DEALER TELLS ALL . . . WELL, SOME

A review of Richard Feigen's Tales from the Art Crypt

by Alice Goldfarb Marquis

Richard Feigen's adventures in the art trade deserve a book, bot not necessarily this one.

He has been in the business for more than four decades, with galleries in Chicago and New York, and a far-flung network of clients. He buys and sells all sorts of art, from works created in the Renaissance to those made the day before yesterday.

He knows a lot about how museums operate and what motivates collectors.

In the subtitle of this book he promises tales about "the painters, the museums, the curators, the collectors, the auctions, the art." That's a tall order, too tall even for a well informed insider. And it's far too ambitious for an author who rambles, who digresses, and who loves to preach rip-snorting sermons on too many topics.

I liked this book's fearless mention of money, the delicious centerpiece of most art gossip, but a word considered too obscene for polite art conversations.

In a priceless chapter titled "Baksheesh," Feigen describes the byzantine complexity of his effort to sell a rare Persian manuscript to the Shah of Iran for $28.5 million. The effort failed and he lost a $3.5 million commission simply from not knowing whom to bribe.

I also liked Feigen's refreshing opinions, even when I disagreed.

Who else would consider Jean Dubuffet the most important artist of the second half of the 20th century? And how many other people would deplore museums' neglect of Italian Baroque painters, for example Orazio Gentileschi and his daughter, Artemisia, the poster-girl for feminist art historians? Also admirable is his connoisseurship and his persistence in smoking out an unknown Poussin and a misattributed Domenichino, both now in his private collection.

The strength -- and also the weakness -- of this book is that it reads like an art war veteran's late night monologue over a Courvoisier V. S. O. P. : He is often a sprightly raconteur, but often, alas, he isn't.

Feigen shines when he describes his personal experiences with museums; for example, the sad story of his connection with the Barnes Foundation. But he lost me when he started haranguing museums about their supposed abandonment of connoisseurship and pandering to the public.

Feigen captivates when he describes his detective work in attributing a George Washington portrait at the White House. But his account of the dispersal of the Gertrude Stein collection has often been told.

Feigen is at his best when he demonstrates the successful art dealer's encyclopedic knowledge and consummate skill. This man appears to be aware of every item in every collection, private or public, everywhere in the world -- and he has the chutzpah to approach the biggest wigs.

As an art dealer, he is a legend, probably in a league with Bernard Berenson, Lord Duveen and Leo Castelli. But when he strays into analyzing the world economy, the sociology of Chicago, or how the arts should be funded, this man who is so alert to every nuance in a painting resorts to stark and simplistic black and white: the good guys vs. the villains.

The publisher of this book, the once-distinguished house of Alfred R. Knopf, has not served the author well. A good editor should have shaped this ramble around the block into a coherent book. A proofreader also should have caught the typos, for example, the artist John Trumbull printed as "Trumbell" on page 199. A scrupulous publisher would have provided this book with an index, if only from self-interest: how many of the hundreds of big names dropped in these pages would buy the book, if they saw themselves in the index? Perhaps this is a selling point for a searchable electronic version. Finally, this $30 book is shabbily produced: a simulated cloth and cardboard cover and a binding that broke after one reading.

Not much of a selling point for a book about excellent visual art.