Gallerist Dennis Christie’s New Horizons
[Timothy Tompkins' "Big Tree" from his Interstate Sublime series.]
Conner: Where are you from originally?
Christie: The off the coast of Florida, from Anna Maria Island.
Conner: When did you move to NY?
Christie: In 1994. Before that I was at Boston University. I really started in the art world in 1996. I was debating the masters route and then I just met the right mentor at the right time.
Conner: When did you come out?
Christie: When I was in college. Being gay was so far removed from the realm of possibility, at least from my growing up and where I’m from. I’m so envious in a way of kids today who are able to come out in high school because that fascinates me. That just wasn’t my world.
Conner: What got you interested in art?
Christie: My parents. Whenever we would travel anywhere my parents would always make it a point to go to an art museum though it wasn’t until I was half way through college that I took up Art History. I actually started in archaeology but didn’t want to spend a summer digging somewhere without a nice hotel.
Conner: Have you always been drawn to contemporary art?
Christie: It really started in the early 90s from reading Artforum and Art in America because our classes kind of ended with Pollock and an image of Warhol. When I was in middle school Warhol died, but I was already fascinated with him. If it wasn’t for him I wouldn’t be in New York at all. For a kid from an island in Florida it really had an impact.
Conner: So Warhol kind of pushed you to New York City?
Christie: For sure, even though he was dead and buried. But through my internship at Charles Cowles I met a lot of factory people and that always made me secretly happy.
[Lia Holleran's "Untitled (Diffusion 3)" helps build her Vellum series.]
Conner: What do you think about being young and gay and in the art world in New York now? A lot different from when Andy ruled the scene…
Christie: It’s great not even in New York because you have that kinship. For example, every year for the last several years going to South Beach for Art Basel Miami Beach has always been a funny thing.
Conner: You mean going to the club Twist, don’t you?
Christie: Yeah! The bar upstairs. We call that “the Office,†because you can see everyone and anyone in the art world pass through and do more business of any kind there. Being gay, there are so many specific outlets for us outside of work. I found I got so much more work done at Twist than during the day. It’s great to have that sense of community in the art world which can be kind of a…
Conner: Clusterfuck.
Christie: Sure. And corporate and very money-driven.
Conner: Do you think a crash in the art market would be good for art?
Christie: I think it’s important to take a step back from these issues of the market and money. That’s what I do a lot. I say to myself I don’t want this as part of my life. And that makes me happy.
While I haven’t seen any signs of any resurgence of the sort of conceptual art which gave so many gay artists a place in the aesthetic and intellectual culture of our age, we can always hope.
The magic of Warhol, Raushenberg, Pollock , Arbus etc. may never reemerge, since our culture at large has become so dumbed out and really mindless, it is nice to see some young gay people in the area of promotion even if they don’t have vision.
I think that many people see this tendancy towards decorative “art” as a sign of a general cultural degeneration like happened at the end of Rome.
I try to think that we are still capable of a kind of rebirth, if the political scene ever has revived hope. I think that we have to see athe current situation as a kind of enuei related to the terrors of our barbarous militaristic society.
Art deteriorates kind of like it did with Hitler.
I always hope that even in the worst of times a human spirit will arise out of the corruption . I find it helpful to realize that a coup has taken place and that our society is in it’s death throws, but that the human spirit can arise.
these ‘futuristic” movies like even Star Wars, can help us understand that we can revive something from the ashes.
It takes alot of drive, dedication and focus to be a gallery owner. And connections, like Charlie Cowles. His mother Fleur Cowles was a pioneer in modern art, and published a great magazine in Paris during the 1950′s. It’s a business. The gallery owner has to sell the idea that his artists are the next big thing that museums and big collectors should buy them. Gay art has never gotten it’s feet, although the critic for the New York Times is doing his part. Although being in a museum’s collection does not mean your work is going to fetch high prices like Warhol. My friend, the late ,Alex Liberman is in every museum in the world, yet his sculpture doesn’t bring high prices, certainly not compared to Calder or Warhol. Andy was unique, a visionary and captured the 60′s. Peter Max can’t compete.
Being someone who is venturing into more and more gay art, I am glad to see more and more artists geting the space the deserve in both galleries and the art press. It allows mw to re-evaluate Fairfield Porter, Thomas Eakins, John Singer Sargent, Larry Rivers, Robert Rauschenberg and Andy Warhol in a whole new light.
I will definitely be stopping by Mr.Christie’s gallery when I am next in New York.
Are these gay artists just artists who happen to be gay or is there work expressly gay?
http://www.queersunited.blogspot.com
Keith Haring was the first explict gay artist that reached the International market and brings huge prices at auction. I owned a Keith Haring, I bought at an LA charity AIDS auction, and later sold it. It was one of his dancing figures with a hard on. It didn’t bring as much as his other dancing figures, because of the explicit pornographic subject matter. In conceptual art that they youth is leaning towards, is basically anti-merchandising, in that it expresses political ideas and ideals, a form of social sculpture. There is little for sale to hang on the walls, as in Joseph Beuys, artist and founder of the Green Party, but the galleries manage to get a few scraps to sell to important International dealers.
Many dealers are very wealthy, inherited money, and being a gallery or art magazine owner is something they like doing. Also, in the case of gay man Charles Cowles, it gives them a venue to meet attractive gay men, the subject featured in this interview. Like Hollywood, the art world has a casting couch.
glad to see warhol’s ability to exploit everyone around him for material gain while being catastrophically uncomfortable in his own skin has been passed down to another generation of money grubbers. cheers to the nyc queer!
My my do I feel a daub of bitterness, mixed with jealousy, and envy. he’s cute, young, succsessful, and worst of all self-made by his ability to make connections. You go Mr. Christie, you some day may own your own auction house, and then these guys can really bitch.
Queerunity: regarding yourquestion about “gay art “,just onb the surface, it stricks me that there are various things which can be “gay” (1) art which has subject matter that is homoerotic ,e.g. Mapelthorpe (2) art in which the subject matter is clearly of attactive naked males which becomes”gay”, because of the tradition of using females as subjects. e.g. St. Sebastian, or Dying Gaul. (not specifically homoerotic). Keith Haring is a modern example, of modern art of this type.
(3) there is a whole, to me, the most intriging,
set of images, which have, as a basis the conceptual position of looking from the outside, in epitomised by(3a) Camp-(susan Sontag describes) making jest of serious icons.or(3b) taking banal images e.g. Camble soup cans(Warhol) and presenting them in a different context-as art., not advertizing. I think that the former-camp- is a little more related to gay sensability. As a marginalized group-outside of the norm- changing the context of things for the sake of humor or contemplation(the later).
This is a lot more complex a topic andthere are books relating to it specifically. Good question though, mainly because art was a vehicle of gay identity, which has become a more banal matter of late.