0:01

When you go into a gallery, you're going to a museum,

0:03

and you look at a painting, you don't know what the story is

0:05

behind the painting. It's like seeing somebody

0:07

in the street who's an old man. You don't

0:09

know all the adventures he's had, and all the marriages

0:11

he's had, and all the divorces he's

0:14

had. My

0:16

name's Aaron Richard Gollub. I'm an attorney

0:19

licensed to practice law in the state of New York, and

0:21

my concentration is art world

0:23

issues. I

0:27

had a case years ago involving

0:29

a portrait of Paloma Picasso by Picasso,

0:32

and there were two precisely the

0:34

same portraits of Picasso's

0:36

daughter, one owned by a dealer in

0:38

Spain and one owned by a collector

0:41

in Switzerland. They were identical.

0:44

Claude Picasso came over to the

0:46

gallery and unpacked

0:49

the painting that Cogozian was about

0:51

to show in a Picasso show, and Claude

0:53

said, well, the nails arrusted that

0:56

attacked the canvas to the stretcher on

0:58

this painting, and on the other painting the nails

1:00

and not rusted. And that was his basis

1:03

of saying that one picture was a counterfeit

1:05

and the other picture was not. I don't

1:07

think that's a basis to determine authenticity.

1:11

Authenticity can fall under the general

1:13

rubric of fraud, but

1:15

authenticity is a world in and

1:17

of itself where painting has been

1:19

counterfeited. Somebody has

1:22

made a painting and claims

1:24

it's by a certain artist in that style

1:27

to the artist, and in fact

1:29

that artist never made that painting. Now,

1:31

if somebody sells you that painting and

1:34

claims that that painting is by

1:36

a Matisse or it's by Warhole,

1:39

and it's not, that's fraud,

1:41

but it's actually really counterfeit. Is what you're

1:43

going to have to prove. People

1:46

are always fooling everybody in the art world. It's

1:48

a place where that game is played by

1:51

everybody. And

1:53

Friedman would never have imagined growing

1:56

up to be the most notorious dealer

1:58

of the New York art market. She

2:01

might have been an art professor, perhaps,

2:04

but as her career blossomed and

2:06

she came to see just how good she

2:08

was at selling art, being a

2:10

dealer suited her quite well. And

2:13

not just a run of the mill dealer, to

2:16

be sure, but one of distinction, helping

2:18

artists and collectors she loved.

2:22

She was born Anne Louise Fertig

2:24

in the early nineteen fifties in

2:26

Scarsdale, a wealthy bedroom community

2:29

north of New York City. Her

2:32

father was a vice president of a commercial

2:35

real estate company called Williams

2:37

and Company. Perhaps not by

2:39

chance, Anne would marry a commercial

2:41

real estate executive herself, Robert

2:43

Lawrence Freedman real Men

2:46

and told one of her staffers

2:48

worked in commercial, not residential

2:50

real estate. Two

2:54

people in Ann Friedman's life would

2:56

play an instrumental role in

2:58

inspiring her art career. The

3:00

first was her mother, Hilda Fertig, who

3:03

first brought Anne to New York City's

3:05

art museums as a child. The

3:07

other was H. W. Jansen, the

3:10

legendary author of the History of

3:12

Art, the standard text for millions

3:15

of students around the world. Jansen

3:19

was a Russian emigre. Through the nineteen

3:21

forties, he taught at Washington

3:23

University in St. Louis and helped

3:26

expand the breadth of these schools

3:28

art collection. He

3:30

left a legacy for generations of students

3:33

to admire, though not without controversy.

3:35

Not a single female artist was

3:38

described in his epic tone. Ann

3:41

Friedman would become one of those

3:44

captivated new students upon her

3:46

own arrival at Washington University

3:48

in the late nineteen sixties, earning

3:51

a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree in

3:54

the summer of nineteen seventy one. When

3:56

Anne graduated, finding gainful

3:59

employment wasn't easy. New

4:01

York was on the verge of a nasty recession.

4:04

Somehow, Anne managed to reach Robert

4:06

Miller, a senior director of the American

4:09

Gallery on Street, and

4:11

talked him into granting her a job interview.

4:14

Whatever she said at the meeting, it worked.

4:17

Friedman began working as a receptionist

4:20

at the Emeric and immersed herself

4:22

in the color field painters for which it

4:24

was known abstract expressionists

4:27

of a softer school like Maurice

4:29

Lewis and Helen Frankenthaler, with

4:31

their broadwashes of color, as

4:34

opposed to the bold, almost brutal

4:36

strokes of the action painters like

4:38

Jackson Pollock and William Dacooning.

4:41

Here's writer Michael Schneerson, and

4:44

starting salary was five thousand dollars

4:46

a year, or a hundred dollars a week. It

4:49

was typical pay for newcomers in a world

4:51

where wealthy parents who were expected to do their

4:53

part. Eager and perhaps

4:55

somewhat desperate, and began overstepping

4:58

her lowly tasks and started actually

5:00

selling art. And she was successful,

5:04

so much so that her boss was thunderstruck.

5:06

As Anne said herself in one of my interviews

5:08

with her for Vanity Fair, she said, Andre

5:11

started seeing more and more invoices on his

5:13

desk than he ever could have imagined.

5:16

There was a sense of some disbelief, if

5:18

not resentment. No one paved

5:20

the way for me to sell, but I sought

5:22

out the opportunity and I never looked back.

5:28

Her personal life was bossoming as well. Anne

5:31

would marry her fiancee, Robert Friedman,

5:33

on Christmas Day. A

5:36

Long Island Rabbi Jack Stern performed

5:38

the ceremony at Manhattan's Regency Hotel.

5:41

Anne and Robert would have a daughter, Jessica, and

5:44

moved to an apartment on East seventy two Street,

5:46

where they still live. Despite

5:53

her early successes, both

5:55

personally and professionally, it

5:57

would be fair to say that Anne wasn't embraced

6:00

by her colleagues at the Emeric Gallery. She

6:03

glowed with ambition and showed

6:06

little interest in making new friends. Rumor

6:10

had it that one of Anne's colleagues

6:12

threw a typewriter at her. Another

6:14

time, the owner of the gallery,

6:16

Andre Emrick, returned to New York

6:19

from a trip to London with little gifts

6:21

for his staffers. Emeric announced

6:24

that his gift to Anne was a Rose Royce.

6:26

Supposedly, she raced to the window

6:28

to see if there was a real one parked on the street.

6:31

Those were the kinds of expectations

6:33

she had, the staffer said. It

6:36

was, of course a little toy. She

6:39

was very ambitious. People at the gallery

6:41

hated her. Emrick's widow, Suzanne,

6:44

said the galleries registrar

6:46

once wrote to owner Andrea Emrick about

6:49

Anne and how she behaved when he was gone.

6:52

She was vicious, the registrar fumed.

6:59

While Anne was rising at Emeric, another

7:02

young ambitious staffer was a step

7:04

ahead of her at the Knoedler Gallery.

7:09

Leslie Feely came to Ndler in nineteen seventy

7:11

one with the legendary dealer Larry

7:14

Rubin, when the armand hammer era

7:16

of Ndler ownership began. By

7:19

this time, the Knodler was no longer the most

7:22

venerable gallery in New York. Those

7:24

days were long gone. By one

7:27

the gallery had slumped to a third

7:30

rate institution, with artists

7:32

like Leroy Neiman, who was most well

7:34

known for depicting bright, splashy

7:36

sports scenes with crowd pleasing

7:39

speed. The longtime dealer

7:41

Richard Fagen famously said that

7:43

armand Hammer bought a cadaver when

7:45

he bought the Knoedler. As

7:49

Leslie Feely recalled, the Knoedler

7:51

had no contemporary art at

7:53

that point in the early nineteen seventies.

7:56

I never thought of I don't think it

7:58

was active. Armand

8:00

Hammer needed a dealer who could help bring prestige

8:03

and clients back to Knodler. In

8:06

Larry Reuben. He'd found his man. Starting

8:10

with the brilliant Frank Stella and Kenneth

8:12

Noland. Reuben was proving his value

8:14

to Nodler and armand Hammer right

8:16

away. He also brought in Richard Debencorne,

8:19

the great abstract landscape painter. That's

8:22

why he signed up Larry.

8:24

For the artists, Leslie

8:27

Pheely and Larry came

8:29

in together. That's Joe Stevens.

8:32

Joe was the Nodler's art handler. My

8:34

main job was I was the shipping manager

8:37

and the head preparative of all

8:40

the artwork and hanging shows.

8:43

Leslie was Larry's partner

8:45

assistant. She was on a higher

8:47

level. She sold artwork.

8:50

Leslie worked at Nodler for nearly half a

8:52

decade until she left abruptly

8:54

in nineteen seventy seven. As Leslie

8:57

said, armand Hammer didn't keep his

8:59

word with her. He'd offered up

9:01

her compensation for artwork sold.

9:04

She said yes on a Friday. On Monday, he

9:06

came back and said, I'm sorry, I can't give you that

9:08

deal. With that, Leslie left

9:10

to become an independent dealer on her own.

9:13

I happened to gallery when Frank Gary

9:15

built gallery for me. I mean

9:18

he was my architect. He's terrivic

9:20

friend. I think, a great architect. And it

9:22

was a very beautiful gallery on sixty

9:25

eight in Madison. That was when

9:27

Anne became Larry Rubin's right hand,

9:30

taking Leslie's place. And

9:35

then Anne Freedman came in and

9:37

the changes were happening.

9:41

She was the receptionist, very knowledgeable

9:44

woman, you know, she knew her stuff,

9:47

and she had that I always called as

9:49

a gifted gap. She was incredible talker.

9:52

What change did you observe? Well,

9:55

she did move up, you know, she went move

9:57

right up. She get out, and she wand up

9:59

to get Aronal office. Since she started selling

10:01

art work, often

10:04

vying for paintings with her from outside

10:06

the gallery, Leslie would come to know Ann

10:08

friedman style of business all too well.

10:11

Almost from the beginning. It sounds

10:13

like you've got a sense of this woman not

10:16

only as abrasive and difficult

10:19

and unpleasant, but someone

10:21

who was, you know, willing to do anything

10:23

to make a profit. Absolutely.

10:29

It was in the fall of nine seven

10:31

when Leslie left the Notler, with

10:33

an eager and Friedman stepping in

10:36

to take her place. After her

10:38

departure, Leslie's dealings with Larry

10:40

Reuben on works by the artist which

10:42

her Deep in Corn came from outside

10:44

the gallery. The

10:48

work was beautiful, anyone

10:50

could see that, but the heat of

10:52

Deep in Corns market was also

10:54

due to the way he worked. He

10:56

would produce a dozens of ocean park

10:59

paintings and drawings, then send

11:01

them in one great clump to Knoedler dealer.

11:04

Larry Reuben would earmark new paintings

11:06

for his favorite clients, many of them

11:08

dealers themselves. Leslie

11:10

Feely was lucky enough to be on that

11:12

list. To Anne's intense

11:14

irritation, there was nothing she could

11:17

do to keep Larry from allocating

11:19

a Deep and Corn to Leslie when one

11:21

of those batches of new work came in.

11:24

I think I bought a deepon Corn in every

11:27

Deep in Corn show. I was still

11:29

friendly with Larry, which

11:31

was good, and I was friendly with the Deep and Corns,

11:34

and I loved his work, and it was

11:36

so exciting for me to buy one. One

11:39

staffer at Knoedler said that opening

11:42

those Deep and Corn shipments was like opening

11:44

presents on Christmas morning. The

11:47

paintings would be all lined up. These

11:49

were the days when an ocean park crossed

11:52

maybe eighteen to twenty dollars.

11:55

Larry would let Ann Friedman have first

11:57

pick. The staffer later said

11:59

to Lar why let Anne have first choice?

12:02

Because Ruben said, with a laugh, I

12:05

know she'll pick the worst one. Would

12:08

she be buying Deep in Corns as

12:10

well? Well? She must have. I

12:13

don't think she had a particularly good relationship with

12:16

the artist, or the wife

12:19

or the children. Who were you

12:22

know who ended up managing these days soon

12:26

enough, to the shock of the gallery staff,

12:29

and acquired the title of the

12:31

head of Contemporary Art sales. She

12:34

felt she'd paid her dues as

12:36

the front receptionist and demanded

12:38

a position of greater distinction. The

12:40

title was quite a leap, perhaps, but her

12:43

sales skills were being noticed. She

12:46

was known as the rainmaker. That's

12:49

artist Michael David. Michael

12:51

came to Knoedler as a client of the gallery

12:53

in a

12:56

collector introduced my

12:58

work to end and then and Larry

13:00

came to the studio. There was this desire

13:02

to find young artists at that point, and

13:05

I think that Larry liked me, not so much

13:07

for the work at that point, but because of the way I spoke,

13:09

in the speed of my speaking reminds him

13:11

of Frank Stella. I know

13:13

that there was a hierarchy of floors.

13:16

You go past that red velvet rope and then

13:19

there'll be one floor, and then it would be Ann's office

13:21

in Larry's office, and Larry

13:23

would focus more on the

13:25

higher end blue chip and Ann would

13:28

do more of the volume selling.

13:30

That was my impression. Joe

13:33

Stevens remembers what it was like handling

13:36

art for private meetings with Ann's clients

13:38

at not Learn. She had a

13:40

huge supply of artwork in

13:43

her office was always painted and

13:45

taken care of, and you know, she had

13:47

six French windows overlooking seventy

13:49

Street. He had a big, huge

13:51

office. You know, she had a couch

13:53

in front of it, sat down with the clients.

13:56

Very convenient and well done. You

13:59

know. It was always very clean and

14:01

immaculate. And we

14:03

used to come up and you know, you have the two people

14:05

have to pull out one of these big motherwells, you

14:07

know, so you know, put

14:09

it right back and pull out at all this It

14:11

was kind of really cool to do

14:14

that because I'm listening

14:16

to how what they're paying for these things, and I'm

14:18

going, you know, it

14:20

was an incredible mansive money that these

14:22

people paid for him. Here's

14:25

artist Michael David again. There

14:27

was also a thing that you know, there was always you know,

14:29

we don't sell work. We place work, and

14:31

you know we'll always take the work back. Was

14:36

it true? Could you decide you didn't like a stella

14:38

and bring it back and get your money back. I

14:41

don't think that you get your money back. I

14:43

think they would make efforts to sell it for you.

14:47

Interestingly, in my Vanity Fair story,

14:50

Michael David had described Anne rather

14:52

more sharply. He said she wasn't

14:54

someone you wanted to play poker with. Or

14:56

someone you wanted to cross. He's

14:58

a complicated person. She was great

15:01

at what she did. I never saw evidence

15:03

of her being unethical. She had an

15:05

edge, she took no prisoners, and she could

15:07

be vindictive. I think for her

15:09

it was always about making it rain. I

15:12

think that was how she defined herself. That

15:14

may have been a fatal flaw that led her

15:17

not to be as mindful as she should have been.

15:21

But at some point after the Vanity Fair story

15:23

appeared, Anne had taken Michael David

15:25

to lunch more than once and conveyed

15:27

how hurt she had been to be called vindictive,

15:30

and so David's portrait of her had softened

15:32

over the years. For

15:36

k Nodler's artists, like Michael David,

15:38

art was never anything less than

15:41

a business. But how did the money

15:43

change hands between the buyer,

15:45

the seller, and the artist. That's

15:48

after the break. The

15:56

financial arrangement between Ndler

15:59

and its artists seemed simple enough

16:01

on the surface, everything

16:04

was on paper before computers. Recalled

16:06

one staffer, if the price for

16:08

a painting just sold was say one

16:10

hundred thousand dollars, then the standards split

16:13

on painting sold was fifty fifty

16:15

fifty percent for the artist and fifty percent

16:17

for the gallery. But at Nidler

16:20

there was a category called report

16:22

to Artists. Instead

16:26

of being recorded as a sale for

16:28

one hundred thousand dollars, the report

16:30

to artist would show the sale as,

16:32

say, ninety six thousand dollars. When

16:35

the fifty fifty split was made, the artist

16:38

got fifty percent of ninety six

16:40

thousand dollars, not of one hundred

16:42

thousand dollars. It wasn't

16:45

a big reduction for the artist. In

16:47

fact, it was so small that most

16:49

of the artists were probably perfectly happy

16:52

pocketing their fifty percent of the

16:54

report to artists that they failed to question

16:56

the galleries accounting methods. The

17:00

staffer, a new arrival at

17:02

the time, questioned one or two people

17:05

about the practice. To her, it seemed

17:07

unsavory, a red flag, as

17:09

she put it, but she felt if she pushed

17:12

too far, she'd put her job in

17:14

jeopardy. Donald

17:17

Sultan, one of the Knodler galleries

17:19

younger artists at the time, confirmed

17:22

that Anne kept two separate sets

17:24

of books. Sultan

17:26

said she told people she sold an artwork

17:29

for X, but she actually sold

17:31

it for X plus y. Either

17:33

she or the gallery kept the

17:35

difference Another

17:38

delicate matter at Knodler was

17:40

the upstairs presence of an accountant,

17:43

Dr. Maury Leebovitz, who ran a much larger

17:45

operation. He

17:47

oversaw not just the Kndler, but

17:50

also the very commercial Hammer Gallery

17:53

situated on Park Avenue, just above

17:55

Street, which the Hammer family

17:57

had bought some time before. He

18:00

was a shadowy figure. The staffers seventh

18:03

Maury You were not allowed to even

18:05

mention his presence because they

18:07

didn't want anyone to know the two galleries

18:09

were run together. Why

18:12

because while the Noodlers sold art

18:14

of impeccable quality to wealthy

18:16

collectors, the Hammer Gallery

18:18

over on Park Avenue sold tacky

18:20

artists like Leroy Nieman with his highly

18:23

commercial sports scenes to

18:27

Larry Reuben and the rest of Knoedler, Nieman

18:29

was an embarrassment. In spite

18:32

of this, Nieman was the biggest earner for the

18:34

two galleries combined, and his

18:36

profits helped prop up the galleries

18:38

bottom line. There was nothing

18:40

illegal about this, It was just

18:43

a way of disguising the galleries finances.

18:46

The k Nodler would disguise its finances

18:48

later on too, in a much different

18:51

and very illegal way.

18:56

By the nineteen eighties, Anne had

18:58

become a fixture at Knodler, selling

19:00

far more than anyone else at the gallery,

19:02

and thus accruing more power as she did.

19:05

One former staffer recalls Anne saying,

19:08

I could have sold catalogs, but I chose

19:10

to sell art. Perhaps she was

19:12

being facetious, but to the staffer

19:15

that sort of rang true. When

19:20

I used to go to the Nolar Gallery, which I did every

19:22

trip to New York, to see Larry, perhaps

19:25

to buy something or you know,

19:27

just have Blanche whatever. Ann Friedman's

19:30

office was not an office. It was a desk

19:32

in the showroom where they had

19:34

their paintings in racks. She

19:37

would be right there. That's

19:40

John Burgruin, who San Francisco Gallery

19:42

remains a bastion of the art business more

19:44

than half a century since he opened

19:46

it on Grant Avenue. And

19:49

Friedman was always,

19:51

as far as I'm concerned, controversial

19:54

person. You know, I don't. I

19:56

often wondered how Larry dealt with her

19:58

on a day to day basis. What was striking

20:01

about her presence, the fact

20:03

that the fact that she was even there

20:05

in a way, but what was her style? Well,

20:08

she was aggressive. Another

20:10

former staffer took a slightly softer view,

20:13

She was demanding, but not totally unfair.

20:16

She was like that type in the Devil Wears product

20:18

that was Ann. You never felt close

20:21

to her. The staffer added, there's an almost

20:23

masculine quality, hard to read. She

20:25

was tough and a lot of people ended up not

20:28

liking her. The

20:31

note was a long time manager and art handler,

20:34

Joe Stevens once stopped at her desk

20:36

in the late nineteen eighties after hours. When

20:38

she was gone, his

20:41

eyes widened. There was Anne's latest

20:43

paycheck. I was juned

20:45

and she was already made

20:48

seventies thousand dollars. It

20:51

was June and she had already made three

20:53

seventy five for the year. So far,

20:55

so far. That's a lot of

20:58

money in the late eighties. That's what I found that

21:02

these were the go go years in

21:04

the contemporary art market. Dealers

21:07

like Leo Castelli and Mary Boone

21:09

were selling big, bold canvases

21:12

of artists like Julian Schnabel and

21:14

Eric Fischel, along with David Sally

21:17

and Ross Bleckner. Abstract

21:19

art was out along with minimalist

21:22

art. Figurative art was back

21:24

in with a vengeance. The

21:31

Kndler wasn't quite at the heart

21:34

of all this once again it was selling

21:36

the art, no longer quite of its day

21:39

under Larry Reuben. However, it did

21:41

well enough when

21:44

Larry was the head of the gallery. We weren't

21:46

in trouble for money. It was it was a

21:49

name armand

21:51

Hammer died in leaving

21:54

his grandson Michael as chairman of

21:57

Ndler as well as head of

21:59

the tacky Hammer Gallery on Park Avenue.

22:02

Michael Hammer was an elusive figure,

22:05

known mostly for his born again

22:07

evangelical zeal, his deep

22:09

affinity for tanning machines, and

22:12

later for his two dozen or so vintage

22:15

automobiles. But he was smart

22:17

enough to let Larry Reuben keep running

22:19

the Noteler gallery, and though

22:21

the whole art market suffered a

22:23

major recession in the early nineteen nineties

22:26

with the galleries closing right and left,

22:29

Knoler survived due

22:31

in combination to the revenues from the Hammer

22:34

Gallery and blue chip artists

22:36

who stayed loyal to Larry Reuben. What

22:39

Michael Hammer failed to sense, however,

22:41

was that Anne was no longer a docile salesperson

22:44

for Knoler. She

22:46

felt she was the one keeping the gallery

22:49

afloat. The major sales were

22:51

hers, and yet the gallery wasn't

22:53

giving her the credit she felt she deserved. The

22:57

more underappreciated she felt,

23:00

the more resentment she radiated.

23:04

It was about that time in the early nineties,

23:07

said Larry Reuben started planning his

23:09

exit. I didn't understand

23:12

him leaving the gallery, but he missed

23:14

Europe. He had a house in the south of France,

23:17

and then he had the house in Italy. He wanted a

23:19

semi retire. Joe

23:21

Stevens recalls Larry's

23:23

departure. I knew

23:26

something was wrong now.

23:29

I didn't know if it was because the galery

23:31

was taken over by Michael. I

23:34

couldn't figure it out. Reuben

23:37

wanted a life of European

23:39

travel, yet he still wanted to

23:42

retain control of the gallery.

23:46

He would manage to do just that by

23:48

bringing in a successor, one who

23:51

reported directly to him.

23:54

This was an expert in multiples named

23:57

Donald Staff. Multiple

24:00

does mean any art made in more than one

24:02

copy. Usually it's a numbered and signed

24:04

edition. Lithographs are multiples,

24:06

for example, so we're engravings, which were part

24:08

of the origins of Noeler Back in the

24:10

eighteen forties. Donald

24:13

Staff had done multiples for the great pop

24:15

artist Roy Lichtenstein, and the two

24:17

had grown close. It was a good chance

24:20

that Staff might get Lichtenstein to join the Notlar

24:22

gallery. Larry Reuben

24:24

thought he had talked Michael Hammer into adopting

24:27

this plan. Larry would

24:29

direct the gallery from Italy, where he had a country

24:31

home, and Larry and Donald Staff

24:33

would run it together, and Friedman

24:36

would be the hard driving salesperson. I'm

24:41

sure at that point she was saying, I'm making all

24:44

the sales. He's not doing anything. You don't

24:46

need him, You'll do just as many

24:48

sales, which was probably true in

24:50

a sense. No, no, but she had

24:52

no connections to get Liechtenstein

24:55

or Ralschenberg. The other

24:57

guy had better connections. Donald

25:00

aft it. Yeah, yeah, And so

25:02

even though Notally didn't yet have Rauschenberg

25:06

or there was

25:08

a hope of it, whereas there was no hope

25:11

if if Anne was the

25:13

head of the gallery she didn't know any of these artists.

25:16

I mean, what what sort of self delusion

25:19

you've called it? The

25:23

news of Larry's retirement and Staff's

25:25

imminent arrival in the fall of infuriated

25:28

Anne. Later she said she just

25:30

wanted to know what Don sass Roll would

25:33

be That seemed to cause a

25:35

problems and put it dryly to me, she

25:38

wanted more than that. She wanted to know

25:40

why she shouldn't be made director of the gallery

25:42

after seventeen years, when she was

25:44

the one who sold the art and shored up

25:46

the company's bottom line. Like

25:50

a heat seeking missile and

25:53

shot into Michael Hammer's office on a mid

25:55

November day in and

25:58

took him on directly. She

26:01

could do everything Reuben and Saff could

26:03

do, she pointed out to Hammer. She could

26:05

cultivate new artists, organized their

26:07

shows, and run the business.

26:10

At the same time. She would sell a lot more

26:12

art than Reuben or Staff put together. Why

26:15

not let her run the gallery with Michael

26:17

Hammer's help, of course, and send

26:20

the old men packing. And

26:23

must have been persuasive because Michael

26:25

Hammer changed his mind on the spot

26:28

and gave her the job. He

26:30

did that even though sav had just been

26:33

formerly hired as co director and

26:35

was sent a letter detailing the terms

26:37

of his employment. According

26:39

to Staff's lawyer, the letter was

26:42

signed by Staff and sent back to Knodler

26:44

to be countersigned. It was sitting

26:46

in an inbox at the Knoedler when Hammer

26:49

changed his mind and seized it.

26:52

Staff's lawyers accused Hammer of

26:55

preaching an oral agreement, but the charge

26:57

went nowhere. There would be no

26:59

more talk of Staff and rubenous co

27:01

directors. There would be just

27:04

one director and Friedman.

27:13

We'll be back in a minute. Ann's

27:16

new title seemed to assure her great success,

27:19

but Leslie Feeley since the story would turn

27:21

out badly, if only because of Anne's

27:23

temperament. She

27:26

was not a people person. She would

27:29

try to you know, sway

27:31

people gush over people,

27:33

but a lot of people didn't go for

27:35

her. One collecting couple

27:38

who resisted her charms was the mayer Hoffs.

27:41

Wonderful, fabulous collect

27:43

According to one person in Baltimore, they

27:45

would have nothing to do with Anne.

27:47

A lot of people had that reaction, like

27:50

me, Yeah, whether collectors

27:52

or dealers, anything so interesting

27:55

that she should alienated

27:57

them all and yet still get

27:59

this job. So thanks to

28:01

Michael Hammer, I guess right. So

28:04

the amazing thing to me about

28:06

this story at this point is

28:08

that you know, Anne gets

28:10

her wish, and be careful what

28:12

you wish for, because now

28:15

there's no one to guide her and

28:18

to keep her from making truly calamitous

28:21

decisions. Making

28:23

a calamitous. I don't I

28:26

think she wanted to make

28:28

more money, so she didn't care how she did

28:30

it. I mean, don't

28:32

you think it was in her blood?

28:35

She wasn't making enough money to carry

28:38

the gallery, and now

28:40

that she had gotten this job and this

28:42

power and pushed aside

28:45

any chance of these other artists

28:47

coming in, also having artists

28:50

leave because of her deep

28:52

and colorin gone. Wow,

28:55

when did that happen? I think Rodway, I

28:58

think she was pushed out of Stephen Corn

29:00

right away because they never liked

29:02

her. Joe

29:09

Stevens got an earful of Larry Reuben's

29:11

fury that Stevens drove Larry

29:13

across town that day. We're

29:16

coming back from Frank Stella's studio and

29:19

you got a call. It

29:22

might have been a treasury. He spoke to me. He goes,

29:24

dad fucking and

29:27

now he's boiling.

29:30

He wants to kill him. He says, what

29:33

the are you fucking fitting me?

29:36

And he just rent and raved. So

29:38

he says, I says, Larry, what's going

29:40

on? He

29:43

says that bitch, and

29:46

but he didn't get into it. He just says that

29:48

you'll you'll hear about it soon enough.

29:51

So I had said to him, Mrs Larry,

29:54

do I have to get another job? He

29:57

says, I don't know, Joe,

29:59

he is things are happening right

30:01

now. I don't know. He

30:04

didn't specify it, like say,

30:07

if you get along with an you'll be around for

30:09

a while, you know. But he

30:11

was absolutely furious,

30:14

and within a month he was gone and

30:23

had seized power in the last

30:26

ticking moments she had while that

30:28

letter from Donald sav lay in Michael

30:30

Hammer's inbox. With that

30:33

move, she changed the course of her life

30:35

and ultimately the Knodler Galleries

30:38

too, But it came with

30:40

a drawback. The problem

30:43

was that the art market of the early to mid was

30:47

terrible like all her rivals,

30:49

and needed top quality art

30:52

to sell. It wasn't so easy

30:54

to find, especially for a dealer who

30:56

lacked a lifetime of friendships with

30:59

famous artists. Anne's

31:02

predicament was actually worse than

31:04

it seemed. Her

31:07

harsh personality and the swiftness

31:09

with which she had grabbed her prize had

31:12

alienated many of the galleries living

31:14

artists, along with the estates

31:16

that represented deceased ones. The

31:18

Adolph Gottlieb Foundation was alarmed,

31:21

so was the David Smith Foundation. The Robert

31:24

Motherwell Foundation and the Richard

31:26

Deepencorn Foundation. Upon

31:28

Anne's coup, they all left the

31:30

gallery. Joe

31:33

Stevens recalls Anne's rise to leadership

31:36

with mixed feelings.

31:38

She became an officer of the

31:40

company. You know, she became like

31:43

a vice president. So she

31:45

changed. Now she had authority

31:48

to me, she just became bitchy because

31:51

she knew who she was. She sold a lot

31:53

of all work. She was a big time salesperson.

31:56

I had really good working

31:59

with her the very beginning, and then

32:01

she became the borce. She

32:04

never really said nothing much to me in

32:06

the beginning because she knew. I

32:08

knew my job I do. I took care of everything.

32:10

I took care of everything that had to be taken care

32:12

of. I was the top sergeant in that place,

32:15

and it's in physical I took care of the

32:17

building everything. If a window

32:20

cracked, I had have it fixed, the

32:22

air conditioning. I did it all. But my

32:24

main job was I was the shipping manager

32:27

and the head preparative of all

32:29

the artwork. I

32:31

don't care if you the precedent the company, I

32:33

deserve respect. I take care

32:36

of this whole gallery from the minute

32:38

it opens to the minute it closes, and

32:41

I handled all the artwork, every

32:44

bit of it. In

32:51

that capacity, there was a lot that Joe

32:54

would see as the gallery began to sink

32:56

and money became an issue. Even

33:00

as an began wielding her new power,

33:02

as noted as Director, sales

33:04

were plummeting, and aggressive

33:06

and ruthless tactics had pushed away the gallery's

33:08

best clients and the staff were turning

33:11

against her, and

33:13

Friedman was now totally on her own

33:16

to decide which artists to promote

33:18

and sell. Her standards

33:21

became the galleries standards.

33:23

Her eagerness to close these deals

33:25

conveyed a clear message, sell,

33:28

sell, sell, no matter what.

33:31

This guy, I think his name was Bud Larkin.

33:33

He used to be a directive of like Bewitched.

33:36

He bought this Pollock. Now,

33:39

if you remember, Michael, do you go back

33:41

when Cartier was sending out empty

33:43

packages so people don't have

33:45

to pay taxes? Absolutely, Okay,

33:48

here's the scam that Joe is referring to. Cardier,

33:53

the world famous jewelry brand, was

33:55

helping its customers evade sales tax.

33:58

At the time, those taxes in New York's city

34:00

were eight point to five out

34:02

of state buyers were exempt from

34:04

those taxes. So the scam was

34:07

when a customer came in and purchased

34:09

an expensive item, cartier would

34:11

ship an empty box to a bogus address

34:14

and the customer would walk out of the store

34:16

with their merchandise. And it worked

34:19

for a while. Time Magazine

34:21

reported in April that at

34:23

least two hundred and sixty thousand dollars in taxes

34:26

went unpaid on a hundred and twenty

34:28

five sales over three years. Similar

34:31

scams at the time were estimated to

34:33

have cost New York State and local governments

34:36

more than a hundred million and tax revenue

34:38

annually. Well,

34:42

this guy here had to go and

34:44

delivered his painting to Kauai, Hawaii.

34:47

Hid I

34:50

jumped on a plane in North flew

34:52

Non stopped to Honold, got in another

34:54

plane and flew Kauai and delivered.

34:56

It took me seventeen hours, seven

34:59

million dollars US. You know why,

35:02

because she saved dollars

35:05

in taxes by me delivering.

35:07

It was your

35:09

sense that that was common place at

35:12

Noler. No. I

35:14

did it once, and I said I'll never do it

35:16

again. In the aftermath

35:19

of Larry Ruben's departure, the

35:21

changes at Ndler were profound

35:25

with the gallery still struggling through tough

35:27

times, and became more demanding

35:29

and sharp tongued, even imperious.

35:32

Even Michael Hammer, the galley's

35:35

owner, seemed to defer to Enne

35:37

more often than not and was

35:39

always screaming at everybody. One staffer

35:42

recalled, always screaming for himI

35:44

Andratti, her assistant. If

35:46

she didn't have the right pen, she would call

35:48

to himaid to get her more. As

35:51

personal assistance came and went

35:53

in dizzying succession. If

35:56

you unwrapped her sandwich, she wouldn't eat

35:58

it, says one former assist.

36:01

If you answered the phone in the wrong way, she

36:03

would pounce on you. One

36:05

woman was fired after three days

36:08

for having too strong an Eastern European

36:10

accent, a staff are recalled. Another

36:13

lasted two weeks for being too young and

36:16

inexperienced, So

36:18

the next assistant they hired was older in

36:20

her forties. She was fired

36:22

after a few months because Anne seemed

36:25

threatened by her. One

36:28

staffer recalled that she and her colleagues

36:30

kept a list of all the assistants

36:32

who came and went during the years she

36:34

was there. As she said, if

36:36

you made it past the hazing rituals.

36:39

You became part of this dysfunctional

36:42

family. The

36:44

most memorable of that long

36:46

line of the demoralized was

36:48

a fragile Southerner straight out

36:50

of a Tennessee Williams play, and

36:53

would call her five or six times a day.

36:55

One staff are recalled, they would be crying

36:58

and screaming, and

37:05

Friedman's Nodler Gallery was in free

37:07

fall. Help would come not long

37:09

after Anne's ascension at a Soho

37:12

art gallery opening, surprisingly

37:14

in the form of a demure Mexican

37:17

art dealer in her mid forties named

37:19

La Rosalis. Anne

37:25

had never met Rosalee,

37:27

and upon learning that she had something

37:30

to do with a gallery and Great Neck Long Island,

37:32

she might have given the woman a pain to smile

37:35

and moved on. But Rosalves

37:37

had sailed up to Anne on the arm of

37:39

the Nodler's own him Andrade,

37:42

and so Anne was intrigued. From

37:45

such a casual meeting, the whole

37:47

art market would be seismically altered,

37:50

leaving the Knodler itself devastated

37:52

and ultimately doomed, depending

37:57

on who you asked him. And

38:00

Ratty was either a long trusted employee

38:02

of the gallery, harmless and endearing

38:05

or an agent provocateur who

38:08

saw a way to put Ann Friedman together

38:10

with hero Rosalee, ensuring

38:12

that all three of them would profit from

38:14

their endeavors. Oh please,

38:17

that's not a connection. I mean, that's just trying

38:19

to push the guilt onto this poor,

38:22

uneducated sweet

38:25

man. It has nothing to do with

38:27

I mean, Anne would say that, of course, But I take your point.

38:30

I mean it sounds like she was just just

38:32

naming someone else besides her.

38:35

Okay, he introduced her. So

38:37

what she made the judgment? She

38:40

That's right, She just nothing else.

38:42

I mean it was totally her

38:44

call. Next

38:50

time on art Fraud, she

38:54

swears that she didn't know, which

38:56

seems hard to believe. Should

38:58

she have known? Yeah,

39:02

I believe from the beginning she knew these

39:04

were fakes. They had no provenances.

39:06

She made up provenances. Every Day,

39:13

Art Fraud is brought to you by I Heart

39:15

Radio and Cavalry Audio.

39:18

Our executive producers are Matt del Piano,

39:20

Keegan Rosenberger, Andy Turner,

39:22

myself, and Michael Shnayerson.

39:25

We're produced by Brandon Morgan and Zach

39:27

McNeice. Zach also edited

39:30

and mixed this episode. Lindsay

39:32

Hoffman is our managing producer,

39:35

our writer is Michael Schneerson. I

40:00

can can't be anything in add