Deitch Projects - R.I.P.

Deitch Projects - R.I.P.

14 comments:

Anonymous said...

Zero comment? Huh??

Colin's Ghost said...

I know, I've found that weird too.

Calvin Tompkins has only profiled three art dealers in the New Yorker (as opposed to many, many, many artists)

1. Leo Castelli
2. Ileanna Sonnabend
3. Jeffery Deitch

The Master, the freak, the high exalted grand wizard.

He is, without a doubt, the BIGGEST artist in his gallery!

(And he works his ass off and is a selling MACHINE!)

Anonymous said...

Strange there are not more comments... The NT Times said what I am about to say but in the form of a review of Ted Mineo at Deitch, a couple years back.

Young Artists: STAY AWAY! Or at least procede with extreme caution:

Deitch is a notorious poacher. In fact, more than any other dealer I know of he treats his artist's careers like temporary assets, and treats artwork like gasoline in his big machine.

I'm not a hater. He is also a awesome dealer... I speak from experience and from speaking with people who have been in this city for way longer than me by far... Many artists have just one show and then disappear... (bad sign!) JDeitch will just throw stuff against the wall and see what sticks. Maybe you're a hit, if so, great... Now produce like a seasoned artist with 10 years of production experience! Oh, you can't because your 22 and still in undergrad... No problem, I have an army of others to replace you... But FYI, you resume will have a horrifying gash across it when you try to make a comeback in 3 years...

Sometimes people can keep up with demand and their youthful work does have room to grow and all the better. He will support you until you're not bringing in the money.

JD is at the center of a system that promotes Spacemen Riding Unicorn type art; cool ideas that have nowhere to go. Seasonal art. Hey, cool, but it's not based in supporting developing artists.

He has some GREAT artists but he also has a good amount of wallpaper...

You may get a show with deitch, but what if it doesn't sell? I once heard Friedrich Petzel comment on one of his artists that, "sure it's not selling now. But this is the kind of thing you need to wait 10 years for. You need to build an audience, a collector base..." Not that FP is a saint, but he thinks about his artists careers constantly...

Anonymous said...

I know of three moderately successful artists who entered in to a relationship with him only to have him sell their work during the flirtation stage and never show anything he sold or give them a show. And I don't know that many people so three is a lot.
I've also heard he does this with people newly out of art school. At least Mineo got a little show before being dumped.

Anonymous said...

Deitch in many ways personifies the two-sided coin of the art market in perhaps the most raw, unabashedly vampiric form. He somehow finds the most eager-to-please young artists to go along with his overpriced, ditzy hot-artist bakery of sorts.

I have witnessed him at various open studios with his entourage of low-body-fat women scouring for raw, pliable dough upon which to sprinkle his magical yeast. I know people who were "on a stipend" with him, maybe had a show, etc...but never got any serious shows after that. Yeah, Kehinde is doing great, but how long can this kind of production-carnival art go on if the buyers are minding their vanishing Madoff accounts?

He is not the "evil" that dumps the innocent young artists, but an enabler who finds those willing to go along with the facile plastic grandiosity his gallery sustains. Going with Deitch - at this point - is a Faustian bargain for the limp-brained. The reality is that there are a lot of artists who actually want this kind of deal, who make big, competent paintings of gardens with monsters or vomiting butterflies or splashy-"sexy" abstractions and just want to please. He maintains his operation precisely because there are so many willing to supply to and buy from his model...with those awful group shows and their flashy, art history class 101 titles like abstraction and aggression or conceptual figuration or whatever. what's next? Neo hero funky fun?


Having said that, the relationships he built when he basically started Citigroup Art Advisory from stratch allow him much greater force than all of the artists he shows combined...his relationships with big self-museum building collectors like Joannou allow him to appear to be a mix of cool-hunter and gaudy CEO...


In a way, he is a mega-producer who uses his seemingly disposable artists to sustain his spectacle, where he remains the (only) actor and ringleader.

Unknown said...

love the gallery but man oh man is he an alien. I've spoken to him over 10 times and it's always like i'm talking to a weird art dealing zombie who blankly stares through me.

I also heard he likes young ladies.

Jamie Sterns said...

worst art. best pr. please make it stoppppp

Anonymous said...

Jeffrey Deitch is a quirky man and can be difficult and hard on his employees, but he's up-front and says what he means-- it's not always what you want to hear, but I'd take that over suave bullshit like Gagosian(who is also hard on his employees). Deitch genuinely loves to appreciate art but he loves selling it just as much. If an emerging artist doesn't sell, then they don't sell, as a business man what's he to do? He runs a very expensive gallery and art has to sell. He's honest about the commercial aspect of the art world so what's wrong with that? Artists do have to sell work to survive, you know.

Also, the gallery works with too many different types of artists for someone to say they don't show good art. Deitch collects the best of each genre. If you don't like a specific type of art he'll probably have something else for you next month. Even Dash Snow, who is the lamest, most worthless figure in the art world is "the best" of the slacker bullshit artists (so deserves more pure hatred than the others as well).

Anonymous said...

had numerous sexual harassment suits against him inthe 90s. Ex companion of Wim Delvoye used to work for him. He took her and another gallery assistant to the Venice Biennial, they shared a flat. He would open the bathroom door naked and try to walk in on said assistant and keep saying it was an accident. Creepy is the word, though his actions are apt for one who suffers from a sexual Napoleon complex

Anonymous said...

he handled william powhida's dumb NY Times insult like a pro.

Anonymous said...

it's not clear if this is really RIP. I think the directors may take over - something is still going on but he needs to lay low while he sees if MOCA works out.

Anonymous said...

check this out on artnet:
. "I’m just going to stop all commercial activity," he told Los Angeles Times art-news reporter Mike Boehm (though he thought that some of the business might be taken over by his current employees, gallery directors Nicola Vassell and Kathryn Grayson).

Anonymous said...

the gallery's fate is undetermined. it is not definitely closing. it may just be ch-ch-changin'!

(kathy on facebook)

Anonymous said...

. Deitch is a businessman who saw a burgeoning market and invested and got others to follow. To imply that's he's some altruist is a joke. Ask one of his artists how he treats them between shows.

when Deitch leaves...there will be one less condescending suit/asshole in New York.