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But out of New York's 300-odd galleries (as compared with about 15 twenty years ago), only about a fourth are impeccable old-line dealers or fair and reliable outlets for living artists. Below—well below—them comes the host of vanity galleries, the new "rental" houses that will exhibit any artist if he pays from $700 to $1,000. They overcharge him for the catalogue, the publicity, the cooking sherry served in lieu of good cocktails at the opening. Some even go so far as to arrange a split with the framers, while others charge a fantastic 60% commission, which is nothing short of usury. These carpetbaggers have not only turned the New York art scene into a hopeless clutter, but they have tainted what should be one of the brightest pages in the history of U.S. art by flooding the market with mediocrity in the hope of a quick profit.
Going, Going—Up. Whether or not he has integrity, every dealer shares in the psychology of the rising market, and has a story to tell about it. About 1955, the year before Jackson Pollock died, Sidney Janis, onetime shirt manufacturer turned top Manhattan dealer, sold a Pollock to a collector for $2,500. "At the time, it was a good price," says Janis, who almost always gets a good price. Last month the collector sold the painting for $120,000, then phoned to ask whether he might not have been smarter to have held onto it a bit longer. Says Janis acidly: "I told him I thought he had probably made enough on the painting."
About 20 blocks uptown, in her gallery on Madison Avenue, Dealer Grace Borgenicht reports that in 1952 she bought a Max Ernst for $500, recently saw a similar but inferior Ernst go for $15,000 in London. Sculpture by De Rivera that went for $800 ten years ago would fetch more than 30 times as much today. Dealer Otto Gerson recalls a Cezanne watercolor that was sold for $1,500 before the war, is now worth about 20 times as much. Recently, Leo Castelli sold an oil on paper by Willem de Kooning for $10,000. He had bought it in 1951 for $250.
The Brand-Name Buyers. "People have read about these paintings going up tenfold and twentyfold," says Grace Borgenicht. "So everybody is out to find the next Jackson Pollock." Adds her colleague, Richard Sisson: "There is a large group of people who don't really know anything but will buy anything they think is avant-garde." "The art market today," says Dealer Charles Alan, "is terribly unhealthy. People are buying not what they like, but what is fashionable. People are actually buying things because they are expensive. Sidney Janis raised prices enough to attract these people. He found that the brand-name buyers don't trust anything that is not expensive."