The Galleries

THE GALLERIES10

She Was Always Right

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JAY GORNEY Jay Gorney Modern Art opened in the East Village on 10th Street in 1985. I opened the gallery at that moment and in that space because I’d become friendly with Peter Nagy and Alan Belcher at Gallery Nature Morte, and with Meyer Vaisman and Liz Koury, plus the always-absent Kent Klaman at International with Monument, which was Sarah’s gallery. International with Monument closed around the time I moved from the East Village to SoHo. I ran into Sarah. I don’t remember if I said it or if she did, but one of us brought up the possibility of her showing with me. I remember a very brief conversation and then getting her “Sarah Edwards Charlesworth Poe” card, and we formalized it.

We did six solo exhibitions: Academy of Secrets; Renaissance; Natural Magic; Neverland; 0+1—the white ones; and Doubleworld. It’s hard to convey the complexity of the artistdealer relationship. It’s an organic, daily relationship that encompasses finance, aesthetics, and art. She would take advice—or not—but I always gave her my opinions. We had a dialogue. It wasn’t a collaboration. You couldn’t say to Sarah, “Change the green.” I would never—one would never—say to Sarah Charlesworth, “Change your piece.”

SUSAN INGLETT She took floor plans and she knew where everything was going before she walked in the door. She was never wrong, thank God, because I would never want to go head-tohead with Sarah. The first show—we hung the work and she said, “I think it should be half an inch lower.”11 We lowered it half an inch and it was better—she was right.

KATE LINKER I would say, “You’re going to be having this show. Have you reached out to some people?” She wouldn’t know how to do that. She was sufficiently old-school to believe that the merchandizing and promotion was not part of the process. She simply made serious work of the highest level. That was enough for her.

SARAH My work is difficult; it’s not easy work. I think work that engages complex conceptual questions is much harder for people to write about, for people to understand and for the market to assimilate. That’s okay with me… I mean, what’s “understanding” mean? Who cares whether work is understood?

LYNNE TILLMAN She didn’t hold back. She was definite about what she thought. It was bracing to talk with her. Just as looking at a work of hers is bracing. It doesn’t hold back. Sarah knew what she was making, she knew what she wanted viewers to look at. What we’d see, well, that was our business.

JAY GORNEY Sarah was fearsomely intelligent and concise. Some collectors found her a little too much to handle. The collectors who could handle it appreciated it. I remember wanting prices to be higher. Sarah was always very conservative and wanted lower prices.

GLENN O’BRIEN Sarah was ahead of her time, but she certainly deserved ten times more recognition than she got in her lifetime. Sarah should have been with Leo Castelli, you know. We hear a lot about the boys’ club of the art world, but a lot of it’s really true. When women artists made it, it was against the odds. Maybe Sarah would have done better if she wasn’t so proud. She felt that if the work was good enough, the work would do the work. That’s really not the way it works in the art world.

She was very passionate about whatever she was doing and was the same with the shooting. I found through my 50 years of photography that when you photograph a person of talent and they are one with self and their art they project the beauty of themselves in their personality. ANTHONY BARBOZA

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