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The Art Prophets CONFIDENCE MEN by Pedro Vélez

Richard Polsky, The Art Prophets: The Artists, Dealers, and Tastemakers Who Shook the Art World, Other Press, 2011, 262 pp. $24.95.

Richard Polsky is a rare bird -- an art dealer who writes books (and magazine columns, which he used to contribute to this magazine).

So far, he’s done two on Andy Warhol, filled with anecdotes about the art world, and a third on dinosaur-bone collectors.

Now he’s got a new one, The Art Prophets, which bills itself as an account of how “great 20th-century visionaries in the art world,”

armed with money and confidence, were able to open the doors for new movements to emerge. You can’t underestimate the importance of

money and confidence, but Art Prophets has a problem. It’s altogether too Pollyannaish for a time when the art world is in an

accusatory frenzy.

The reader just can’t help contrasting Polsky’s super-optimistic musings with real-life dramas, like the potential scandal over at

Knoedler & Company, the disbandment of the Andy Warhol Foundation authentication board or the uncertain behind-the-scenes

arrangements that led to that Lichtenstein painting setting a ridiculous auction record.

For starters, equating “prophet” with “art dealer” might strike some as ludicrous. Polsky’s seers do not interpret signs from deities

or foretell the future. Rather, they make niche markets, promote labels and brands and exploit commercial ghettoes. This situation

begets the question: What came first, the egg or the chicken?The book is fun, though, which may be more the point. Each prophet gets

a chapter: Ivan Karp and Pop Art; Stan Lee and comic book art; Joshua Baer and Native American art; Jeffrey Fraenkel and photography;

Louis Meisel and Photorealism; Tony Shafrazi and Street Art; and so on.

I skipped the chapter on Pop because I can’t stomach it anymore. However, the chapter on Outsider Art really got me. Blame it on a

chance encounter noted Philadelphia dealer John Ollman had in 1982 with a stranger who showed up at his door with a box full of

objects made of wound wire. 700 of them were apparently found abandoned in some alley.Without any real evidence, specialists in the

field were forced to assume the maker was African-American, since the alley was located in a poor neighborhood, and that these

objects (presumably made in ‘70s) were abandoned there after the maker’s death.

Slowly but surely the seas parted in 2006 when Matthew Marks Gallery in New York decided to show the works amassed by Ollman. And so

the legend of the Philadelphia Wireman was born. Polsky describes the event as an act of faith and fate.

“Had the owner of the assemblages shown them to another gallerist, there’s a distinct possibility that we never would have heard of

the Philadelphia Wireman. You can have the greatest eye in the world, but you cannot be a true art-world visionary unless you ‘know

when you see it’ -- even if you’ve never seen it before.”

Ah! Such are the virtues of an unregulated art market.

Other prophets, like ‘60s Bay Area rock promoters Bill Graham and Chet Helms, had to build their thing up from scratch by developing

critical mass and street cred. They did it the old fashioned way, commissioning artists to make posters and employing high-concept

production values to impress their audience. I love this chapter because it gives props to legend Stanley Mouse, the eminent artist

of the “Weirdo Hot Rod” as well as so many great trippy rock posters, including those of the Grateful Dead. The Denver Art Museum now

collects Mouse’s work, a well-deserved prize for his years of service to rock ‘n roll.

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