Stefan Simchowitz (born in
Johannesburg, South Africa
Johannesburg ( , , ; Zulu language, Zulu and xh, eGoli ), colloquially known as Jozi, Joburg, or "The City of Gold", is the largest city in South Africa, classified as a Megacity#List of megacities, megacity, and is List of urban areas by p ...
on October 8, 1970) is a
Los Angeles
Los Angeles ( ; es, Los Ángeles, link=no , ), often referred to by its initials L.A., is the List of municipalities in California, largest city in the U.S. state, state of California and the List of United States cities by population, sec ...
based
art collector
A private collection is a privately owned collection of works (usually artworks) or valuable items. In a museum or art gallery context, the term signifies that a certain work is not owned by that institution, but is on loan from an individual ...
,
art curator
A curator (from la, cura, meaning "to take care") is a manager or overseer. When working with cultural organizations, a curator is typically a "collections curator" or an "exhibitions curator", and has multifaceted tasks dependent on the parti ...
, and art advisor.
He is a vocal proponent of social media as a legitimate way of discovering, distributing, and popularizing the fine arts, primarily using
Facebook
Facebook is an online social media and social networking service owned by American company Meta Platforms. Founded in 2004 by Mark Zuckerberg with fellow Harvard College students and roommates Eduardo Saverin, Andrew McCollum, Dustin Mosk ...
and
Instagram as platforms for self-promotion, discovering new artists, and endorsing those he already manages.
Early life and education
Simchowitz is Jewish, spent his early years in
South Africa
South Africa, officially the Republic of South Africa (RSA), is the Southern Africa, southernmost country in Africa. It is bounded to the south by of coastline that stretch along the Atlantic Ocean, South Atlantic and Indian Oceans; to the ...
, but otherwise lived a mobile childhood. He graduated from
Stanford University with a bachelor's degree in
economics
Economics () is the social science that studies the production, distribution, and consumption of goods and services.
Economics focuses on the behaviour and interactions of economic agents and how economies work. Microeconomics analyzes ...
, finishing the program in three years.
Shortly after, he attended the
American Film Institute in
Los Angeles
Los Angeles ( ; es, Los Ángeles, link=no , ), often referred to by its initials L.A., is the List of municipalities in California, largest city in the U.S. state, state of California and the List of United States cities by population, sec ...
. Simchowitz would go on to produce and assistant produce fifteen films.
Career
Simchowitz believes that conversations on social media hold a degree of influence over the artworld comparable to other canonical forums for artistic discussion and legitimization, including art reviews written by critics for key publications. Supporters see his method as concerned with diversifying the number of systems which recognize and produce credible artists. A number of them, including, but not limited to
Sterling Ruby,
Oscar Murillo,
Paa Joe
Paa Joe (with family name Joseph Tetteh-Ashong) is a Ghanaian figurative palanquin and fantasy coffin artist born 1947 at Akwapim in the Eastern Region of Ghana. Paa Joe is considered one of the most important Ghanaian coffin or abebuu adekai (“p ...
,
Lucien Smith,
Petra Cortright
Petra Cortright (born 1986) is an American artist working in video, painting, and digital media.
Biography
Petra Cortright was born in 1986 in Santa Barbara, California. Cortright is the daughter of two artists; her father who died when she wa ...
, Zachary Armstrong,
Kour Pour
Kour Pour (born 1987) is a British-born American artist, who is of British and Iranian-descent. His artwork is inspired by living between different cultures and he works primarily in painting and printmaking. Pour is best known for a series of ca ...
,
Jon Rafman, and
Marc Horowitz
Marc Horowitz (born July 19, 1976, Columbus, Ohio) is an American artist who works in a large variety of media including painting, drawing, sculpture, photography, performance and video.
Biography
Marc Horowitz is a Los Angeles-based artist w ...
have all been advised by Stefan Simchowitz. In November 2015, he was ranked No. 95 in Art Review Magazine's POWER 100, a list of 2015's "most influential people in the contemporary artworld."
Stefan Simchowitz engages in a hybrid practice that includes
art dealing, art advising and
art collecting
A private collection is a privately owned collection of works (usually artworks) or valuable items. In a museum or art gallery context, the term signifies that a certain work is not owned by that institution, but is on loan from an individual ...
. He believes that "the
alchemy
Alchemy (from Arabic: ''al-kīmiyā''; from Ancient Greek: χυμεία, ''khumeía'') is an ancient branch of natural philosophy, a philosophical and protoscientific tradition that was historically practiced in China, India, the Muslim world, ...
of art is that it’s not just the artist who produces the work but the spectator and the audience that essentially refines the art in its raw state into a refined product."
As such, once he discovers a young, talented, generally unknown artist with whom to work, he sets about generating a market for them and their work, building demand, which eventually drives up prices. This part of his practice functions not unlike that of an
art gallery. In the meantime, Simchowitz provides a patron-like role for the artist, providing them with the finances needed to live, maintain a full-time studio and produce work. He believes that the artist must be committed to their creative work on a full-time basis and that financial hardship, as well as the need to make ends meet, can be detrimental to the challenge of making good art. However, in exchange for footing the bill, Simchowitz buys any new work at a discount.
Simchowitz burst into the public stage when a 2014
Bloomberg Bloomberg may refer to:
People
* Daniel J. Bloomberg (1905–1984), audio engineer
* Georgina Bloomberg (born 1983), professional equestrian
* Michael Bloomberg (born 1942), American businessman and founder of Bloomberg L.P.; politician and m ...
article about speculation in the contemporary art market reported on his purchase on-the-cheap of 34 paintings by the
Colombian artist
Oscar Murillo near the beginning of his career in the early 2000s, paying as low as US$1,500 for some canvases.
Since then, between 2012 and 2014, the value of a Murillo work surged by nearly 3,000 percent.
In the current auction climate, a typical piece by the artist can command as much as US$400,000 at auction.
However, Simchowitz rarely sells the work which he collects, and currently sits on a collection of over 1,500 contemporary works that he values personally at around US$30 million, with "five percent of the works accounting for fifty percent of the value."
In addition to dealing and collecting, Simchowitz also works as an art advisor. He serves a roster of clients whom he advises about the acquisition of contemporary art, offering advice, not only on works produced by artists under his representation, but also on art outside his immediate reach (pieces typically for sale at galleries and auction houses).
On March 6, 2021, Simchowitz opened his first art gallery under his namesake, Simchowitz.com.
Producer
After college, Simchowitz started a
film production company responsible for a number of feature films and shorts, such as
Darren Aronofsky's drama, ''
Requiem for a Dream
''Requiem for a Dream'' is a 2000 American psychological drama film directed by Darren Aronofsky and starring Ellen Burstyn, Jared Leto, Jennifer Connelly, Christopher McDonald and Marlon Wayans. It is based on the 1978 novel of the same na ...
''.
Filmography
* The Farewell (2011)
* Lula (2007)
*
The Wild
''The Wild'' is a 2006 American computer-animated adventure comedy film directed by animator Steve "Spaz" Williams and written by Ed Decter, John J. Strauss, Mark Gibson and Philip Halprin. It features the voices of Eddie Izzard, Kiefer Sutherl ...
(2006)
*
Till Human Voices Wake Us (2002)
*
Slap Her... She's French (2002)
*
Requiem for a Dream
''Requiem for a Dream'' is a 2000 American psychological drama film directed by Darren Aronofsky and starring Ellen Burstyn, Jared Leto, Jennifer Connelly, Christopher McDonald and Marlon Wayans. It is based on the 1978 novel of the same na ...
(2000)
*
The Love Letter (1999)
*
Coming Soon
Come may refer to:
*Comè, a city and commune in Benin
*Come (Tenos), an ancient town on Tenos island, Greece
Music
*Come (American band), an American indie rock band formed in 1990
*Come (UK band), a British noise project founded in 1979
**Come ...
(1999)
*
Guinevere (1999)
*
Judas Kiss (1998)
*
Starstruck (1998)
*
The Alarmist
''The Alarmist'', also known as ''Life During Wartime'', is a 1997 crime comedy film written and directed by Evan Dunsky and starring David Arquette, Stanley Tucci, Kate Capshaw, and Ryan Reynolds. The film is an adaptation of a 1990 play written ...
(1997)
*
Little City
''Little City'' is a 1997 romantic comedy film written and directed by Roberto Benabib. The film stars Jon Bon Jovi, Josh Charles, Joanna Going, Penelope Ann Miller, Annabella Sciorra, and JoBeth Williams. The film follows the intersecting lo ...
(1997)
*
The House of Yes
''The House of Yes'' is a 1997 American dark comedy film adapted from the play of the same name by Wendy MacLeod. The film was written and directed by Mark Waters (in his directing debut), produced by Robert Berger, and stars Parker Posey, Josh ...
(1997)
*
Johns (1996)
*
The Chili Con Carne Club (1995)
MediaVast
In 1999, Simchowitz co-founded the visual content provider MediaVast. Later in 2007,
Getty Images acquired the company for a reported US$207 million. At the time of the sale, the repository held approximately 8.5 million images.
Controversy
Simchowitz is a popular target for critics who claim that his particular penchant for promoting young, undiscovered artists through bulk acquisitions of their work to later
flip for profit, destabilizes established workings of the art world
— age-old, value-determining systems composed of a long-standing and tight network of critics,
publications
To publish is to make content available to the general public.[Berne Conv ...](_blank)
,
universities
A university () is an institution of higher (or tertiary) education and research which awards academic degrees in several academic disciplines. Universities typically offer both undergraduate and postgraduate programs. In the United States, ...
,
museums
A museum ( ; plural museums or, rarely, musea) is a building or institution that cares for and displays a collection of artifacts and other objects of artistic, cultural, historical, or scientific importance. Many public museums make these ...
and
galleries that collectively define the nature of 'good' art. He subverts the establishment by selling his curated acquisitions directly to a diverse network of wealthy clients who trust his taste implicitly.
In the media, he has received both ample praise and heavy criticism. He has been called the
Michael Milken
Michael Robert Milken (born July 4, 1946) is an American financier. He is known for his role in the development of the market for high-yield bonds ("junk bonds"), and his conviction and sentence following a guilty plea on felony charges for vio ...
of the art world,
and "a
Sith Lord from the Brotherhood of Darkness," by Jerry Saltz. Art Review's entry on Simchowitz states that "if the artworld needed its
Howard Stern
Howard Allan Stern (born January 12, 1954) is an American radio and television personality, comedian, and author. He is best known for his radio show, '' The Howard Stern Show'', which gained popularity when it was nationally syndicated on terr ...
, its
Ari Gold, its
Donald Trump
Donald John Trump (born June 14, 1946) is an American politician, media personality, and businessman who served as the 45th president of the United States from 2017 to 2021.
Trump graduated from the Wharton School of the University of P ...
, it got 'Simcho': a brash, publicity-hungry yet highly intelligent collector-adviser-dealer...".
Andrew M. Goldstein of Artspace argued that "his approach to collecting and nurturing artists systematically abrogates—annihilates—a whole series of beliefs that lie at the foundation of the art world's critical, institutional, and commercial structures." Simchowitz's trademark transparent and honest attitude leads some to believe that he is simply lifting the veil off of previously hidden activities already prevalent in the artworld.
Marc Spiegler, director of
Art Basel
Art Basel is a for-profit, privately owned and managed, international art fair staged annually in Basel, Switzerland; Miami Beach; Hong Kong and from 2022, Paris. Art Basel works in collaboration with the host city's local institutions to help ...
, attributes Simchowitz's success to the fact that he does exactly what the galleries do, except at a significantly faster clip, and the "he has taken a market that was built on opacity and been much more transparent. He goes to an artist's studio; he puts the stuff on
Instagram." Spiegler characterizes Simchowitz's practice as similar in function to galleries of past, in that he holds exclusive access to his collector base. As such, the approach has been characterized as paradigm-shifting in the context of the
contemporary art artworld, while snuggly fitting into an extended historical lineage of the artworld's many businessmen.
In 2013, along with Dublin gallerist Ellis King, Simchowitz sued Ghanaian artist
Ibrahim Mahama. Mahama had been paid by the dealers, but refused to authenticate derivative works they produced from Mahama's installations of Ghanaian coal sacks. In 2016, Simchowitz
settled
A settler is a person who has migrated to an area and established a permanent residence there, often to colonize the area.
A settler who migrates to an area previously uninhabited or sparsely inhabited may be described as a pioneer.
Settle ...
with Mahama.
In 2017 the Dutch art collective
Keeping It Real Art Critics published a documentary about Simchowitz under the disguise of being a German television crew.
References
External links
"The Art World’s Patron Satan"Art Review's POWER 100"STEFAN SIMCHOWITZ: IN CONVERSATION WITH MARTA GNYP""Stefan Simchowitz for the Yale University Radio""PRIVATE EYE on Stefan Simchowitz""Le requin del’art contemporain""Art Brut""How Stefan Simchowitz "Makes" an Artist""Cultural Entrepreneur Stefan Simchowitz on the Merits of Flipping, and Being a "Great Collector""The Sacred Cows of the Art World (Or, Why Everyone's So Nervous About Stefan Simchowitz)""17 Disruptors Who Have Completely Changed the Art World"YouTube video 30 minutes Stefan Simchowitz at The Museum of Fake Art*
{{DEFAULTSORT:Simchowitz, Stefan
South African film producers
South African art curators
21st-century art collectors
Jewish art collectors
Stanford University alumni
People from Johannesburg
Living people
1970 births