About this item
Highlights
- The Art Dealer's Apprentice tells the story of how the author moved to New York in 1989 as a young Midwesterner, found a job at an Upper East Side gallery, and became the protégé of Carla Panicali, an Italian countess and major international art world figure.
- About the Author: David Guenther was a gallery assistant and gallery director at Panicali Fine Art in New York from 1989-1992.
- 246 Pages
- Art, Business Aspects
Description
About the Book
The Art Dealer's Apprentice tells the story of how the author moved to New York in 1989 as a young Midwesterner, found a job at an Upper East Side gallery, and became the protégé of Carla Panicali, an Italian countess and major international art world figure.Book Synopsis
The Art Dealer's Apprentice tells the story of how the author moved to New York in 1989 as a young Midwesterner, found a job at an Upper East Side gallery, and became the protégé of Carla Panicali, an Italian countess and major international art world figure.
Review Quotes
Guenther encounters the works of dozens of artists and devotes chapters to many of the most important ones his Panicali gallery deals with, including Kandinsky, Balthus, Dubuffet, Modigliani, Zurbarán, Rothko, Chagall, Renoir, Tamayo, Fontana, and others. He offers opinions on these painters and sculptors, some profound, some prosaic, but that is this book's charm. It doesn't try to be something other than what it is, unlike the art market of this period, which the author characterizes as spanning "the fakery, the genius, and everything in between." ...Perhaps this kind of Midwestern frankness is what made the author so successful during the course of the tale he relates, navigating a milieu of ersatz cultural sophistication and hyperbolic artistic faddism, in one of the most ruthless commercial cities in the world. Even more so, it makes The Art Dealer's Apprentice a stimulating and refreshing read.
In a memoir recounting his time as a gallery assistant, then gallery director at Panicali Fine Art on New York's Upper East Side from 1989 to 1992, Guenther looks at the art business' ecosystem, one populated by collectors, dealers, artists, experts, and more than a few unscrupulous types. He writes that working at the "gallery turned out to be the most interesting job I ever had" and that he learned a lot about art, artists, art history, and international business. When the art market collapsed, and money and power played increasingly larger roles in the business of art, he soured on the field since it "wasn't really about art anymore." He writes about the people and personalities he encountered, including his mentor, Carla Panicali, owner of the eponymous gallery, and his experience as a Midwesterner adapting to living and working in New York. Documentation is an essential part of the art trade, and Guenther provides helpful notes and a sizable bibliography. Anyone interested in the business side of the art world will enjoy this candid and personal account.
The Art Dealer's Apprentice is a charming coming of age story set in the high stakes, sometimes shady, world of tony Manhattan art galleries. If you ever wondered what happens behind the scenes, buy this book. Now.
The Art Dealer's Apprentice, equal parts memoir and tribute to the prominent dealer Carla Panicali, is a crash course in the shadow world of the art gallery system. David B. Guenther takes us along on his youthful journey through the New York gallery scene of the late 1980s and early 1990s, and regales the reader with vivid reminiscences of its lack of regulation, artworks and people of dubious authenticity, authentication certificates bought, sold, and refused outright -- that is, all of the weighty trials and tribulations of the art world that still pollute the art market today.
About the Author
David Guenther was a gallery assistant and gallery director at Panicali Fine Art in New York from 1989-1992. He was also a gallery assistant at The Drawing Center in New York (1984-1985) and a journalist and art critic for The Pittsburgh Press, In Pittsburgh, New Art Examiner, Pittsburgh Magazine and other publications (1988-1989).
