Alone, I stroll from block to block, following whim and mood, always uncertain. From the Thursday exhibitions of Louise Bourgeois to the Greenwich
Village antique shops, the
Big Apple
fascinates me; a breeze of old Europe still blows across the city. My steps take me to West 23rd Street and 980
Madison Avenue: the New York haunts of the Gagosian Gallery. New York, New York! Without a doubt, the creative blade was forged very nearby,
right on Ellis Island!
Installatio
Paris © Photo by
Mid-1980’s: the City of Angels takes a violent turn for the worse.
The hardcore punk scene explodes in riots to make
Black Flag
green
with envy; Larry Gagosian of the vagabond shoes, who doesn’t like to
speak of himself but does like to let others express themselves, opens the
Gagosian Gallery, in 1980. It is a place devoted to the explosion
of contemporary art, all the while giving earlier works of the Modern
era the chance to enthral again and again; at rst, its walls give free
rein to the demands and visions of Eric Fischl, Jean-Michel Basquiat and
David Salle. In 1985 the man who never sleeps and who is never seen
opens his rst gallery in New York, West 23rd Street, dedicated to the
New York School, to Abstract Expressionism, to Pop Art, and here
presents early works of Robert Rauschenberg, Roy Lichtenstein and
Willem de Kooning. Like plate tectonics, New York City moves and
vibrates to the whims of its passions and furies. Larry Gagosian likes
to let this current run free, this constantly changing epicentre of the city.
1989, he sets up at 980 Madison Avenue; 1991, in the old factory
neighbourhood, Soho, become the city’s artistic centre: a meandering
towards downtown! The artists: Richard Serra, Mark di Suvero, Barnett
Newman, Chris Burden, Douglas Gordon… The list is long and difficult
to track. The vagabond shoes of art must then stretch out again. 1995
a return to L.A. County and Beverly Hills. The punks have abandoned
their future but Larry Gagosian continues his own, backing
the installations and strokes of Nan Goldin, Jeff Koons and Richard
Prince. 1999, New York unceasingly “epicentres” itself. Larry
Gagosian returns to the relentless turntable of Chelsea, located West
24th Street.
