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WD_205/ 2005
(  Satoshi Kinoshita )
| Series: | Works on paper: Drawings 3 | | Medium: | oilstick on paper | | Size (inches): | 39.8 x 25 | | Size (mm): | 1020 x 640 | | Catalog #: | WD_0205 | | Description: | Signed, date and copyright in pencil on the reverse.
"Blame Ovitz: When Art Started Imitating Hollywood" by NIKKI FINKE.
LA Weekly, November 18-24, 2005
Rising to the highest ranks of Hollywood professionally and socially is not enough for most entertainment moguls. They realize that to be taken seriously as major players, they have to hold sway in more than just one sphere of influence. The first big pond they almost always navigate is the art world. Unfortunately, their interest does not always spring from a deep and abiding love of fine art, but from their lust for another trapping of power. Many value paintings and sculpture in much the same way they value show biz properties: as a passionless commodity to conquer and control.
So it was with the once-unstoppable Michael Ovitz, who started acquiring art as he began attaining mogul status. Today he is one of the world’s top 200 collectors, along with six other Angelenos who made ARTnews magazine’s 15th-annual list this summer. True, David Geffen’s and Doug Cramer’s collections far surpass Ovitz’s, but his is better than Terry Semel’s and Jake Bloom’s. And that’s not even counting the giant Roy Lichtenstein in the lobby of the I.M. Pei–designed CAA building that Ovitz co-owns with ex-partners Ron Meyer and Bill Haber. (The famed Beverly Hills space, including the painting, will be put up for rent when CAA moves out next summer, more than ten years after Ovitz left the agency.) Ovitz was also the first Angeleno to be named to the coveted board of trustees at New York’s Museum of Modern Art after passing muster with legendary art collector David Rockefeller.
These feats usually take a lifetime to accomplish, or at least a billion-dollar net worth. Yet Ovitz did it in record time with only a hundred million to his name. But how? To date, no one has gone behind his collection to describe what he did to amass it early on. It’s a tale of ambition, greed and ego not only on his part but also on the part of those who did business with him. In the process, Ovitz helped change the art world for the worse by bringing the same ruthless tactics to SoHo and 57th Street that he’d used to rule Hollywood.
This story includes recollections from two dozen interview subjects, one of whom, famed gallery owner Leo Castelli, has since passed away. On Monday, I spoke with Ovitz, who would not go on the record to dispute any of the details contained here. He did indicate he’d forgotten about these and other incidents with some of the art world’s most famous names because they represented merely a few of the many transactions he conducted on a routine basis early on. He dealt with about three dozen art dealers and galleries in both Los Angeles and New York City while amassing his 1,000-plus collection of art and antiquities. He also emphasized that art wasn’t his business, but his hobby, and that one of the reasons he’d sought solace in it was to try to escape the pressure cooker of Hollywood and put himself into a different environment that was antithetical to his agency business. Besides, he pointed out to me, if he’d been such a jerk, would all those people have done business with him?
Probably. Because these were heady days in the art market. Like Hollywood at that time, supply was limited, demand was huge, and the dealers/agents were controlling the stars. To paint the picture with a broad brush, it wasn’t so much the art of the deal as it was the deal of the art. And Ovitz manipulated the two.
Let’s start at the beginning: In his early years as an agent, Ovitz, who came from a tract-home development in the San Fernando Valley, had little knowledge of art. He educated himself by hanging around people who grew up rich. Whatever art his more sophisticated pals indicated was good, Ovitz would try to buy. One friend even started looking for the worst thing in the gallery and then breathlessly declaring, “Now, that’s terrific!” Invariably, Ovitz purchased it.
At first, Ovitz was interested only in contemporary art, because it was the only art he could afford. His first real exposure came from an unlikely source: a former mailroom clerk at the William Morris Agency.
Barry Lowen rose from WMA to become vice president for creative affairs at Aaron Spelling Productions, but he was, as the Los Angeles Times once described him, a key “center of influence” in the art world. He’s best remembered as a founder of the Museum of Contemporary
Art in downtown Los Angeles and the short-lived Entertainment Alliance of the Modern and Contemporary Council, a support group for the Los Angeles County Museum of Art. (After he died of complications from AIDS in 1985, Lowen left his multimillion-dollar collection to MOCA and named Ovitz as one of his estate’s three executors.) Lowen was a passionate collector: Even when he could only afford the equivalent of lawn furniture, Lowen had paintings that were museum quality. He Sheetrocked over every window inhis Hollywood Hills home to have more wall space to hang his art. Lowen happened to be best friends with agent Bill Haber, who introduced him to Ovitz. In Lowen, Ovitz found a valuable contact inside the rarefied and cliquish New York gallery scene, which was all but closed to him then.
At the time, there was an incredible demand for contemporary art, especially by well-known and even up-and-coming painters. Like other art neophytes, Ovitz couldn’t go into a major gallery, see a painting he liked, and then buy it. The vast majority of works were sold right out of artists’ studios long before they ever graced a gallery’s walls. Only the privileged few serious collectors who’d done business for years with a dealer were given a chance to buy the best pieces. Outsiders like Ovitz were left to scour what might come available on the much more expensive secondary market.
It was around this time that Ovitz saw the April 19, 1982, cover of New York magazine, picturing an exotic brunette beauty who was tagged “The New Queen of the Art Scene.” Mary Boone was credited with reinvigorating the SoHo gallery scene by hyping the reputations and prices of several young artists, like Julian Schnabel, amid a media frenzy the likes of which hadn’t been seen then or since. Ovitz made up his mind to meet Boone. He had the perfect go-between: Lowen, who introduced Ovitz to Boone during an exhibition of David Salle’s work at her gallery later that year. “I wanted to meet you because you’re like me,” Boone recalled Ovitz saying to her.
And they were alike in so many ways. Born in middle-class Erie, Pennsylvania, Boone had changed the way people in her field repped artists as Ovitz did with agenting. Boone forged a new entity in the art world: the star dealer. The year she connected with Ovitz, she was well on her way to becoming a legend. At that first meeting, Ovitz kept gushing about his enthusiasm for art, and especially for Salle’s work, proclaiming, “I always liked him.” But Ovitz had only California artists in his collection. “People you’ve never heard of,” Boone recalled.
She quickly recognized that Ovitz was yet another nouveau riche guy who’d made it big and now wanted the art to prove it. But Boone did sit up and take notice when Ovitz pledged to her that he “really wanted to be a great collector.” Because that meant, potentially, big money for her artists. Soon, Ovitz began flaunting his new relationship with Boone. Within weeks of the New York magazine article, Ovitz and his wife attended a glamorous dinner party in Boone’s honor held at the Bel Air mansion of Doug Cramer, a Boone client and executive producer of Dynasty and Love Boat . Around CAA, to his close associates and even clients, Ovitz boasted about how smart Boone was and what taste she had. Ovitz would call her nearly every day and send her cases of wine and Elsa Peretti jewelry from Tiffany & Co.
But that first year of working together was difficult for both art dealer and client. The reason was Ovitz’s overwhelming and annoying paranoia. While trying to draw the parallel that he and she were in the same business, Ovitz cautioned her repeatedly, “Don’t hustle a hustler.” It got to a point where Ovitz would openly challenge Boone’s authority on art, saying, “Well, I don’t believe you,” or “What kind of scam are you trying to put over on me?” whenever she urged him to have faith in an artist he hadn’t heard of. He even began complaining to his friends that he’d been “suckered” by Boone into wildly overpaying for several pieces of art, including a couple of Schnabels. He didn’t share Boone’s faith that Schnabel would become a superstar.
Finally, Boone laid it out for Ovitz: professing that he “really, really” wanted to have a great collection and wanted to buy art from her wasn’t enough. He’d have to trust her.
“Mike is the kind of person who goes to the doctor because he’s got a disease and then tells the doctor what the diagnosis is,” explained Boone. “I had three degrees in art history, I did this for 20 years, and I do it 60 to 80 hours a week. It’s all I do. If I say this is a masterpiece, and I don’t say it often, people usually believe me.
“But he was always challenging.”
Why Ovitz couldn’t rely on her word alone was understandable given his history as an agent. He had guided CAA to make its reputation not on nurturing unrecognized talent, but on stealing already established superstars from other agencies. Ovitz not only wanted, he needed someone else’s stamp of approval first.
Boone also had trouble tolerating Ovitz’s way of expecting to be put ahead of all her other collectors. At first, Ovitz refused to buy from any Boone gallery show unless he had first choice of all the artist’s work to be exhibited. That was a near impossibility, since it could be three years or more between when an artist finished a work and when it was shown; the usual practice was to sell each painting as soon as the last brushstroke was dry in order to keep the artist’s energy and, more important, the cash flowing.
But Ovitz insisted that Boone store all the artist’s work and sell nothing until the start of the show, so he could pick the best of the lot. Not only was his demand unspeakably arrogant, it also completely ignored any long-standing commitments Boone may have had with her regular customers of a decade or more. To draw a comparison to the movie business, it would have been as if a studio asked an agent not to sell a writer’s scripts for three years, storing up four or five in the meantime, so the studio could pick the best one and not have to risk losing out on that writer’s next blockbuster. Of course, Ovitz would have expressed outrage, and so did Boone.
But Ovitz always wanted, and expected, special treatment. Out of loyalty to her regular customers, and also fear of losing her artists, Boone refused to accede to Ovitz’s demand on this score — even when Ovitz suggested that she lie to her other clients about the practice. Instead, Boone gave Ovitz what she gave other good clients — right of first refusal.
When Eric Fischl’s Master Bedroom came up for sale, Boone, who’d advised Ovitz early on that his collection needed a Fischl, recommended that he buy the new painting at the bargain price of $25,000. She explained that it was a truly great piece of art, one even she wanted to keep herself, and that Fischl was rapidly becoming a hot commodity. Yet Ovitz was undecided, mostly because the painting’s style and subject were radical departures from what Fischl had been doing two years earlier. Ovitz didn’t trust Boone’s judgment that this new direction for the artist was an exciting one. So he passed.
The painting ended up being sold to L.A.’s Museum of Contemporary Art, and Ovitz kicked himself for not having bought it. Now it had the museum’s stamp of approval, not just Boone’s unofficial praise. In 1984, just two years later, Boone had another Fischl show. This time, Ovitz came prepared to buy.
But Fischl was now a darling of the art world, and only one of his paintings hadn’t yet sold. And that one, Vanity , had a reserve on it by the Tate Gallery in London. Ovitz, however, decided he had to have that painting. He nagged Boone to let him buy it, placing phone calls to her every day for the next two weeks. But Boone wasn’t listening. After all, she already had 50 too many collectors who all wanted the Fischl just as much as Ovitz, maybe even more. Ovitz was so desperate that he was prepared to openly grovel. In a letter sent via Federal Express to Boone and dated May 23, 1985, Ovitz repeated the word please 60 times. The Fischl soon found its way into Ovitz’s collection, not the Tate’s, thanks to Boone’s machinations. She expected him to be ecstatic.
Instead, he tried to renegotiate. “And that’s $25,000, right?” he asked.
Boone was shocked. Ovitz knew the price of the painting was $45,000, and a very conservative price it was, because Fischl on the secondary market was already fetching $500,000. (One reason was that Fischl only produced three or four paintings a year.) Ovitz could turn around and sell Vanity for three or four times its price. A huge fight ensued, and Boone told him not to buy the painting. Finally, Ovitz forked over the full $45,000, but only after considerable foot-dragging. And in a move that was both insulting and demeaning, he took four months to make payment — sending her two separate checks for $22,500. In the strangest move of all, he didn’t take immediate delivery of the painting. Instead, he asked Boone to store it at the gallery because he didn’t want his children to see the nude portrait. Boone’s gallery wound up holding Vanity for a full year. Even more embarrassing, every time Fischl himself visited during that time, he’d see his painting lying there unclaimed.
“Mike Ovitz doesn’t want his painting yet?” Fischl complained over and over.
Finally, in 1986, Fischl had a retrospective at the Whitney Museum to rave reviews. Vanity , credited to “Michael and Judy Ovitz,” was one of the paintings prominently featured. Suddenly, the painting’s nudity was no longer an issue, and Ovitz wanted the work sent immediately to his house. (Two years later, during an art lecture held at Ovitz’s Brentwood Park home, the CAA chieftain told the assembled group of collectors that he had acquired Vanity directly from Fischl before the artist had ever joined Boone’s gallery. Of course, it was common knowledge that Fischl had joined Boone’s gallery in 1982, and Vanity wasn’t even painted until 1984.)
Another artist Ovitz was eager to collect was Anselm Kiefer, one of the most influential German neo-expressionists. But that meant elbowing aside already-seasoned collectors. Boone had snagged a big Kiefer show for her gallery a few years earlier; now in the spring of 1983, she discovered that coming up for sale was a magnificent Kiefer — Deutsch , done in 1978, a time when the artist was producing little. It had been bought from her by the then-head of the Cologne Museum in Germany and since shown at many world exhibitions. The collector offered it to Boone to resell on the secondary market. Boone called Ovitz first. It was an extraordinary gesture, but it was also a litmus test of their ongoing relationship. The price was steep — $150,000, a sum that Kiefer at the time had never commanded. Ovitz’s reaction was to hem and haw.
“Well,” he gulped, “I’ll be in Chicago in a day. Call me then.”
The clock was ticking for Boone, who had received the painting on consignment. One day stretched into two, and then three. A week went by and still Boone was unable to get Ovitz to make a decision. Every time she’d talk to him, he would say, “I don’t know. Let me think about it.” Finally, she could wait no longer and she tracked him down in a hotel in London. When she rang Ovitz’s room number, she was surprised when Ovitz client Bill Murray answered the phone. The actor started doing shtick.
“Don’t you understand? Mike is married,” Boone remembered Murray telling her. “He doesn’t want to have your phone calls all the time.”
“What the hell are you talking about?” Boone replied, outraged. “This isn’t me chasing Mike Ovitz. This is about him making a decision about a goddamn painting!”
Murray called out to Ovitz, “Mike, you’d better get on the phone now.” Immediately, Ovitz picked up. Boone launched into an angry diatribe. “Listen, your business is full of homecoming queens from Omaha, Nebraska, that want to be movie stars. Well, my business is full of people that made a couple of dollars and want to be great collectors. When you want to be serious, you call me.”
With that, Boone hung up the phone.
Ovitz did not buy the Kiefer.
(Ironically, it came on the secondary market again in 1988, and, once more, Boone had control of its sale. She sold it to Angeleno Eli Broad. The price of the painting? One and a half million dollars — 10 times what Ovitz was asked to pay for it just five years earlier. The Kiefer became one of the highlights of Broad’s collection.)
After that phone call to London, the relationship between Boone and Ovitz chilled. Still, 18 months after Boone had hung up on him, Ovitz called her one day and asked contritely, “Can I talk to you?” Ovitz explained his hesitancy in buying the Kiefer and apologized. He acknowledged that he still had a lot to learn about the art world.
What he didn’t say was that he was learning it from Boone’s rival gallery owner, Arne Glimcher.
It was inevitable that the two men would link up. Ovitz and Glimcher shared the same striving social ambitions; both had reinvented themselves from nobodies into men of wealth and seeming sophistication. Like Ovitz, Glimcher came from a middle-class background. Born into a Midwestern Jewish family, Glimcher grew up in Brookline, Massachusetts, began studying art, then borrowed $2,500 from his brother and opened a small Boston gallery called Pace, where he showed local artists. Eventually he moved to New York and was introduced into the heady New York art world. Soon Glimcher was buying upthe estates of Mark Rothko, Picasso and others at his elegant 57th Street Pace gallery.
It wasn’t long before, Glimcher and Boone were locked in a death match, especially after Schnabel met Glimcher at a Picasso exhibit, then jumped from downtown Boone to uptown Pace. At the time, defections of artists between galleries still had certain ground rules, which is why the old-school Castelli — for whom loyalty was everything — slammed down the phone on Schnabel upon hearing the news. It was around this time that Ovitz discovered Glimcher, thanks to Ovitz confidant and literary agent Mort Janklow, who made the introduction. Glimcher was not only Janklow’s art dealer but also a close friend, and Pace was conveniently located across the street from Janklow’s office.
Eager to replace Boone, Ovitz glommed on to Glimcher. And for good reason: Ovitz wanted special treatment, and this time he got it. He had offered that deal to famed dealer Larry Gagosian, who’d rejected it. He had offered that deal to Boone, who’d rejected it. He had offered that deal to Castelli, who’d rejected it. “I’d like to have a better relationship with you,” Castelli recalled Ovitz saying again and again.
“‘Well, you know what I have,’” Castelli said he’d replied. “‘You have to just keep in touch with me. Otherwise, I can’t constantly think of you.’ And then he disappeared.”
The deal, according to Castelli, was this: Ovitz tried to buy his art at cost, minus any dealer’s commission.
“He wanted to pay as little as possible, period,” Castelli told me. “No one was as bad as him. Now, some are hagglers. They want a 10 percent discount, no matter what, and if it’s possible to give to them, one does. If not, not. But generally speaking, they are not as bad as Ovitz. That’s just his nature.” (Ovitz insisted to me that paying commissions, or not paying commissions, was the responsibility of the artist, not the buyer.)
Note: Continued on the following "page" as "WD_206".
©2005 LA Weekly
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