Daniel Katz, one of London’s leading dealers, is holding a major exhibition at his Jermyn Street gallery (until 26 July). In May, a smaller version was exhibited in New York and around fifteen of the twenty-five works on show were sold. The London exhibition is much bigger, with around sixty works from the fourteenth to the nineteenth centuries, with a particular emphasis on Renaissance bronzes. Prices range from £10,000 upwards.
The Art Newspaper interviewed Mr Katz about the exhibition, the art market and his views on art.
How long have you spent planning this exhibition?
Daniel Katz. About six months. I’ve never done a proper exhibition before, and I thought it was a good idea because we’ve had this gallery open two years now and I wanted to promote it, and to get over the idea that there are wonderful sculptures available, for people to look at and possibly purchase. We’ve worked very hard to make the catalogue as much to the point as possible without going on too much and making it too academic.
We opened in New York last month and had tremendous success there, selling to museums and collectors. The London exhibition is going to run much longer, until the end of July.
One of the highlights in London will be a wonderful marble group by Joseph Plura the Elder, who worked in Bath in 1752 and made a virtuoso sculpture of Diana and Endymion. It’s one of the only English rococo sculptures that exists, a fantastically beautiful piece, which we’re hoping to find a place for in an English collection, I hope a museum.
Is there a separate market for sculpture these days?
I’ve always been a bit cynical about the word market. I think the situation arises where we find someone who’s interested in sculpture or painting or furniture or whatever, who wants to furnish a house or wants to collect something.
Most people are pretty insecure about what they’re buying, although there are exceptions. They need to have faith in a dealer, and I hope we’re the people to come to for sculpture. I’ve been a dealer and a collector for thirty-one years. I’ve also formed some wonderful collections of sculpture for other people.
Over that period do you think the type of person collecting has changed?
It’s quite amusing. I remember back in the late Sixties when people were still familiar with names such as Alfred Spero, the legendary dealer in London, and the echoes of the great collectors in Germany and France in the late nineteenth century like Lanna, the Rothschilds, Goldschmidt; those names meant a lot. The sale catalogues that were produced at the time of these sales from the late nineteenth century to around 1935 were highly prized and sought-after books. And if you have something from those collections, it’s still important today, but it meant a lot more in the Sixties and Seventies when there were people that still remembered dealing with these people before the war.
There used to be a horseshoe in front of the rostrum at Sotheby’s where they had the Works of Art sales. The specially invited crowd of dealers and collectors would sit round this horse-shoe, and as the objects came up you would handle them and bid for them. They were relatively inexpensive, a few hundred pounds or perhaps a few thousand pounds if it was an exceptional piece.
It was a tremendously exciting time. That all seems to have gone. Things are much more expensive today, even though sculpture is a lot cheaper than painting. There is the odd exception where a great bronze or marble might fetch millions of pounds but someone interested in the field can pick up a plaquette or medal for just over a hundred pounds these days, it’s still possible.
Would you say that something like the de Vries which made £7 million at Sotheby’s, was a freak price at the height of that market, or was it the acknowledgement of a very rare thing?
I think at that particular time there was a lot of museum interest and there were a lot of collectors. If the same piece came up today, I think it would possibly fetch the same price again. I see the signs of another art boom coming around the corner. You can see it in the American art sales in America, where things are fetching millions of dollars.
The signs are there; the stockmarkets have been booming but, as far as I know, I have never yet sold anything to anybody as an investment.
In what you refer to as the Golden Age of the 1960s and 70s, do you think that buyers had a better understanding of the cultural context in which works of art were produced, which meant that they understood the objects better?
I think it’s because of the legacy left by people like the great Wilhelm von Bode and John Pope-Hennessy, who was director of the V&A at the time and a towering figure, fascinated by Italian sculpture in general. And people like Tony Radcliffe and Charles Avery who worked at the V&A. They were known as The Boys in the V&A. It was a golden time when you took along objects and people were fascinated by the subject. We didn’t know enough about names and it wasn’t that easy to attribute things. For example, there was a sculptor known as The Master of the Dragon, to whom a lot of Paduan work was attributed. Now suddenly he’s been identified as Severo da Ravenna.
We are now seeing new collectors; people are becoming fascinated by the subject, particularly bronzes, and they want to create collections. There are very few things left to deal in. The great fifteenth-century bronzes hardly exist and most of them are in museums today. But it’s an exciting world: the rediscovery of antiquity in the late fifteenth century and the importance of religious thought; people digging up these antiquities and making pastiches. My great love is the fifteenth century.
Why do people collect sculpture?
Well, you have to put every client on the analyst’s couch for several years to understand the psychology and the philosophy that makes someone collect a work of art. I collect myself and what makes me do it is probably similar to the motivation that makes others collect. I wish to profit, but I’m also interested in the object. Most people who can afford expensive works of art are businessmen and they can’t afford the time to look properly.
Works of Art is a huge field. In the past dealers would sell almost anything.
Yes, I consider myself to be an extremely eclectic dealer. I mean, I’m happy dealing with pre-dynastic Egyptian art, Chinese art, European illustrated manuscripts, Islamic art, African stools, Benin bronzes, contemporary art, Impressionism, Victorian painting, High Renaissance painting, print-making from MarcAntonio Raimondi, Old Master drawings, Pre-Raphaelites, Schiele watercolours, textiles, maiolica, manuscripts, clocks, watches, furniture, scagliola, LeBrun tapestries, violins.
I have no taste, I love the best of everything. Every period to me is great. Every culture, every period, no matter what it is.
How do you keep up with it all?
I’m just fascinated by works of art. Any period, anything, it doesn’t matter what it is. It can be a Frank Lloyd Wright tea cup or an armchair or a Wiener Werkstätte candlestick, or a Charles Rennie Mackintosh chair, or a great Ecuadorian stand from the tenth century, or a Tibetan bronze from the fifteenth century. You need a tremendous amount of confidence because most people are insecure, and it’s easier to give them many reasons why you shouldn’t buy an object, than why you should.
The most taxing thing I can do is to spend an hour in the V&A or the National Gallery or the British Museum. It’s worse than doing a three-hour run; I’m totally exhausted. All your emotions and your psyche go into the object. There are a few people who have the ability to pick up an object and totally understand what they’re looking at. They have an innate understanding.
What was your first purchase?
The first thing I bought was a small copy of a Giambologna bronze in the market in Brighton in 1967 for five pounds and sold it for six pounds. I had no money in those days, and I don’t come from a wealthy family. Then I just built up my work from that date. My education is Sotheby’s and Christie’s, the auction rooms and the museums. I wasn’t handicapped by a formal education. I mean art dealing for me is a total passion. I am as excited with an object today as I was when I collected bottle tops or hub caps from cars in the Fifties.
Do you collect in the same area or very eclectically?
Old Master paintings, and Islamic and Tibetan art; anything like that. I’ve collected just about everything.
Do you think that you have to travel to see art in its context, for example, the Baroque in Germany?
I’m a very great supporter of museums. Perhaps not the politics of museums, but I think its very important that the role of the museum in society is maintained. To be able to take an hour off work—I’m not talking about blockbuster exhibitions,—to wander in a leisurely way through the museums and galleries of London.
Presumably you’re in favour of these museums remaining free?
That’s a very highly charged issue. If a museum can’t afford to open its doors to the public because it has no money to pay staff, then it would have to introduce a voluntary charge. Other countries charge. In a perfect world it would be lovely just to walk in anytime you want. But if it costs six pounds to go and see a movie for an hour and a half, and the V&A costs three or four pounds, I think you might get the better show at the V&A.
There are plans to charge five pounds.
I think it’s a good thing if it keeps a museum open, but I think it’s a bad thing for the public generally.
Of all the things you’ve dealt with in your career, can you pick the one which has given you the most pleasure.
I have recently acquired an oliphant, if you know what that is. It’s a carved horn made of ivory for blowing. It was made during the Norman Conquest of Sicily in the eleventh century. In the later medieval period, magical properties were ascribed to these objects. When you blow it you get this wonderful sound. You can imagine William the Conqueror coming to England in 1066 and someone signalling his troops into action through one of these horns.
Another object I had about ten years ago is from the eighteenth century, a wonderful marble vase, carved by Clodion in Rome in 1766 when he was a young man. It was a beautiful piece of virtuoso carving. I sold it to the Art Institute of Chicago and every time I go to Chicago I go and look at it. It is a young man looking at antiquity for the first time, being influenced by it, and making this vase before he comes back to his native France.
I am interested in provenance but it is not the most important thing for me. Part of the provenance that really interests me is the original commission because without that commission that work of art would not exist.
The fact that someone owned something two hundred years earlier, might reflect on the taste of the time, which is important, but it does not alter the object.
I have been offered many objects by people who say, “The history is amazing”. But you find yourself looking at a second rate object; the history may be amazing but the object is no good.
Is late nineteenth-century sculpture a field in which you might wish to expand your activities?
The problem with the late nineteenth century is that the French worked out how to take a large bronze and reduce it in size through a mechanical process. They then produced thousands of casts of these things
It was a very affluent time: works of art were very much in demand and the demand was so great that if you designed something good, you would make hundreds of versions of it. I think that slightly debased the object. People like to have something pretty original or rather rare, not too rare, but rather rare.
I very much like the English nineteenth century, particularly Sir Arthur Gilbert, very decorative, inventive, beautiful lines.
Who are the major players these days?
Well, obviously the Getty Museum, Philadelphia, Chicago, the Metropolitan, the Louvre. I hope the V&A one day, but they haven’t got any money. As far as collectors are concerned, I used to sell a lot of things to Mrs Johnson back in the Eighties, she was a great collector. There’s a great collector of bronzes in Washington called Robert Smith. There are people out there—I’d better not say their names—but they come from the most unexpected sources. Sometimes someone just walks in and wants a great bronze.
Do you think that high profile auctions introduce people to the market?
In my experience—and let’s take the Adams sale at Bonhams last month—most of the lots are bought by dealers. I think it’s basically dealers who control the market, and some of them are quite wealthy and want to own the objects themselves, which leads to competition. Estimates are only a guide. The public seems to think if something is estimated at £20,000-30,000, then that is what it is worth. There is a lot of naivety in the art world. It’s not like other businesses.
People often fail to understand why a dealer adds on a mark-up.
I’ve given dealers ten or twenty times what they have paid at auction for things. You know there is no price.
There are very few successful dealers. It is a very tough business to be in. You have never got enough money, and when you have money you cannot resist going out and buying something. You have never got any cash, you have got the tremendous expenses of running a gallery.
You also need a lot of patience in this business . I’ve got things I bought in the Sixties. People think that dealers should not be making a profit. But the world is about profit. Everybody gets paid for doing something. Everybody. I think that’s all I’ve got to say.