Mr. Laib recently left Christie’s for the David Zwirner gallery — bringing the Asawa estate with him — partly because he said that he saw greater possibilities for an artist in a gallery context.
“What we were able to do through Christie’s, I don’t know if that can be replicated for every artist,” he said.
Several art experts point out that efforts to merge the skill sets of galleries and auction houses have failed in the past, namely the 50 percent interest Sotheby’s bought in the gallery Deitch Projects in 1997, and its purchase of the André Emmerich Gallery in 1996, as well as Christie’s acquisition of the gallery Haunch of Venison in 2007.
Auction houses are not permitted to show at art fairs, which leaves today’s largest transactional arena off limits. And many dealers say auction houses will not be able to serve artists and their legacies the way galleries do. “Their interest is selling,” said Arne Glimcher, the chairman of Pace, which represents living artists such as Mr. Close and Kiki Smith. “Making money is a long-range process with us.”
The care and feeding of artists, dealers say, is also a high-maintenance job. “Living artists have enormous personal needs,” Mr. Glimcher said. “There are constant conversations. We’re a daily support system.”
In one extreme example, Mr. Glimcher said, the artist Jim Dine sent Pace his shirts to be cleaned: “You think Sotheby’s is going to do that?”
Even Brett Gorvy, who just left Christie’s after 23 years to join forces with the dealer Dominique Lévy — this year Ms. Levy took on the painter Pat Steir, 74, and the Korean sculptor Lee Seung-taek, 84 — said that what galleries do for artists cannot be replicated by an auction house.
“Auction houses are going to find it difficult to compete with dealers, whose whole apparatus is looking after artists and artists’ estates,” he said. “The artist wants a sense of independence more than anything else and doesn’t want to be a corporate soul.”
The abstract painter Brice Marden in his New York studio. Mr. Marden, 78, just announced that after more than 20 years with the Matthew Marks gallery, he was leaving for Larry Gagosian. Credit Tony Cenicola/The New York Times
Sotheby’s executives disagree, saying that galleries are not necessarily well equipped for the long-term planning required by today’s successful artists, whose holdings can include land, or foundations that give philanthropic grants.
“Dealers’ first calling is to sell the work by artists,” Ms. Cappellazzo said. “They don’t often get involved in matters of legacy or wishes of the heirs.”
Allan Schwartzman, Ms. Cappellazzo’s partner in the art advisory service that Sotheby’s acquired last year, said many artists had not “stepped back and looked at the big picture: ‘Do my papers matter to me, or do I want to keep them private? Is it meaningful to me to have a core group of works in the major museum in my hometown?’ Or, ‘I have 12 children from various marriages, and I really want to be able to set each of them up.’”
But many artists consider auction houses the enemy, because they can inflate prices and hurt an artist’s reputation if something fails to sell.
“The last thing I want messing around with my career is an auction house,” Mr. Close said. “That might be the worst thing for the artist.”
This new model also raises ethical questions: Couldn’t the auction house show preferential treatment to its artists by putting them on catalog covers, for example, to increase their value, and by steering an artist’s work into auction sales, rather than into prestigious museum collections?
“There is the inherent conflict of interest,” said Edward Dolman, the chairman and chief executive of Phillips auction house, which is not pursuing artist management. The auction house’s “emphasis is to make sales,” he added, “which may not be in the interest of the artist or the artist’s estate.”
Mr. Dolman also questioned why an artist would enter into an exclusive arrangement with any one house. “The great advantage of the market is to play Christie’s and Sotheby’s and Phillips off against each other,” he said. “Why would you bind yourself to one auction house for advice you can get for free, anyway?”
