Byron Cohen approached the business of selling art with a twinkle in his eye. With his daughter Toma Wolff at a desk nearby and his wife, Eileen, popping in to lend a hand, he was in his element at the Byron C. Cohen Gallery for Contemporary Art.
The art world will remember Cohen, who died May 10 at the age of 72, as a dealer who loved his work and was also good at it.
In 2008, he sold more than $1 million worth of art during the four-day run of the Art Basel Miami Beach art fair, all of it work by contemporary Chinese artists.
?They?re going to let me go into any fair I want now,? Cohen crowed on his return to Kansas City, where he was a pioneering dealer in the Crossroads Arts District and the first dealer here to show contemporary Chinese art in a big way.
?Byron lived an expansive life ? embracing new art, people and experiences always,? said Bruce Hartman, executive director of the Nerman Museum of Contemporary Art. ?His passion for art, however, defined him. He possessed a keen eye, a penchant for the contemporary, unbridled enthusiasm and an ever-present sense of wonder. Artists loved him!?
Cohen was an avid art collector before retiring from real estate development to become a dealer.
His good friends John and Sharon Hoffman remember the days in the late 1970s and early ?80s when Ted Coe, director of the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, instructed the two couples in the fine art of collecting. Coe introduced them to gallery dealers in St. Louis, New York and the West Coast and to what were then the top names in contemporary art.
?The first thing we all bought were major pieces by Jim Dine,? Sharon Hoffman recalled. ?Byron?s first really major piece was a Duane Hanson sculpture. He had the eye for the unusual and the daring. Ted told us what to buy; we all bought Frank Stellas and Jasper Johns and Robert Rauschenberg. He told us to buy African, American Indian, art nouveau, art deco and contemporary art, and to buy the best piece we could afford.?
When the couples started the Contemporary Art Society in 1977, Hoffman said, Cohen became president.
The happy times suffered a major interruption when Cohen?s heart stopped on the golf course. He spent weeks in a coma in a rehab center, which was decorated with typically middle-of-the-road art.
When he awoke, Hoffman said, ?The first words out of his mouth were: ?God this art is horrible.??
In 1994, Cohen and ceramics dealer Lennie Berkowitz opened the Cohen/Berkowitz Gallery at 2000 Baltimore Ave.
?The most remarkable thing about Byron,? Berkowitz said, ?was this innate taste for art. He had been in that coma, and he got to come home from the rehab center for a weekend. He looked around the house, and he said, ?All of this is mine.? That sort of sums up Byron to me, because at first he didn?t even know his family, but he knew his art was superior to all the stuff he?d seen around the hospital. I think that?s amazing.?
Following Berkowitz?s retirement in 1997, Cohen changed the gallery?s name to Byron C. Cohen Gallery for Contemporary Art and moved it down the street to 2020 Baltimore Ave. Toma Wolff signed on as assistant director, and father and daughter worked together in the two-level Crossroads space until they decided to take the business online in late 2010.
Cohen did shows with big-name artists such as Petah Coyne and Ursula von Rydingsvard, and he regularly exhibited Kansas City artists, including Nate Fors, Mary Wessel, James Woodfill, Ricky Allman and Grant Miller.
?He gave me my first solo show in Kansas City and (it) was reviewed in Art in America,? Peregrine Honig noted in a Facebook post. ?He had an amazing eye and he owns beautiful drawings and paintings of mine.? He was a great person and I was lucky to share time with him in good health and great humor.?
Coyne too has fond memories of Cohen. She was traveling to China when she learned of Cohen?s death.
?We live in a world today that is far richer because Byron Cohen was in it,? Coyne wrote in an email. ?His passion ? when it came to the arts ? knew no bounds. Who couldn?t love that about Byron ? especially artists! I will dearly miss Byron every time I go to Kansas City, but he will always be there in my heart.?
Cohen?s funeral was Monday. His family requested donations to the Charlotte Street Foundation.
Source: http://www.kansascity.com/2013/05/16/4239513/byron-c-cohen-an-innate-taste.html
Sweetest Day optimal Samantha Steele Espn goog Sylvia Kristel st louis cardinals Steelers Schedule
No comments:
Post a Comment
Note: Only a member of this blog may post a comment.