Perry Rubenstein (1954–2022) – Artforum International
Perry Rubenstein, a gallerist recognized for his uncanny skill to foretell the artwork world’s subsequent scorching locus, in addition to for his imprisonment on grand theft expenses, died July 21 at his residence in Los Angeles on the age of sixty-eight. His former spouse, Sara Fitzmaurice, confirmed his demise, which she cited as owing to pure causes. Rubinstein was one of many first gallerists to open store in Manhattan’s Chelsea neighborhood, now well-known as an arts district, and turned his sights on Los Angeles earlier than most of his friends did. Although LA in the end grew to become an arts hub drawing blue-chip galleries, main festivals, and the megawealthy patrons attendant to each, Rubenstein didn’t succeed there along with his personal gallery, and as an alternative wound up in jail after being sued by purchasers over funds he had embezzled in an try to preserve that enterprise afloat.
Perry Rubenstein was born January 15, 1954, in Philadelphia. After incomes a BA in historical past from Pennsylvania State College, Rubenstein traveled round Europe earlier than being noticed in Milan by the then up-and-coming designer Gianni Versace. Rubenstein modeled for a number of years in Europe and Africa for purchasers together with Armani, Valentino, Versace, and French and Italian Vogue, throughout which period he developed an urge for food for gathering artwork, notably that by rising Italian artists. He proved an astute choose of high quality, and on making his return to the States within the Nineteen Eighties found that he was possessed of an especially precious assortment, which included early works by such stars as Sandro Chia, Francesco Clemente, and Enzo Cucchi.
Rubenstein opened his first gallery on SoHo’s Prince Avenue in 1989; he moved into Chelsea in 2004, displaying work by younger cutting-edge artists comparable to Robin Rhode and Amir Zaki in addition to that by famed artists together with James Lee Byars, Roy Lichtenstein, Julian Schnabel, and Andy Warhol. In 2011, he moved to Los Angeles, then thought-about considerably peripheral within the artwork world, opening a 9,500-square-foot gallery at 1215 North Highland Avenue. In Los Angeles, he instructed Musée shortly after his arrival there, “There’s area, interludes, passages, site visitors, and the chance to be alone in your backyard or your automotive. It’s a extra contemplative mind-set about issues; you select to come back to a gallery by vacation spot. When you’re on the gallery you’ll invariably spend 45 minutes as a result of to go to a different one requires the following cease with a while and distance in between. We see super high quality, far much less amount.”
Regardless of internet hosting exhibitions of labor at his new gallery by such heavy hitters as Shepard Fairey, Mike Kelley, and Helmut Newton, Rubenstein quickly discovered himself in dire straits, owing lots of these on his roster cash. In 2012, he tried to extricate himself from the scenario by including on a last-minute $20,000 fee payment to the worth of a Takashi Murakami work he was promoting on behalf of collector Michael Salke to the Eli and Edythe Broad Basis. Displeased, Salke sued and within the course of discovered that Rubenstein had extracted from the Broad Basis almost $195,000 greater than he had reported to Salke, and had silently stored the proceeds for himself. Shortly thereafter, former Disney mogul Michael Ovitz sued Rubenstein in regard to 2 works by Richard Prince, considered one of which the collector alleged Rubenstein had bought with out his permission at an appallingly low worth, and the opposite of which he had by no means bought in any respect, although Ovitz thought he had finished so and had failed to show over the proceeds.
The Salke and Ovitz fits had been initially settled, and Rubinstein filed for chapter in 2014, with money owed of $5.4 million and property of simply $1.2 milllion, largely within the type of artworks. Each collectors pressed expenses, and Rubenstein was arrested in 2016 on three counts of embezzlement and grand theft. He pled no contest to 2 of the fees in March 2017 and in Might of that 12 months was sentenced to 6 months in a soft “pay to remain” jail, considerably more time than he would have been compelled to spend in a state or county jail had he not chosen to as an alternative shell out $100 a day to be incarcerated in a personal facility.
Following his launch, Rubenstein acted as an artwork advisor to collectors and wrote a memoir of his early years, which stays unpublished.
