The great art connector

Knight Landesman is renowned for his generosity to artists. Photo / Supplied

It won't be hard to spot Artforum publisher Knight Landesman at the Auckland Art Fair when it opens with a big party on Wednesday night. He'll be a shining jewel in a sea of black. "Come and say hi," he says, on the phone from his offices in Manhattan. "I'll be wearing a brightly coloured suit. It'll be easy to find me."

When I point out it's winter here so he'd better bring a coat, the New Yorker is blithe. "How cold does it get? Twelve degrees? Come on! That's not cold. Do I need to bring a winter coat? I don't think so. I'll bring a scarf but that's about it."

Landesman is coming here to deliver the fair's keynote lecture on Friday evening, a gig he leapt at when Auckland dealer Gary Langsford, who was in New York, asked him if he knew anyone who'd be right for the job, filled in previous years by big-name critics like Sarah Thornton and Matthew Collings. Landesman immediately volunteered, a trip which will take him away from his frenetic Artforum life for a week. The simple fact is, Knight Landesman, so renowned for his colourful clothes and one of the most powerful players in the international art circuit, adores our country and is interested in our artists. Quietly, he has done a great deal of work over the years to help them out.

Landesman first came here 15 years ago, when he toured the country, funded by what was then known as the QEII Arts Council. He recalls that the arts community here is "small but very dedicated, very aware of the international scene. They read Artforum, it's an educated audience with good artists, good galleries".

Landesman has been with Artforum - a glamorous fat glossy where the advertisements run for 300 pages before the editorial content kicks in - for 30 years. "When I started I worked three days a week," he says. "I went to art school and moved to New York to be an artist. I needed to make some money so I did different jobs and I fell in love with the magazine."

He snorts when asked if he held youthful ambitions to climb to the powerful job of publisher, a position he shares today with Anthony Korner and Charles Guarino. "I was never ambitious, anything but," he laughs. "For a few years I was still interested in making art. I was surprised when they offered me the job to be one of the publishers, flattered but surprised."

Landesman says Artforum has weathered the recession and the draining of advertising to online editions suffered by mainstream print magazines. "We've been lucky," he says. "It's still useful as a place for galleries to advertise. The reason other magazines suffer from the internet more than we have, thus far, is because most advertisers want to reach as many people as possible and the internet provides maybe 10 times more people.

"But advertisers in Artforum - they have an art show where they have 20 pieces to sell, they don't care about reaching 50,000 people - they want to reach 5000 people who could really buy the piece.

"We deliver that better than any other magazine and we are very international" - the Summer 2011 edition includes two full-page ads for Michael Parekowhai's show at the Venice Biennale - "we even have good loyal subscribers in New Zealand."

The content of Landesman's illustrated talk at the fair, The Making of an Artist, was not finalised at the time of our conversation but he says, "I'm just going to talk about how the art world works that I know. In America and Europe it is important to get connected but I'm not going to give a lecture on that. It's pretty self-evident - the more you can get connected the better.

"So, for the talk I'll follow the careers of three or four artists, show images of their work and talk about how those artists got known."

Landesman is adamant that artists need not chase a media profile. "That's the role of the dealer, maybe. Some artists are reclusive, some have mental health issues. They need to have a community behind them in a way, certainly the gallerists. There are a lot of very shy artists who don't promote themselves who become very successful. Their dealers promote them.

"In a way, if you promote yourself too much, you almost get a bit of a stigma. You don't want to be seen as someone who's always bothering people: 'See my work, see my show.' Art is a private act of creation first of all. It is a little unseemly, don't you think, sometimes?

"People who are endlessly promoting their work - you think, oh God, they should spend more time making it."

With that, Landesman is gone, dashing back to his Artforum duties. Only then do I realise he has cleverly and politely batted off questions about himself by asking me lots of questions. It's a typical Landesman trait, say those who know him. He just doesn't care to talk about himself.

Gary Langsford
Owner of Auckland gallery Gow Langsford

"He's not that sort of guy," says Langsford of the near-complete absence of Landesman interviews.

"I bump into Knight all over the world - he's a very big art world personality and he's a helluva nice guy. Every time I'm in New York he's around the traps and he stands out, because unlike everyone else in the art world, he doesn't wear black.

"I have always found him to be extremely supportive of anybody. Maybe he likes New Zealand because we are the underdog."

The summer 2011 edition of Artforum features full-page ads for Michael Parekowhai's show in Venice.

Langsford thought Landesman would be a compelling keynote speaker at the fair because "it would be good to have someone who wasn't an artist or a critic but more of an art world personality who's got a much broader idea of what goes on in the art world - he knows the dealers, the artists, the publishers, the art fairs.

"He was instantly interested so it was all about timing because he is as busy as all hell, so we are very lucky."

Helen During
New Zealand-born curator, director of visual arts Westport Arts Centre, Connecticut, and art adviser Art Dubai

During, based in Weston, Massachusetts (Keith Richards is a neighbour), and a resident in America for 26 years, counts Landesman as a good friend.

"I was introduced to him about 15 years ago [shortly after his New Zealand trip] and I was just segueing into the art world at the time. He said: 'Well, you must come and meet so and so.' It was like another lunch, another dinner, always with gallerists, artists, curators, writers - it was a very speedy entry into the arts world.

He's like a paper boy - he does the rounds and it is in his nature to make connections."

During, who scored the Art Dubai adviser position on Landesman's recommendation when the annual event began in 2007, says when she first met him and he learned she was from New Zealand, "he just lit up". "That trip to New Zealand was very important to him."

She says one of his most attractive qualities is his modesty. "He looks like an extrovert from the outside but in fact he doesn't let that much in. He will ask you all the questions. He will ask questions which are right on the nose, very direct. A very typical strategy is he will shoot a lot of questions and you really have to work hard to get a question back to him. Very clever.

"In a way, the colour is the buffer. What he does is read people extremely well, then makes this sweeping connection. He doesn't network in a conniving way - it's a very helpful way. That is why he is so adored, there is no manipulation. You come across people who are always trying to network but he connects people in a genuine way."

During, who attended Landesman's wedding (his third marriage), knows that if he's coming to her place for dinner, she must have one vital ingredient. "He makes this wok thing with everything in sight but then he'll ask if I have lemongrass. It's like, 'I do not!' Ha ha. But now that I know Knight is coming, I will."

Tony Korner
Artforum owner-publisher

Asked to describe Landesman's career at Artforum, Korner emails a reply: "Knight is one of a team of four who head up the management of Artforum and Bookforum magazines. We number over 50 staff members, many of whom have been with us for 20-plus years.

"I met Knight shortly after I acquired the magazine in 1979, so it must have been in 1981 that he joined us part-time. The staff was a total of six people, including editorial staff and the business manager, so his arrival was at the beginning of our expansion.

"Knight came from an art background and when he started working for Artforum he already knew many of the New York galleries and young artists. With the development of the Soho artist-run small galleries in the mid-80s, he and Charles Guarino, who joined us in the advertising department about the same time, quickly befriended the smart young players opening new gallery spaces and supported them by attending openings and helping them by making their advertising in Artforum as affordable as possible.

"Towards the end of 1988, when the recession was biting hard and we had a major change of management, I asked Knight and Charles to take over the running of the advertising and production departments as executive and associate publishers. With the recovery of the art market we were able to turn the magazine around and enter into a period of expansion, largely due to their hard work and their exceptional networking ability.

"Ten years later they became full co-publishers with me as they had assumed so much responsibility and were the architects of Artforum's great success.

"One of the main qualities I see in Knight is his interest in people. He has no inhibition in asking questions of anyone he meets. He is an extrovert, well-known in the contemporary art world for his primary colored suits, which make him stand out from the crowd. He is a born salesman - confident, firm and with integrity ... but I must emphasise that Artforum is a team effort."

John McCormack
Owner of Auckland gallery Starkwhite

"I first met Knight when he did the trip around the country. I was at the Dunedin Art Gallery at the time and I hosted him for a few days at the end of his trip. We spent a lot of time talking about art but I also showed him the landscape down there. One of the first things we did was go to Aramoana and we walked that beautiful beach.

"Knight loves the New Zealand landscape as well as the people in the art world. I think he was completely besotted with New Zealand. He has become one of the most tireless and generous international contacts that we have had. He's unfailingly generous and supportive when people contact him.

"He is a curious person, curious in the best sense. You never get a halfway engagement with Knight - it is always absolutely full-on, from my experience. When we were at the Armory Show in New York, Knight invited me and [artist] John Reynolds to his place for lunch and when we got there a handful of people from the international art world were there and he made sure New Zealand made the cut.

"We had the same experience at Art Basel. We were invited to the Artforum dinner. When he says he is willing to help, it is absolutely genuine and he always follows through."

John Reynolds
Auckland artist

Reynolds first met Landesman when he was "just a nipper". "It may have been through [Wellington dealer] Peter McLeavey. I met him in New Zealand and mentioned I was coming to New York and he said: 'Well, you must come and see us.' One of the observations I'd like to make is that when you get out in the big wide world in a sector like the art world, you realise we are so in the periphery, we are such small players. But that also has its own intoxications, its own interests for the greater world, but we have to try a lot harder to connect and meet people like Knight who have a tremendous influence.

"I had a wonderful coffee with him - he did his mail and pulled out a bundle of invites and while we were chatting away, he speedily sorted out the pile of things to go in the bin and things to consider and it was invite after invite after invite."

After coffee, Landesman took Reynolds up to his Artforum offices on Seventh Avenue. "What struck me was that there was nothing on the walls," recalls Reynolds. "Then we went into Knight's office and there was one artwork on the wall. I stopped in my tracks. It was a Gordon Walters painting. I just stared at it. There I was at the epicentre of the international contemporary art world and there's a Gordon Walters hanging on the wall. Knight said, 'Guess what? I bought it from Peter McLeavey.' I was deeply moved."

Reynolds describes Landesman as "one of those friends of New Zealand, here for the long game and the deep game".

He also recalls going to a party at the apartment Landesman shares with his wife, Jennifer. "His apartment is so white. I thought, 'Here we go, a Woody Allen moment' but what takes your breath away - yeah, the floor's white, the ceiling's white, the walls are white - but the people just looked fantastic.

"I'll go to my grave thinking Knight was someone I was privileged to meet," Reynolds adds. "But it's not about me. He is a friend of the New Zealand art world. That friendship with Knight is in another stratosphere of connectedness and regard and beneficence. You get significant friends like that and you can't put a price on it."