Speaker 1: I'm Alec Baldwin and you're listening to Here's the Thing Today.
Speaker 1: I look at the art world from two angles, from
Speaker 1: someone in it and from someone who has observed that
Speaker 1: world from a distance. Writer Michael Shnayerson's latest book, Boom,
Speaker 1: gives an exhaustive history of how today's art market came
Speaker 1: to be. Art dealer Richard Feigen spent his entire career
Speaker 1: in that market. Will start with Michael Schneyerson. He grew
Speaker 1: up in New York. His first writing job was as
Speaker 1: the sports editor of the Santa Fe Reporter in New Mexico.
Speaker 1: He made one dollars a week, but it led to
Speaker 1: a job at Time Magazine, then Two Avenues, and finally
Speaker 1: Vanity Fair, where he has published over feature stories. Shnayerson
Speaker 1: writes books too. He's collaborated with Harry Belafonte, written a
Speaker 1: portrait of Andrew Cuomo and Unpacked General Motors and the
Speaker 1: Electric Car. For his latest book, Boom, Schneyerson interviewed more
Speaker 1: than two hundred art dealers. Whenever he writes a book,
Speaker 1: and Boom is his seventh, he becomes lost in the
Speaker 1: world of his subject. One reason that I undertook those
Speaker 1: books was to immerse myself in the different worlds. I mean,
Speaker 1: I found Albany a fascinating world and very in its
Speaker 1: own way, sort of exotic one. How soles about that?
Speaker 1: This is the Cuomo biography? You know it's Yes, It's
Speaker 1: often said that when your drive from New York to Albany,
Speaker 1: let's say you're a representative of some kind, by the
Speaker 1: time you get halfway there, you know you're you're within
Speaker 1: the this realm that is completely apart from Manhattan, and
Speaker 1: you know there's a kind of pervasive corruption in um
Speaker 1: in Albany. It's so pervasive that there's everyone acknowledges it. Basically,
Speaker 1: there's no there's virtually no rules or very modest ones
Speaker 1: on campaign contributions. You can give anything through beyond cynicism. That, yeah,
Speaker 1: let's beyond cynicism. I found that fascinating. Did I learn
Speaker 1: more about Cuomo because of the Cuomo's a very complicated,
Speaker 1: dark guy who's sort of haunted by his father, UM
Speaker 1: Harry Belafonte, It occurred to me as someone who was
Speaker 1: always haunted by his father. UM. Now with with Andrew Cuomo,
Speaker 1: who I don't know well, I've met him many times,
Speaker 1: and of course, like anybody who participates on any level,
Speaker 1: especially a level that can involve check writing. Uh, you
Speaker 1: you have Cuomo lieutenants reaching out to you. But um,
Speaker 1: he's a guy who was always kind of uh fascinated
Speaker 1: somewhat by that relationship with his father because he's so
Speaker 1: much more of a retail politician than his dad. You know.
Speaker 1: But and and their mother was this wonderful woe. She
Speaker 1: was this dynamic and daughter, Matilda Cuomo was always how's
Speaker 1: your mom and how's your mom's breast cancer? Thinger? She
Speaker 1: she knew that game inside and out and she did
Speaker 1: it sincerely. She was a very warm woman. And Como
Speaker 1: would be standing there at Cuomo Senior and it was
Speaker 1: like he had a hair shirt on. He just couldn't
Speaker 1: wait for everybody to get the hell away from him
Speaker 1: and he can go home. Well, it's very perceptive. I mean,
Speaker 1: he was seen as written as being this avuncular, warm, empathetic,
Speaker 1: you know, true democrat. Um. In fact, he was a
Speaker 1: very tough father on on Andrew. Um. Um. You know,
Speaker 1: maybe one thing to be gleaned here is that almost
Speaker 1: everybody's got a father problem, this dynamic between fathers and sons. Um.
Speaker 1: What was Belafonte's luck in terms of because because when
Speaker 1: I met him, he was a pretty no nonsense guy.
Speaker 1: To tough guys, beget tough sons or can What was
Speaker 1: what was Belafonte's relationship with his father? Like they grew
Speaker 1: up partly in Jamaica. His father was a sailor UM
Speaker 1: in some sort of marine, in a military marine situation.
Speaker 1: He um when he came home, he was um. He
Speaker 1: was really abusive to his son, I mean physical, physical violence.
Speaker 1: I remember Harry describing a moment when his father, Uh, well,
Speaker 1: he had done something. Harry had done something wrong, and
Speaker 1: his father said, we're going to take care of this.
Speaker 1: And he made Harry fill the bathtub with absolutely scalding
Speaker 1: water and then he told him to come out of
Speaker 1: the bathtub and put his foot in, and just as
Speaker 1: he was about to put his foot in, the father
Speaker 1: sort of pushed him away. And that wasn't the only
Speaker 1: time he did something like that. At one one time,
Speaker 1: I remember Harry saying that his father took a a
Speaker 1: lit cigarette and put it to his leg um. So
Speaker 1: that was pretty extreme UM and I think it made
Speaker 1: Harry a very tough character. Indeed, UM very tough. But
Speaker 1: at the same time. When I met him, Yeah, he
Speaker 1: did not suffer fools. When I met him, he really
Speaker 1: really seemed like somebody who he had a chip on
Speaker 1: his shoulder. Can I tell you a little story because
Speaker 1: it's just one of the great stories from that book. Um. Uh,
Speaker 1: I hope it's okay if we venture a little bit
Speaker 1: away from from art um. Uh. So, Harry had served
Speaker 1: in the military in the Army. Um, of course, in
Speaker 1: a black regiment outside of Chicago. If you were black,
Speaker 1: you were in a black regiment. Um. There was no integration.
Speaker 1: And he came back. He didn't know what to do,
Speaker 1: so he worked as a janitor in Harlem. Uh. And
Speaker 1: one day one of his uh customers, not customers, the
Speaker 1: people in the building said, Harry, could you help fix
Speaker 1: my broiler or something? So he fixed the broiler and
Speaker 1: she said, well, I want to pay you by giving
Speaker 1: you these two theater tickets, and uh, it's for free.
Speaker 1: It's something called the you know, the America, The American
Speaker 1: Negro Theater was I think the name. So Harry had
Speaker 1: never seen a play and he went down alone to
Speaker 1: see this play and he was absolutely gobsmacked. It involved
Speaker 1: is there contemporary involved black soldiers? Coming back from the
Speaker 1: war trying to readjust so he goes up to the
Speaker 1: founders afterwards, the directors of this theory, sis, I want
Speaker 1: to help, only do anything I can, and they say, really, okay, well,
Speaker 1: if you want to move the props around, come on back.
Speaker 1: So he comes back. He starts moving the props around,
Speaker 1: and he's below that area of the of the stage,
Speaker 1: you know, whatever you call it where the orchestra's pit
Speaker 1: is or whatever, is moving things around, and this very
Speaker 1: surly guy uh is moving them around too, and and
Speaker 1: Harry find says, you're not talking much. Is that because
Speaker 1: you were just in jail? And the guy freaks out.
Speaker 1: He says, why would you think that, um? And Harry says,
Speaker 1: you know, just because that's sort of like I had
Speaker 1: a sense when people are in jail have been. He says, well,
Speaker 1: I can't talk about that, uh. And he says, well,
Speaker 1: what's your name? And he says, Sydney Partier. And this
Speaker 1: is how Harry and Sydney Potier met and it was
Speaker 1: the beginning of their like seventy year friendship which continues
Speaker 1: to this day. Were there white artists, writers, thinkers that
Speaker 1: he trusted that he thought really cared about the movement,
Speaker 1: you know, um, something that he respected I offhand, UM,
Speaker 1: I don't have that recollection. What I have is actually
Speaker 1: the opposite sort of recollection, which is a a white
Speaker 1: guy whom he trusted explicitly because the guy was his therapist.
Speaker 1: And actually the guy's last name was Kennedy. I've forgotten
Speaker 1: his first name wasn't anything to do with the Kennedy family,
Speaker 1: and um uh, as it turned out, the guy was
Speaker 1: a spy for the FBI, and um, Janeer Hoover was
Speaker 1: using Yeah, and and so you know, imagine the sense
Speaker 1: of betrayal you feel if you're Harry Bellafonte and your
Speaker 1: own therapist has been reporting on you to Jaeder Hoover, Um,
Speaker 1: a white therapist. Just to clarify, So, I don't know.
Speaker 1: I think I think trying. I thought my opinion of
Speaker 1: Hoover couldn't go down maybe lower. Um, I have to
Speaker 1: say I think that that he came to trust me
Speaker 1: and we had a very very strong friendship, which continues.
Speaker 1: I'm wondering as I hop over to the world of
Speaker 1: art and your current book, Boom, did writing this book
Speaker 1: lead you to look at art differently than you had before? Yeah,
Speaker 1: I think it did. I mean, I'm quick to say
Speaker 1: on page one of this book that I am not
Speaker 1: an art critic. Uh, neither before nor after that, you
Speaker 1: know that. That's no. I never collected friends that were
Speaker 1: galorous or art artists. I had a few, to be honest.
Speaker 1: I I first got into this story because some of
Speaker 1: the art stories, if some of the stories I did
Speaker 1: for any Fair, were about contemporary art. Yes, you know,
Speaker 1: the whole Older Gallery, which and Freedom, which which we
Speaker 1: have discussed, and uh, you know I found those stories fascinating. Um.
Speaker 1: That was the first thing. I also was intrigued always
Speaker 1: by Larry Gagosian, Um, you know, the the top dog
Speaker 1: of the whole contemporary art dealer world, and I wanted
Speaker 1: to write about him, and I would always be told
Speaker 1: forget it. It took me a while to realize that,
Speaker 1: of course, I would never get to write about it
Speaker 1: goes In because he was a sacred cow. Because Si
Speaker 1: new House, the head of you know, the head of
Speaker 1: the company was Conny had bought a lot of art
Speaker 1: and was buying more. I mean you know, uh, go
Speaker 1: goes Ian had sat in an auction room with Um,
Speaker 1: with Si new House, and they had been a work
Speaker 1: up to seventeen million dollars, So of course I wasn't
Speaker 1: gonna be allowed to write by It was fine. Uh,
Speaker 1: time passed, I thought, you know, this subject is too big.
Speaker 1: I've been I've been thinking, I'm going to write about
Speaker 1: the whole contemporary art world and how it got this
Speaker 1: way from the late fourteas until now, and it's going
Speaker 1: to involve collectors and curators and dealers and artists. Yes,
Speaker 1: but I, um, but I just was. I had just
Speaker 1: taken on too much. So how was I going to
Speaker 1: reduce it? Well, I finally occurred to be the answer
Speaker 1: was to Winnow it down to the dealers, because you know,
Speaker 1: there's no art without artists, but there's actually no art
Speaker 1: without dealers either, and they had been kind of at
Speaker 1: the center of this story from the beginning, and they
Speaker 1: were a very interesting group of people. So that's how
Speaker 1: I got going. You know, I when I've met you know,
Speaker 1: there's something about him it's so exciting and so kind
Speaker 1: of because because he has an energy to him, like
Speaker 1: you want to believe, there's a rakishness to him. To me. Um,
Speaker 1: the only person that could play in a movie about
Speaker 1: him is Daddy would be John Garfield's a is a tough,
Speaker 1: tenacious quality, and you want to believe that began his queer.
Speaker 1: But like hijacking a truck, someone said, listen, kid, A
Speaker 1: bunch of people like he just is a toughness to him.
Speaker 1: There's a kind of a there's a kind of a
Speaker 1: veneered him. He's really kind of a tough guy and warm.
Speaker 1: You know, so many things come to mind as you
Speaker 1: as you speak like I mean, one thing is just
Speaker 1: to the point about his charm. It's fascinating. If he
Speaker 1: wants something from you and I hear this again and again,
Speaker 1: then he's the most charming guy in the world. Um,
Speaker 1: and he loves I mean, there are these billionaires who
Speaker 1: are his clients. You know, he's he's what they call
Speaker 1: collector centric versus artists centric. You know, he's realized a
Speaker 1: long time ago that if you can get Ron Perlman
Speaker 1: or whoever else Steve Cohen to be at your table
Speaker 1: and come to your parties, and then by the art
Speaker 1: you're gonna be Not long ago, I was in the
Speaker 1: restaurant Sedimentzo, and I overheard this little snippet of conversation Asian.
Speaker 1: I guess it was around the holidays, and uh, this
Speaker 1: heavyset guy, older guy leaned towards someone at the next
Speaker 1: table and said, going down to uh st Bart's for Christmas,
Speaker 1: and the and the other guy said, oh, you know
Speaker 1: you're gonna you're gonna see Larry. Yeah, I'm gonna gonna
Speaker 1: see Larry. And and where are you gonna stay? And
Speaker 1: the other guys, oh, we just always stay with Larry.
Speaker 1: We stay with Larry. And what that meant was that
Speaker 1: this guy has bought a lot of art from Larry
Speaker 1: and that's why he gets invited, not because of his charm,
Speaker 1: which he probably thought he had anyway, So you know,
Speaker 1: go Gozian's charm is uh. It turns on and off
Speaker 1: at as as need be. Uh. He's also described as
Speaker 1: someone who can be um very you know, just turn
Speaker 1: a cold shoulder on you, just look right through you, um,
Speaker 1: depending on if you you know, are necessary to him
Speaker 1: or not. When you look at this line from Kesstelli,
Speaker 1: we'll say that's the line, even though there were other
Speaker 1: people that you write about as well. And the abdex
Speaker 1: world as you call it, um this line from Castelli
Speaker 1: onto Coos and these people who are making a market,
Speaker 1: these people who have convinced other people. Um, would you
Speaker 1: say that that who was are the equivalent? Because if
Speaker 1: I read the book correctly, what you're saying is that
Speaker 1: that that these men and some women they got rich
Speaker 1: people to to turn this into a currency. So who
Speaker 1: do you think it is? It's Castellian? Who else? Well?
Speaker 1: So to go back, you know, to the beginning of
Speaker 1: Gogs and I find it just fascinating, Um, that he
Speaker 1: grew up in the way he did in an Armenian
Speaker 1: community in Fresno, California. You know his parents, I think
Speaker 1: we're they were Americans, but his grandparents on both sides
Speaker 1: had were immigrants from Russia. And you know, this is
Speaker 1: very at odds with the template, if you will, for
Speaker 1: contemporary art dealers. Contemporary art dealers tend to be, you know,
Speaker 1: to started as rich fops. Their parents have art on
Speaker 1: the walls, their parents know the dealer, who will give
Speaker 1: the kid a job. I mean, this is how these
Speaker 1: things tend to come up. So when you get a
Speaker 1: guy like a goes In who didn't even know what
Speaker 1: art was growing up, never a piece of art on
Speaker 1: his apartment. And the father we talked about, the father
Speaker 1: actually was an accountant, did Okay, but you know, as
Speaker 1: as Larry later said, there was he never heard of
Speaker 1: anybody who had two cars. He never heard of anyone
Speaker 1: who went to the country for the weekend. I mean,
Speaker 1: he was just amazed to hear that when he finally
Speaker 1: got into the art business, and so, you know, to
Speaker 1: hear that and then to get that wonderful story, I
Speaker 1: mean it's just so classic. You know, he he gets
Speaker 1: out of USC, he doesn't know what he's gonna do.
Speaker 1: He is actually gets a job at the William Morris
Speaker 1: Male Room, the classics starting job, except that he hates
Speaker 1: working for people like Mike Ovits, and he just he's
Speaker 1: either fired or he quits whatever. He's out of there.
Speaker 1: And then he spends a few years just working like
Speaker 1: for a record store, a grocery store. You know, doesn't
Speaker 1: have any ambition at all, which is quite bizarre when
Speaker 1: you think of how ambitious he really is. And then
Speaker 1: at a certain point he gets a job that has
Speaker 1: him working as a parking lot manager. Okay, so he's
Speaker 1: in his parking lot, he looks down the street and
Speaker 1: there's a guy taking framed prints out of the trunk
Speaker 1: of his car and selling them. As it turns out
Speaker 1: and Larry's kind of fascinated it. And so he looks
Speaker 1: into this and he finds out where these posters are made,
Speaker 1: and he gets his own posters. And you know, it's
Speaker 1: the thing about him, he didn't he didn't look at
Speaker 1: the guys selling posters and think, well, maybe I'll try
Speaker 1: to sell something else. He was very pragmatic. If the
Speaker 1: posters sold, he would do posters. And he later said,
Speaker 1: you know, if the guy had been selling widgets, he'd
Speaker 1: probably be selling widgets now, right. So, uh so he
Speaker 1: started he got to pop up story. Didn't he go
Speaker 1: get a store? Yes, exactly right. He's he starts doing
Speaker 1: this on the street, just like the other guy trunk
Speaker 1: of his car. And then because he is framing these things,
Speaker 1: it occurs to him maybe he should have a little
Speaker 1: framing store, and so he does that. Uh, and then
Speaker 1: he gets a little more ambitious and he has a
Speaker 1: little gallery. So he's framing and he's trying to sell
Speaker 1: the work. But he realizes that he's nowhere out there.
Speaker 1: And I mean it's in Westwood, l A. It's it's
Speaker 1: not a bad community. There's some wealthy people in the
Speaker 1: movie business. But uh, he knows he has to come
Speaker 1: to New York and try to ingratiate himself, and that
Speaker 1: leads him to come in and to actually meet uh
Speaker 1: Castelli and and that's where the whole art world sort
Speaker 1: of begins turning into an art market. One day, he's
Speaker 1: in his l A gallery and uh, he's looking through
Speaker 1: a art magazine and they're these very cool abstract photographs
Speaker 1: by guy named Ralph Gibson um who just parenthetically I
Speaker 1: happen to know because he would do the photo shots
Speaker 1: for Avenue magazine. So I would go to his too,
Speaker 1: Ralph's studio, and we would choose these really cool shots
Speaker 1: and they would go on the cover of the magazine. Uh.
Speaker 1: At any rate, Ralph gets a call from Gozian, who says,
Speaker 1: you don't know me, but I like your photos and
Speaker 1: I'd like to have a show of them here in California.
Speaker 1: And there's a pause on the line, and Ralph says,
Speaker 1: but I'm in New York and and he goes says, oh,
Speaker 1: I'm sorry, I got I thought you were in l A.
Speaker 1: Uh And well, but how about if I take the
Speaker 1: pictures anyway? And and and Gibson says, well, if you
Speaker 1: want to fly here and introduce yourself. Then you know
Speaker 1: we could talk about that. So Gozian flies out he
Speaker 1: um Uh. He arrives on his own and he meets Gibson.
Speaker 1: They're both actually very handsome, charming gods. I mean, they
Speaker 1: really are charismatic the world. Yeah. Yeah, and they liked
Speaker 1: each other a lot. And so Gibson says, hey, before
Speaker 1: you go back, you gotta meet my my agent, my dealer,
Speaker 1: you know, Leo Castelli and Uh. As soon as Castelli
Speaker 1: go Goesi and met it was you know, an spark,
Speaker 1: a spark and and and you wouldn't have expected that
Speaker 1: because they're so different. He's an Italian born kid. Uh.
Speaker 1: The mother's maiden name. Yeah, it took the mother's maiden
Speaker 1: name because he was Jewish and the war was looming. Uh.
Speaker 1: He learns five languages. He's a very debonair guy, comes
Speaker 1: to New York, eventually starts this gallery, as you said,
Speaker 1: on the street, becomes the sort of reigning king of
Speaker 1: pop art um and is very generous in his dealings,
Speaker 1: both with artists and with other dealers. He's actually the
Speaker 1: one who pioneers this idea of splitting deals with far
Speaker 1: flung dealers because instead of trying to make their money
Speaker 1: as much as they can in their own shops. Why
Speaker 1: not share the connections and and then everyone will eventually
Speaker 1: do well. And so this a network was a new
Speaker 1: concept and totally not what Gogozian would have done. This
Speaker 1: was very much Castelle. And you know, Gogozian, uh was charismatic,
Speaker 1: but he was also a very aggressive guy. Why he
Speaker 1: hadn't showed that before, I don't know, but now he
Speaker 1: was very aggressive and uh he started uh selling paintings
Speaker 1: much as he had the frame posters and in l A.
Speaker 1: He just was sort of a guy who would uh
Speaker 1: buttonhole you on the street and say, I know you're
Speaker 1: a dealer, you might be interested in this guy's work
Speaker 1: and uh. And they said that, They said that Ralph
Speaker 1: Lauren used to self ties to people table side. Lauren
Speaker 1: would like walk up to people and show them like
Speaker 1: his collection of ties. Funny. Well, that's that's basically I mean.
Speaker 1: And and that's the way Gogozian was regarded as a
Speaker 1: totally bumptious kind of you know, o riviste or whatever.
Speaker 1: And uh. And there was one person who didn't agree
Speaker 1: with that take, and that was Castelli. Would people tell
Speaker 1: you who knew Castelli, that he was really very astute
Speaker 1: about art, that he knew good art, or was he
Speaker 1: the same? Was all about markets? Was the first? Well
Speaker 1: that's a good question. Um. You know people are always
Speaker 1: talking about an I does this guy have an eye?
Speaker 1: Does he have a good critical eye? Can he really
Speaker 1: recognize which is the good painting which is not the
Speaker 1: good painting? And it was it was assumed by everybody
Speaker 1: that Leo Castelli had a great eye. But those who
Speaker 1: are real cognizanti in this world would tell you that
Speaker 1: it was actually his wife, Alana Sana Bend who had
Speaker 1: the great eye. Um. But you know, uh, you talked
Speaker 1: to a really really smart critic like Robert Store, who
Speaker 1: was the head of the Yale Art School, and he
Speaker 1: would say it was Alana all the way. And and
Speaker 1: Costelli was just writing on on her. You know that's
Speaker 1: not a very good analogy, but was writing on her judgment,
Speaker 1: her judgment. Robert Store, the the the great authority I've
Speaker 1: just quoted here, would be just as quick to sort
Speaker 1: of disparage go goes In as he was to disparaged Castelle. Um.
Speaker 1: He would say that no, no go goes In, It's
Speaker 1: just a retailed guy. That was his. He's just a
Speaker 1: retailed guy. Um. But you know, uh, I don't think
Speaker 1: that's fair. I I remember I said not long ago
Speaker 1: that I am not an art expert, I'm not an
Speaker 1: art critic. But I will say that every virtually every artwork,
Speaker 1: every artist that goes in has represented that I'm going
Speaker 1: to see. I've just felt excited and drawn to that art.
Speaker 1: And and and people who really are in this business
Speaker 1: are actually very respectful of Larry's eye. He's really got it.
Speaker 1: And you want, when you walk into his gallery, it's
Speaker 1: not just the art, but it's the frames. Back to
Speaker 1: the frames. But now there you know, it's no simple
Speaker 1: frames in in l a out of the trunk. It's
Speaker 1: beautiful frames, and it's beautiful floors, and it's and it's
Speaker 1: it's actually you know, very attractive people to you know,
Speaker 1: uh you in. I mean, it's all really done perfectly.
Speaker 1: And uh. And of course he's also the one who
Speaker 1: had I don't know if the eye is the right
Speaker 1: way putting it, but the the sense the prescience to
Speaker 1: start expanding, uh, not only to another gallery in New York.
Speaker 1: And there were a few who had two galleries in
Speaker 1: New York, but to um to the rest of the world.
Speaker 1: So I don't even know what the count is, whether
Speaker 1: it's seventeen galleries or nineteen. It's somewhere between seventeen and nineteen.
Speaker 1: We'll have to see how it settles. But um, you know,
Speaker 1: this was a guy who who made his first move
Speaker 1: in that regard in about two thousand when he went
Speaker 1: to London. Um. There's a cute little story. I could
Speaker 1: it just takes a minute because it's charming. Larry had
Speaker 1: no thought of going to London. Uh. He was settled
Speaker 1: in New York. UM. But he had someone who worked
Speaker 1: from a lovely woman named Molly Dent Brocklehurst. There's a
Speaker 1: name for you. And she was, as you might expect,
Speaker 1: a very blue blood person. She was from. She was
Speaker 1: English and she worked for Larry in his New York
Speaker 1: Um gallery and the one that the flagship across from
Speaker 1: the Carlisle Hotel. And one of her artists that she
Speaker 1: handled for him was Damien Hurst. And Damien Hurst. Uh,
Speaker 1: you know, we could talk for hours about Damian Hurst. Uh,
Speaker 1: but the fact is hugely successful and the kind of
Speaker 1: art that artists that that goes in liked best, the
Speaker 1: kind who could churn out a stuff, you know, like
Speaker 1: in a production line. Um. And so Molly was very
Speaker 1: important to go goes In because she was the go
Speaker 1: between with Damien Hurst. And one day she said to Larry,
Speaker 1: I'm sorry, I've got to leave you because my father
Speaker 1: has just died. There's a castle in the family and
Speaker 1: I have to go tend to the castle. Um And
Speaker 1: Larry took a beat and he said, well, why don't
Speaker 1: you just open a Go goes In office in London
Speaker 1: and then you can tend to your castle and Damien
Speaker 1: Hurst is there anyway, and you can sell some art.
Speaker 1: And so that's exactly what happened. That that happened to
Speaker 1: be just the time that the Russian oligarchs were starting
Speaker 1: to come over, and so there was this whole new
Speaker 1: you know, vein of big money um and and Larry,
Speaker 1: Larry didn't know that was going to happen. It just
Speaker 1: it just happened out of serendipitous A lot of luck
Speaker 1: involved with it. There is a lot of luck. Now
Speaker 1: you touched on Mary Boone, so I have on my
Speaker 1: own history with so I'm told I just want to ask,
Speaker 1: you know, in the way that people build these careers
Speaker 1: because because part of that experience for me, I looked
Speaker 1: at it was kind of inexplicable, you know when I
Speaker 1: when I went through what I went through, which was,
Speaker 1: you know, very specifically, to purchase a painting by a
Speaker 1: painter in a certain year, and let's say that it
Speaker 1: was two thousand ten or two thousand eleven, and I
Speaker 1: pay a five figure some for that painting, and then
Speaker 1: I say, I want you to go find me this
Speaker 1: other painting that's an older painting that might be worth
Speaker 1: twice as much as that are more, and you then
Speaker 1: sell me that painting. I think, selling me that painting,
Speaker 1: But what we find out is it's a copy you
Speaker 1: had made of that painting, and yet you charge me
Speaker 1: the amount of money. This was kind of the undoing
Speaker 1: of the whole thing for her when you represent that
Speaker 1: you charge me a hundred and ninety thousand dollars when
Speaker 1: I just bought the other one from you two weeks
Speaker 1: ago for eighty five thousand dollars. Why would I pay
Speaker 1: you a hundred ninety thousand for the one when I
Speaker 1: just paid you eighty five for the one? That was frustrating.
Speaker 1: There was a lot of things that made it difficult
Speaker 1: for her to escape um responsibility, and and and and
Speaker 1: when she settled with me means it's all on public record.
Speaker 1: She she writes me a check for a million dollars
Speaker 1: to go away. And my point is is that that
Speaker 1: we all sat there the the the statute of limitations
Speaker 1: had passed in terms of the criminal and we get
Speaker 1: ready to do a civil trial and we're gonna we're
Speaker 1: gonna go after a lot of emails of her. And
Speaker 1: they settled the case very quickly at that point, because
Speaker 1: you realize she didn't wake up one day and decided
Speaker 1: to do this to me that day. We wondered whether
Speaker 1: there was something and I'm wondering for someone who had
Speaker 1: a career like hers, it was so you know important,
Speaker 1: I mean, she represented people. She must Someone said to me,
Speaker 1: you know, she'll just turn around and take a busk
Speaker 1: yet out of the bin. That she hasn't selled to
Speaker 1: cover her her losses, you know, to her in this litigation,
Speaker 1: What do you think happened with someone like her? Why? Well,
Speaker 1: here's what occurs to me to say. I mean, I've
Speaker 1: interviewed Mary. I interviewed her a good long time for
Speaker 1: the book. And then as the book was getting ready
Speaker 1: to be published. Of course she was. Um Uh. She
Speaker 1: was sentenced and for tax invasion, nail for tax evasion.
Speaker 1: And so I went to interview her again. Um and
Speaker 1: that actually became an article in Town Country. UM. So
Speaker 1: I spent quite a bit of time with her, um
Speaker 1: interviewed after the sentencing. Yes, yes, yes, spent a little
Speaker 1: time in her gallery. UM. I think she was still
Speaker 1: sort of trying to shape the narrative there and and
Speaker 1: thought I could do this, and and maybe she thought
Speaker 1: Town Country was a pretty sympathetic audience, which I suppose
Speaker 1: it's fair to say it is. Um. But I had, well,
Speaker 1: first of all, I had liked her. You know that
Speaker 1: she's she's easy to like. She uh, she's charming, she's
Speaker 1: sort of she's she's sexy. Felin is a great word
Speaker 1: for it. And um uh. And certainly in those early
Speaker 1: days she showed uh enormous uh cleverness in how she
Speaker 1: built her business. By the way, Gogzian was the one
Speaker 1: who discovered David Sally. Um Mary Boonett had a chance.
Speaker 1: She looked at his work early on, but she'd rejected it.
Speaker 1: She wasn't bold enough and that instance to think that
Speaker 1: that would work for her. But Gogozian went to see
Speaker 1: Sally's work and uh, and he took a chance. He
Speaker 1: had rented aloft on the fifth floor overlooking for twenty
Speaker 1: West Broadway, which for twenty West Broadway was the big
Speaker 1: artist cooperative. Leo Castelli the king of the realm. And
Speaker 1: so when go goes Ian rented a loft space on
Speaker 1: the fifth floor literally looking down at the Kingdom, it
Speaker 1: was kind of almost creepy, you know. It was like
Speaker 1: he was looking down to what he was going to
Speaker 1: conquer one days. Yes, he really was. And so he
Speaker 1: had this show for for David Sally. It did very well.
Speaker 1: He sold quite a number of paintings. Mary Boone came
Speaker 1: across the street from her new little um gallery IF
Speaker 1: at four twenty and she ended up taking Sally because
Speaker 1: you know, it goes in At that point it was
Speaker 1: just a guy from California. He didn't really know he
Speaker 1: wasn't a dealer. He had to admit he was not
Speaker 1: yet a dealer um and that's actually what drove him
Speaker 1: to be kind of a different dealer. Instead of representing
Speaker 1: an artist's primary work. In other words, you find an artist,
Speaker 1: you discover him. He paints the painting. You take it
Speaker 1: and you sell it to a collector. That's primary. That's
Speaker 1: the primary market. If the art has been sold once,
Speaker 1: then it doesn't matter how it sold the second time.
Speaker 1: Might be an auction, might be a private deal, whatever
Speaker 1: that then it's a secondary market. So Larry was always
Speaker 1: most interested in the secondary market because there was more
Speaker 1: money in it. It was usually a fifty fifty situation.
Speaker 1: And uh, because there was just more art to buy
Speaker 1: and sell. He would he would go to someone's house
Speaker 1: for dinner. He would see work on the walls. He
Speaker 1: would remember that who were businessmen. Yeah, meaning when you're
Speaker 1: dealing with artists their artists. Yeah, And when I'm taking
Speaker 1: the paintings that somebody who is the owner wants to sell,
Speaker 1: everybody who realizes it's commerce and and and you know,
Speaker 1: I mean he did discover Boskia very early on. I
Speaker 1: wasn't the first, but the second, I would say, in
Speaker 1: fairness to Larry um and um. And he uh did
Speaker 1: enormously well with Boskia. But even so that again was
Speaker 1: a primary artist. Uh. The work was selling for a
Speaker 1: few thousand dollars in the early eighties, whereas only a
Speaker 1: few years later in the eighties, UH Gogozian was representing
Speaker 1: UM people like Sign New House and and and probably
Speaker 1: getting half of a seventeen million dollar sales. So secondary
Speaker 1: work was really where the big money was, and that's
Speaker 1: where Gagosian went the one. The other thing I would
Speaker 1: just say about Mary is that I think I think
Speaker 1: that what she did really shocked the whole art community,
Speaker 1: the whole art market, and I don't think that people
Speaker 1: do that sort of thing a lot. Now, having just
Speaker 1: said that, Larry Gogzian did have to give four million
Speaker 1: and change to the to the I R S for
Speaker 1: uh sending works that had been bought to a buyer's
Speaker 1: second residents and and state rather than the first one.
Speaker 1: You know, that sort of thing you that dealers can
Speaker 1: sometimes do. I have one last question for you. I
Speaker 1: want to say that you know this kid from the
Speaker 1: Upper West Side where you grew up in the Upper
Speaker 1: West Side of Manhattan, who's tooling around owned a New
Speaker 1: Mexico with a guitar. He doesn't know what he wants
Speaker 1: to do, he's running for the Santa Fe sports page.
Speaker 1: And then you you enter a world in which you
Speaker 1: see a lot of things that you experienced a lot
Speaker 1: of things, and one of them is love. One of
Speaker 1: them is you meet your wife, Yes in the in
Speaker 1: the in the Towers of Manhattan show Yes. I think
Speaker 1: that's fair. That well. Uh my wife, Gaiford Steinberg Um
Speaker 1: was married to a very well known Titan of Wall Streets,
Speaker 1: Saul Steinberg Uh no secret there. They had a wonderful
Speaker 1: marriage for for many years, but he did eventually die
Speaker 1: after a long lingering situation. I knew Gaifrid through a
Speaker 1: few different women who are sort of hostesses around town
Speaker 1: who would have me as a single guy at the table.
Speaker 1: And I remember meeting her a first time and just
Speaker 1: being dazzled by her intelligence or beauty. And so some
Speaker 1: months after Saul died, I just thought, I really loved
Speaker 1: talking to that woman. Let's just invite her to lunch
Speaker 1: and see what happens. And we went to lunch and
Speaker 1: we had a great time, and we went to dinner,
Speaker 1: and one thing led to another. So that was We're
Speaker 1: celebrating our fifth anniversary on Saturday. Michael Schnayerson his latest
Speaker 1: book is Boom. If you want to hear more about
Speaker 1: the social scene at the height of the nineteen eighties,
Speaker 1: you can't get a better storyteller than Tina Brown, who
Speaker 1: took over Vanity Fair just in time to document that
Speaker 1: period's excesses. We were in the Reagan era, right, we
Speaker 1: just role Reagan was on a glide path to re election.
Speaker 1: I came in as a London outsider who didn't know
Speaker 1: really much about America, and I was just plunged into
Speaker 1: this world of Reagan's America, which was this kind of
Speaker 1: black tie, wildly consumers. You know, Bob, he was on
Speaker 1: the magazine. It was just, I mean, it boggles my
Speaker 1: mind when I when I read the diaries now and
Speaker 1: when I started to compile them, how much We went
Speaker 1: out for a link to my full interview with Tina Brown.
Speaker 1: Text Tina to seven zero one zero one. This is
Speaker 1: Alec Baldwin and you're listening to. Here's the thing. Richard
Speaker 1: Fagan's New York gallery has sold hundreds of millions of
Speaker 1: dollars of the greatest works of art from the Renaissance
Speaker 1: through boscuillat his expertise as the Italian Baroque. He was
Speaker 1: one of the most important dealers to the newly minted
Speaker 1: millionaires of nineteen eighties New York, who all bought their
Speaker 1: art and their cultural cash from Figen. As Sathobies put it, quote,
Speaker 1: Richard's a secret is to buy what's not in fashion
Speaker 1: and to trust his keen eye for quality unquote. In
Speaker 1: recent years he's been stepping back from the day to
Speaker 1: day leadership of the gallery, but his taste is still
Speaker 1: evident in its choices. Just this year, before the pandemic hit,
Speaker 1: they put up an exhibit of old Master and nineteenth
Speaker 1: century drawings. Richard Fagan is a dealer, but says he's
Speaker 1: really a collector, a passion he's had his entire life.
Speaker 1: The eleven year old Richard Figen earned a hundred dollars
Speaker 1: and the first thing I bought was a hundred dollars.
Speaker 1: You bought a painting for a hundred dollars. And when
Speaker 1: you told your parents you're gonna take the hundred dollars
Speaker 1: of your personal fortune, all of your personal fortune, and
Speaker 1: by a painting with it, what did they say? I
Speaker 1: don't think they much interfered. They just they just s't
Speaker 1: as long as you were happy, as long as you
Speaker 1: left them alone and bother them. He's gonna go buy
Speaker 1: a painting, okay, So what let him go buy some
Speaker 1: paintings and you bought what painting? I bought a your
Speaker 1: painting from the sixteenth century in an antique store near
Speaker 1: where I lived for a hundred dollars. And what was
Speaker 1: what was it about? I mean it was it really
Speaker 1: about an appreciation of art? Partially partially it was financial
Speaker 1: At eleven, Yeah, you understood the equity involved at that
Speaker 1: age because you were surrounded. But your father was successful. Yeah,
Speaker 1: but he was a lawyer. He didn't have any art,
Speaker 1: didn't have any art. So how does what's the two
Speaker 1: thousand one a Space Odyssey moment for you? When the
Speaker 1: Black Monoliths shows up in your bedroom and tells you
Speaker 1: you need to go out and buy art? I don't know.
Speaker 1: I guess I recognize the values, and I felt that
Speaker 1: there was a vast difference between price and value. So
Speaker 1: I decided to take advantage of that, and I ended
Speaker 1: up selling it for a hundred dollars. It was not
Speaker 1: a very successful It wasn't a score. It wasn't a
Speaker 1: big coup for you. Does this progress or was was
Speaker 1: it a one off? Would you keep going even when
Speaker 1: you were eleven? You kept going? I kept going. When
Speaker 1: did the aesthetic enter the picture? It entered it fairly early.
Speaker 1: As I got more involved and I got to understand more,
Speaker 1: then the aesthetics took over. In the beginning, I went
Speaker 1: to work for a company that was in my family,
Speaker 1: an insurance company on the West Coast, Beneficial Standard. Yeah,
Speaker 1: did you enjoy that? I enjoyed the investment aspect, but
Speaker 1: the art that I wanted as chase was in New York.
Speaker 1: So I arranged to buy art for the chairman of
Speaker 1: our company, which brought me to New York frequently, and
Speaker 1: I ended up staying in New York. You sold your
Speaker 1: seat on the Exchange in fifty seven. Yes, yes, one
Speaker 1: of the great Wall Street figures told me that I
Speaker 1: wouldn't like it, and he was right, so that I
Speaker 1: only had that seat for about a year and you
Speaker 1: and you and you dumped your seat on the Stock
Speaker 1: Exchange dumped. I sold it for a lot of my
Speaker 1: broken It cost me fifty dollars. I had about six
Speaker 1: thousand dollars of initiation visa or whatever, and I sat
Speaker 1: for the fifty six thousands. To start your own art, yes, business,
Speaker 1: your own gallery, yes, But then you but when you
Speaker 1: open up, Richard Feigen, your first company, you've got to
Speaker 1: get money to go buy pay or do people lend
Speaker 1: you to the people? Do they consign the pass and consignment?
Speaker 1: And when did things begin to change for you? When
Speaker 1: did you start to really take off, if you will,
Speaker 1: and sell more paintings and build your business. Well, when
Speaker 1: I got to know the collectors and the museums. That
Speaker 1: became very much involved with a number of museums, and
Speaker 1: I began to either know what they wanted or what
Speaker 1: they ought to want, and then I have to convince
Speaker 1: them well of what they ought to want if they're
Speaker 1: lacking certain museums themselves or clients of your Oh yes,
Speaker 1: a lot of museums. Was there a sale or a
Speaker 1: transaction that you facilitated back then that really began to
Speaker 1: make your reputation? Was there when you recall what you
Speaker 1: thought that was a big turning point from my company? Um,
Speaker 1: I don't think there was a single instance. But but
Speaker 1: I've dealt with most of the major museums in the world,
Speaker 1: I mean the Metropolitan National Gallery to Louver and so on,
Speaker 1: and I would spend time look at their collection, decide
Speaker 1: they need such just such a painting, and then if
Speaker 1: I had it, I would offer it to them. Hopefully
Speaker 1: they would agree with me. Someone that you were an
Speaker 1: early proponent of was Bacon, who I am a great
Speaker 1: admirer of. So I'm assuming you knew him. You must
Speaker 1: have known him, correct. I never met Bacon. You never did.
Speaker 1: I had the first Bacon show, I think in America,
Speaker 1: but I didn't deal with him directly. I just brought
Speaker 1: up his work around because I admired it. He originally
Speaker 1: said he was going to come to my opening, and
Speaker 1: I thought that was great. And then I later got
Speaker 1: a call that he wanted me to fix him up
Speaker 1: with some young boys, and I said, I'm I'm out
Speaker 1: of my water here. I'm not up to this. I
Speaker 1: couldn't handle it, so I dissuaded him from coming. You're
Speaker 1: one chance to meet Bacon. I suppose I could have
Speaker 1: met him. Had you been willing to pimp for Bacon,
Speaker 1: you might have had a nice friendship. Yeah, I might have. Yeah,
Speaker 1: but when I can't remember the exact timing. But I
Speaker 1: bought my friends this Bacon show. The whole show of
Speaker 1: fourteen paintings cost me an average of probably six seven painting,
Speaker 1: and I sold him for a thousand, twelve paintings that
Speaker 1: are individually worth now hundreds of thousands and hundreds of
Speaker 1: thousands of dollars. Yeah, how would you describe the art
Speaker 1: market today compared to when you first arrived here and
Speaker 1: moved here in the sixties. And I think that the
Speaker 1: art market is much much larger now, much more international,
Speaker 1: and um, the focus has changed a lot. Right now,
Speaker 1: the old master market is largely dead unless you have
Speaker 1: something extraordinary that nobody's ever seen before. There's very small
Speaker 1: market for old masters, largely contemporary, and that's where all
Speaker 1: the focus of the spotlight has been on the contemporary.
Speaker 1: So I may see permanent value in things and end
Speaker 1: up buying it, and there isn't that much of a
Speaker 1: market for it. I think when you see someone you
Speaker 1: read about them in the paper and they say that
Speaker 1: this guy bought this painting, uh uh, this Picasso or whatever,
Speaker 1: some huge name in the in that world, and they
Speaker 1: paid five million dollars for the painting they paid through
Speaker 1: the highest amount ever paid. Do those people always assume
Speaker 1: that the day will come that they'll sell that painting
Speaker 1: for more than five million dollars or do they ever
Speaker 1: sit there and say, I don't care about that, I
Speaker 1: just want that painting because I love that painting. It's
Speaker 1: always about or is it always about equity and markets
Speaker 1: and resale about eventually? I think it depends a lot
Speaker 1: on the individual. You know, um, I think of spending
Speaker 1: that kind of money, usually they have to be assured
Speaker 1: that the intrinsic value is there and we're going to
Speaker 1: get it back. Some people don't much care. For some
Speaker 1: people that five million dollars may not be that much.
Speaker 1: The documentary that you were in, the Art of the Steel,
Speaker 1: I want to get to something about that in a moment.
Speaker 1: But another documentary I saw they showed coons standing in
Speaker 1: a laboratory like setting with a bunch of his uh disciples,
Speaker 1: and they're all applying paint to these canvases and under
Speaker 1: his direction, and they're asking basically, is it a coon's
Speaker 1: if your hand never touches the brush? And he was unrepentant.
Speaker 1: He said, oh no, I'm everything. He said, what they're
Speaker 1: doing is completely in my direction. And there was a
Speaker 1: bunch of them working simultaneous. He's going from canvas to
Speaker 1: canvas to well, he has he has a sort of
Speaker 1: a factory. Now, what do you think about though, I
Speaker 1: think a lot of these values are confections, and I
Speaker 1: think that Jeff Coon's is a very sophisticated and clever
Speaker 1: guy and a substantial buyer of old Master pictures, which
Speaker 1: I understand a lot of them are on loan to
Speaker 1: the Metropolitan Museum. Things he bought Coons things he bought,
Speaker 1: and he's very sophisticated. I do not believe he's an
Speaker 1: artist of any consequence. You don't know a lot of
Speaker 1: people would different from different with me on that. I
Speaker 1: don't think. So. You've never transacted to Coons, You never
Speaker 1: bought I've never bought or sold a Coons because you
Speaker 1: didn't want to. No. I I don't get involved in
Speaker 1: things where I have doubts about the intrinsic value. Ever, No,
Speaker 1: really not, And I don't consider Jeff Coons an artist
Speaker 1: of consequence. Do you think there's a market for a place,
Speaker 1: a gallery to open in which you have, uh, you know,
Speaker 1: the curators of the gallery, let's say, are people with
Speaker 1: some experience, and on the walls they hang art of
Speaker 1: people that are undiscovered that they really really believe it,
Speaker 1: And all the art is for arguments sake. You know,
Speaker 1: under to have thousand dollars, it's not super expensive. It's
Speaker 1: not no six figure purchases there, maybe even under ten thousand,
Speaker 1: there's a market for that. Do you think people want
Speaker 1: to come in and they want to look at art
Speaker 1: or do most people who have money to buy art
Speaker 1: their big game hunters. They want famous, big pieces and
Speaker 1: feathers in their cap and so forth. I think there's
Speaker 1: very little now that remains undiscovered. The market has expanded
Speaker 1: and there's so many people in it that uh, and
Speaker 1: you can't predict which things are going to be successful
Speaker 1: or not. Um. I remember years ago I was in
Speaker 1: Japan with a very dear friend of mine, Jim Rosenquist,
Speaker 1: we just died last year, and um, we were in
Speaker 1: this gallery and in walks the artist Sama. Her work
Speaker 1: at that time was very inexpensive. Since then, they've gotten expensive,
Speaker 1: and you couldn't have predicted that. For me, it's relatively
Speaker 1: easy to tell which things they have permanent importance. That
Speaker 1: doesn't mean that they're ever going to be picked up
Speaker 1: by the market collectible expensive. There are things today that
Speaker 1: I'm just flabber gasid at the prices they bring, because
Speaker 1: I don't regard them as being intrinsically very significant. Whereas
Speaker 1: five years ago they caused very little. Now their prices
Speaker 1: are enormous. That doesn't happen very often, and you can't
Speaker 1: tell what which things are going to have that kind
Speaker 1: of appreciation. The documentary that you were in, Art of
Speaker 1: the Steel, Uh, one of my favorite documentaries about the
Speaker 1: acquisition of the Barnes collection, folded into the the Philadelphia
Speaker 1: Museum and all the sterm and drawing about that. And
Speaker 1: there you are at an shib but I think it's
Speaker 1: either Christie's or south Aby's. And you say some are
Speaker 1: my favorite quote, some art is attractive and not very significant,
Speaker 1: significant enough, very attractive, And then you point to a painting, say,
Speaker 1: now this picture, this painting is neither significant nor attractor,
Speaker 1: but it'll sell for thirty million dollars or some obscene
Speaker 1: amount of money. Yeah. I got a lot of flak
Speaker 1: out of it. Really no. And the Barnes is a
Speaker 1: very good example, because the Barnes Foundation I was very
Speaker 1: much opposed to moving it, and they wanted it downtown
Speaker 1: for tourist reasons. I always maintained it was it was
Speaker 1: fine where it was, and if they wanted to make
Speaker 1: it accessible to the general public, they could have run
Speaker 1: shuttle buses back and forth. It was only a about
Speaker 1: a fifteen minute trip. I visited it down in Philadelphia.
Speaker 1: They tried to red they tried to recreate the Saints
Speaker 1: and so on. I think that was absurd. Um, I
Speaker 1: think it's been successful. I assume there are crowds of
Speaker 1: people that come and see it, But I still think
Speaker 1: it could have been handled were in their in their
Speaker 1: other building where they were, which was an admirable building.
Speaker 1: I don't think they had to move it is There
Speaker 1: is there a if you go to one city and
Speaker 1: you're gonna go and see the art in that city,
Speaker 1: you're gonna pick one. Which one would you pick? I
Speaker 1: would probably pick London. You would why because the National
Speaker 1: Gallery has a great collection. The Tate Gallery has always
Speaker 1: been very active. Uh, it's a it's a real and
Speaker 1: the new British artists are continue to be very important.
Speaker 1: They were when I was involved with giving exhibitions. I
Speaker 1: focused on that new generation of British artists. Still longer
Speaker 1: a new generation, they're now older, much revered group of artists,
Speaker 1: but they've had a very significant um role in what's
Speaker 1: going on today. So I think that Tate is important,
Speaker 1: The National Gallery in London is important, and so on.
Speaker 1: Now in your own home is art something that certain
Speaker 1: pieces survive and they stay there forever. Of their pieces
Speaker 1: that you have on a wall, and they're never gonna
Speaker 1: leave that wall, and they live there forever. Pieces you love.
Speaker 1: What is the art in your home change over time? Now?
Speaker 1: The stuff of my home generally is stuff that I
Speaker 1: own personally, and it's pretty stable as stays there stuff
Speaker 1: you love. Oh, I have, uh, a pretty large group
Speaker 1: of very early Italian pictures from the from fifteen centuries,
Speaker 1: which is a is a period that interests me a lot.
Speaker 1: Why First of all, I like it esthetically, and secondly
Speaker 1: it's important in terms of the evolution of our history.
Speaker 1: Some of the things in that period interests me intellectually.
Speaker 1: So I have a large group of those things. Every
Speaker 1: now and then I give something to the Yale Art Gallery.
Speaker 1: But so you have beyond your home and in your gallery,
Speaker 1: do you have in storage tons and tons of pieces
Speaker 1: that you own? Not tons and tons of things, but
Speaker 1: some some things I have, but I don't keep it
Speaker 1: in storage. It usually is on my wall in my
Speaker 1: home if it's personal gallery or in my gallery. And
Speaker 1: I don't generally change that around that much. There's not
Speaker 1: that much that interests me enough to buy it. I
Speaker 1: don't have that big, diverse and inventory, Richard Fagin. Last year,
Speaker 1: Fagen sold some of those personal treasures to fund his retirement.
Speaker 1: This is Alec Baldwin, and you were listening to here's
Speaker 1: the thing.