The Hauser & Wirth art gallery opened in London in 2003 in a classical building in the heart of the city, but the gallery's artists are thoroughly contemporary. On exhibit recently, for example, was the work of German artist Isa Genzken, whose freewheeling sculptures are constructed from items including an ironing board, a car windshield and a monkey doll wearing a tiara.
See Isa Genzken's 'trashy' art
"We show the most exciting art we can show," says Gregor Muir, the director of the gallery, which also has a New York branch.
Hauser & Wirth's edgy exhibitions reflect not only changing tastes but also London's increasingly visible role in the global art market. In a city once known for stuffy auction houses and a preference for old masters and antiquities, a new crop of cutting-edge galleries, museums and art fairs is drawing audiences and well-heeled collectors. So much so that London is stoking its reputation as a rival to New York, the world's undisputed art capital in the eyes of many people.
How London overtook New York
"I would never think of London supplanting New York, but it could become equally powerful," says Mary Hoeveler, a New York art adviser to private clients. As evidence, she notes the growing number of strong galleries in London, especially those with distribution or representation deals with galleries in other cities.
That means you might no longer have to go to New York to acquire the work of a particular artist.
"London has become a player in the global market like it never has before," boasts Pilar Ordovas, the director of post-World War II and contemporary art at Christie's in London, where sales grew from 20 million pounds in 2001 ($35 million in today's dollars) to 250 million pounds in 2007.
'A lot of London'
Muir says the shift began in the 1990s, when a new generation of talent -- known as the YBAs, or young British artists -- attracted attention in the art world and the local media with their pushy creations (like Damien Hirst's pickled shark in a tank) and outsized personalities.
"We were once the center for traditional tastes," Muir recalls. "But then you saw the rise of contemporary art splashed all over the papers."
The momentum led to galleries opening in scruffy neighborhoods such as London's East End -- and later in the more fashionable West End -- as well as government investment in major art institutions, like the Tate Modern. London's Frieze Art Fair, which debuted in 2003 with 27,000 visitors, is now a major stop on the global art-buying circuit, drawing 68,000 visitors in 2007 -- more than rival events last year such as New York's Armory Show (52,000) and Art Basel Miami Beach (43,000).
Meanwhile, while London was emerging as a global financial center, it was also acquiring a population of well-to-do art patrons and collectors from across Europe, as well as from China and India.
Members of London's new luxury class began spending heavily at local galleries, their bank accounts swollen with pounds and euros that were appreciating rapidly against the dollar. (The growth of the London art market is at least in part "connected to currency values," Hoeveler says.)
That London has gained prestige in the art world would seem beyond dispute. New York supergallerist Larry Gagosian opened a London outpost in 2004 -- the largest commercial art space in the city at the time.
Auction houses began to benefit, too, increasing both the number and the scale of their sales. Just recently, Christie's had a record-breaking auction sale that totaled $284 million. The highlight of the sale was a collection of paintings that had been owned by J. Irwin and Xenia S. Miller of Columbus, Ind., and included one Monet that ultimately sold for $80.4 million.
"That the Miller collection was sold here (in London) rather than in New York is a sign that London is considered a crucial marketplace for the top end of the art market, as more rich Russian collectors put down roots here," The New York Times commented.
But could London ever overtake New York as the pivotal place to see and buy art in the $30 billion global art market?
It's not very likely, says David Ross, a former director of the Whitney Museum of American Art and now the director of the newly opened Albion gallery in New York, an offshoot of the eponymous gallery in London.
"New York is still the dominant art space, because there's the greatest density of quality in one place," he explains, noting that there are about 400 galleries in the city's Chelsea neighborhood alone. New York, he adds, is "the place where collectors and dealers are likely to get first whack at primary material."
That goes for major auctions, too, which boast live entertainment, drama and celebrities whenever a major work comes on the block. In that regard, New York "retains its prominent role," Ross says.
Indeed, in 2008 spring sales, New York auction houses brought in about $1 billion in a few days, including a whopping $86.2 million for a painting by Francis Bacon.
With numbers like that, even Hauser & Wirth director Muir acknowledges that "London has picked up the pace, but New York is unquestionably at the top of the market."
Yet Muir also suggests that in the new, truly global art market, the two cities needn't be rivals. Instead, they can play complementary roles as places where art can be seen and acquired and where art is one of each city's main attractions.
New York collector David Raymond agrees that London has taken on greater importance in several fields, such as photography, his passion.
When Raymond visits the city, he senses a buzz and its "wow factor" as an art center. But London won't become the world's ultimate art destination, he says.
Instead, Raymond says, "London will be another important art world stop."
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Produced by Elizabeth Daza
Published Sept. 12, 2008
High