acquavella Galleries, New York