Text Kate Orne Photographs Kate Orne
Originally published in No 3.
Shainman in his hallway. On the wall are C-prints from the Angel Youth portfolio, 1990 by Jack Pierson,
There is a smoldering heat wave the day I drive up to Kinderhook. The afternoon light is unyielding despite it already being 4pm. “He’s in the back!” a friendly woman in scruffy riding boots and jodhpurs calls out. The aroma of fresh sawdust and horse manure is both familiar and comforting.
Outside, in the distance, through a cloud of sandy dust, an exquisite Hanoverian appears. Its black coat shines like it was made of silk velvet. I reach out my hand and a soft muzzle nudges my fingertips. In a well-worn and polished English saddle sits Jack Shainman, art dealer and avid horseman.
Jack is known for representing artists with strong voices that are engaged in social and cultural issues. Exposed to art and nature, he grew up in a liberal, culturally rich home in Williamstown, Massachusetts. As a child, to the astonishment of his Jewish parents, his dream was to become a farmer, “I always loved nature and animals.” But his life was to take a different turn.
On dining table; Center figure: Saint Anthony in the manner of Mena, Granada School, Spain, 18th century.
Shainman reading in the sunlight. Right: Jacques Villon, Still life, 1916, oil on canvas in period frame.
Works by Donald Moffett & William Kentrid. Otherworldly wife, wooden Baule figure, 20th century, Ivory Coast, Africa. Clay sculpture by Rebecca Warren. Self Portrait by Michelangelo Pistoletto.
KO You have two galleries in NYC, why did you decide to create The School?
JS I love it so much here on my farm outside Kinderhook. When the opportunity came up to buy the Martin Van Buren High school, I said to Carlos [Vega, his long time partner] "We've just got to go see it.” I knew it was probably out of our means –– we'd done renovations on other spaces in New York but never anything of this magnitude.
But little by little, I realized how badly I needed it. We’d often rented viewing spaces in Brooklyn but it was always hard to find the really high ceilings needed for artists like El Anatsui. Part of the idea was to have a space up here, surrounded by nature, to look at work. Now we have great restaurants and places to visit, like The Flammerie and Dyad in Kinderhook, Riverview Café in Stuyvesant, and museums like the Williams College Museum, The Clark, and MASS MoCA. I'm delighted that we’ve become a weekend destination point. I mean, for El Anatsui, last summer we curated five decades of his work. He's kind of a rock star. Some weekends we were getting five, six hundred people, which is pretty amazing for a small town like Kinderhook.
KO That's so good, Jack, really.
JS Yeah, it's crazy. Because when we first made this space, it really was more about the idea of doing shows in the summer. But then, after doing the first show, people kept asking, "What's next? What's next?" so I quickly planned the second exhibition. This is our fifth show now.
KO Tell me about Claude.
JS My partner, Claude Simard [1956-2014], was not only a great artist with a phenomenal eye but also an amazing risk taker. He would risk everything to do what he wanted to do and I learned so much from him about that kind of thing.
Portrait of Claude Simard, Co-founder of Jack Shainman Gallery with select items from the collection of Claude Simard, including Indian and African artifacts and antiquities.
KO Was that intimidating at first?
JS Yes, because I'm careful — but you can't always be careful. If you don't risk things you’ll never know what the payoff could be.
KO Can you give me an example of the kind of risk Claude would take?
JS There were so many. Once he went to India and bought a baroque church and a synagogue, which he moved to Canada. He charged it on an American Express card. It was hundreds of thousands of dollars and they let the charge go through. Suddenly we had a church.
KO And a synagogue! …Did you start the gallery from ground up?
At center of photo: A portrait of a midget, 17th century, in a period frame, anonymous in the manner of Valazquez. Right: If I Had Possession Over Judgement Day, 1988 by Kerry James Marshall.
JS Yes, we started in ‘84 with a small savings and some money that we made selling Claude’s art. It was survival really. Neither of us went to business school. For better or worse we never really had a plan like, "Wow, we're going to try to get eight paintings of this guy and if we sell, we'll have this much left over at the end." We didn't really think like that.
Surviving the recession of the early nineties was brutal. Nobody came to the gallery for a couple of months. We needed to sell stuff everyday so we could eat. But I wasn't going to give up. I didn't want to face the failure of all that trying and doing. It took a real drive for me to make it through that time.
KO Let’s return to The School. Great projects usually come from a very deep personal desire, what drives you?
On wall: James Hyde, glass and mixed media. Indo-Portuguese School guardian angel statue from Goa, India, 18th century, wood carving and paint.
JS Oh my god, to have a space like that with the flexibility to show the large scale work of my artists and do my special projects — it really was a life-long dream.
KO Did this space inform what you were going to do?
JS Originally, we thought, “What if we got the building, we’d do a little this and we’d do a little that.” My summer project was going to be touching up the exterior walls… (Laughter).
KO Tell me about Antonio Torrecillas [1962-2015]
JS We really wanted Antonio, our dear friend and neighbor in Granada, to take on the project. He was such a visionary, a great collaborator, and a brilliant architect. At first, Carlos and I were afraid to show him the plans of the building because we knew once we did there was no going back. We were worried his ideas would end up being super-expensive.
Shainman’s 235 acre farm in Stuyvesant was purchased in 1999.
Shainman in the saddle on Positano, his stunning 15 year old Hanoverian. He keeps his 5 horses at Winslow Farm in Valatie, NY.
One night in Granada, we sat in Antonio’s kitchen. He’d created his house from a combination of four caves –– so extraordinarily beautiful! We stayed up all night talking and drinking beer. The sun came up and he was still coming up with ideas — he was scaring the shit out of me but it was really fun.
That winter he made a site visit. At that point we knew he had some health issues. We spent hours and hours talking and I could see his brain working. He was absolute genius. I really wanted to have ceilings 24 feet high and uninterrupted walls but had kind of settled on 16 or 18 feet. Then one day he had this amazing idea.
We were going to cut the gym floor, and dig out the school. At first, I was like, "Oh, my god. Is he kidding? Is this a joke? Oh, my god, really?" A few hours later, I realized how amazing and brilliant it was. I mean cutting out the gym floor and digging out...
In the bedroom: Reliquaire, 1989 by Christian Boltanski,
Virgin of the Milk, 17th century, Spain.
KO: Was Claude still alive for the opening?
JS Yes — but he was meant to be here for a much longer time, so it's really unfortunate.
KO I love his shrine at the school.
JS Oh, thank you. Thank you.
KO Carrie Mae Weems spoke to me about the importance of pushing past categorization of gender and race in art. What do you think about that?
JS I think as Westerners, we love to put everything in a category, in a little box. I also think that the art world has become increasingly diverse. Today, it's more open than it's ever been. But it still has a long, long way to go. If we were to ask Kerry James Marshall, who has taught me so much, he would probably tell us that not that much has changed.
KO: Was there resistance when you and Claude started to introduce artists to the New York art world from places such as Africa, Iraq and so on?
JS It was really mixed. A lot of people celebrated it. I started working with Kerry Marshall in ‘93. Back in Washington DC, we did a show with an elderly African American man named John Robinson who was an extraordinary self-taught painter. His work was just gorgeous. But the resistance was more like — how can I say this in a polite way? It's taken years for people to really develop deep interest in these kinds of things. A lot of people were excited, we had museum sales, top collectors and all of that, but it wasn't for everybody.
Interiors of the School. Hunches in Bunches, 2011 & Before the Flood, 2015 by Richard Mosse.
The School (Window), 2016 & The School (Windows and Traces), 2016 by Pierre Dorion.
Search, 2016, by Havy Kahram.
In the entrance of The School works by Garnett Puett.
I was selected to do a solo vintage booth of Malick Sidibé [1935-2016] in Basel — the first time a vintage work of Malick was shown. It was great, I sold work there, but it was a little too early. Anything you bring into the gallery, you have to believe in it so much that you can defend it to anyone, because usually half the people like it and half the people hate it. Sometimes you're put on the spot and you have to tell people why you like it, why you think it's significant. If you don't believe in the work, you can't really put it on the walls.
KO You’ve used the term “prior commitment trap,” what is that?
JS I just mean, to be successful in the art world, it is necessary to take on long-term commitments. I’m not capable of taking anything on half-heartedly; I’m always engaged in many projects at once, which often take years to realize, so I can never quit.
Visit The School and Jack Shainman Gallery.