London’s Moment

 

Andy Warhol, The American Indian (Russell Means), 1976

Photo: Copyright Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts/ARS, NY

 

 

 Yto Barrada, Twin Palm Island, 2012
Photo: Courtesy Pace Gallery.

 

London’s Moment:
A Bevy of American Galleries Set Up Shop Across the Pond

 

 

New York galleries are heading for London. Larry Gagosian did it first, in the spring of 2000, opening with a performance by Vanessa Beecroft in a Caruso St. John–designed space on Heddon Street in Piccadilly. No surprise that it coincided with the opening of Tate Modern and London’s waking up to the contemporary art market. Tate Modern changed everything and created a momentum. Four years later, a second Gagosian Gallery—about as large as the gallery’s supersize Chelsea spaces—sprang up on Britannia Street, filled with exhibitions that included paintings and sculptures by Cy Twombly.     

Fast-forward to today: London has become such a hot spot for contemporary art that buyers no longer bother to come to New York; London is so international, there’s so much wealth, and it’s so easy to get to from Paris, Brussels, Geneva, Moscow, and Abu Dhabi. You don’t have to cross the Atlantic, or deal with getting U.S. passports or visas. As a result, New York galleries can’t afford to stay away from London anymore, and most are setting up shop in Mayfair. Luxembourg and Dayan, the Upper East Side contemporary art gallery in New York founded by two dynamic Israeli women—Daniella Luxembourg and Amalia Dayan, granddaughter of Moshe Dayan—entered the London scene last October, launching their new outpost in a beautiful town house on Savile Row. This summer it will feature a historical show of works by artists of the French Nouveau Réaliste group, including Arman and César. 

Pace Gallery has been flirting with the idea of London for a number of years, trying to find just the right location. “We recently established a by-appointment space on Lexington Street in Soho,” says Andrea Glimcher, from Pace. This reservation-only setup will open to the public this summer for an exhibition of photographs and sculpture by Moroccan artist Yto Barrada. But the gallery is looking for a larger space in Mayfair, where they can show a roster of the blue-chip artists they represent—Glimcher is thinking particularly of Rothko, who hasn’t had a solo gallery show in London since the 1960s. 

David Zwirner is opening in October with a mighty presence—an entire Georgian town house in Mayfair (done over by the art world’s favorite architect, Annabelle Selldorf), and exhibitions by Luc Tuymans and Yan Pei-Ming. Michael Werner gallery is moving more discreetly, getting Selldorf to renovate two floors in another Mayfair Georgian town house. It opens in late September, with new works by Peter Doig. “There’s a community of international people who go to London, not New York, to see art,” says director Gordon VeneKlasen. “We have a completely different audience in London, and clients we never see in New York.”

Per Skarstedt is opening a new Mayfair space in mid-October. He’s showing Warhol’s less-well-known American Indians paintings from the late 1970s, timed to the Frieze Art Fair and the London auctions. “We’re right between Christie’s and Sotheby’s, on Old Bond Street,” says Skarstedt, who’s just back from the Hong Kong art fair. “There’s not much of an art scene in Hong Kong,” he adds. “Not a lot of collectors, and most of them don’t know who Picasso is—or Warhol.” Let's just say, it's not London yet. 

 

Via www.vogue.com