Tracking the Marvelous: A Life in the New York Art World [signed] [first edition]

John Bernard Myers, who introduced many of the most important artists of our time, has written an extraordinary chronicle of four decades in the New York art world. Larry Rivers, Helen Frankenthaler, Red Grooms, Grace Hartigan, Alfred Leslie, Robert Goodnough, Jane Freilicher, Fairfield Porter, Kenneth Noland - all received their first major show in his galleries. Tracking the Marvelous is, as Myers says, "an observation of the foibles and follies of the gifted, the near-gifted, and the purveyors of dogs' dinners." But the book is much more. It is an informal, anecdotal account of the ups and downs of the avant-garde in postwar America. It is an intimate view of the art market and its workings, from the day-to-day operations of museums and galleries to the manipulations of today's blue-chip dealers. How does an artist pass through the "golden door" into the celestial reaches of international stardom? What accounted for the transformation of art-dealing from a genteel trade into a big business - a change epitomized by the disastrous role of the celebrated Mark Rothko case? With a sadness that is more amused than sentimental, John Bernard Myers looks back to a time when art was not a commodity like oil or uranium or this year's dress line but the passionate concern of a tightly knit group of artists and intellectuals, people who would never confuse studio space with a tax shelter. Tracking the Marvelous is a gossipy but generous - and occasionally appalled - look at life in the New York art world, by a man who had long been at its hot center.