Larry Gagosian has spent decades entertaining artists, collectors, and assorted celebrities at Mr. Chow. Now he’s returning the favor, helping his longtime friend Michael Chow sell a selection of artworks that have decorated the restaurateur’s famous dining rooms for years.
The gallery will present “Friends and Legends: The Collection of Michael Chow,” an exhibition of 11 works from Chow’s collection, including portraits of the restaurateur by Jean-Michel Basquiat, Andy Warhol, David Hockney, Keith Haring, Julian Schnabel, and more.
The blue-chip names on offer could easily feature in an evening sale for the auction houses’ upcoming November marquee sales; according to sources familiar with the sale, one house hoped to make a deal with Mr. Chow, but Gagosian won out. The gallery did not disclosed prices for the works nor did Chow provide a reasoning for the decision to sell these works now.
The exhibition will open on November 4 at Gagosian’s Beverly Hills gallery, where it will run for four days before heading to the gallery’s new headquarters at 980 Madison Avenue in New York. The second installment opens November 14, just as the city’s fall auction season gets underway, and runs through December 22.
It’s a fitting arrangement for a collection that owes much of its existence to friendship. Chow opened his first restaurant in London’s Knightsbridge neighborhood in 1968, followed by Beverly Hills in 1974 and New York in 1979. Along the way, Mr. Chow became something of an unofficial dining room for the international art world. Artists ate there, collectors held court, and Chow, himself an artist, cultivated friendships with some of the biggest names in contemporary art. Many of those friendships produced portraits, several of which have hung in his restaurants for decades.
Gagosian, for his part, has been a regular at the high-end establishment for more than 30 years.
“It’s hard to think of a restaurant more synonymous with the art world than Mr. Chow,” Gagosian said in a statement, adding that he’d known Chow even longer than he’d been hosting parties there.
Among the works on offer is Ed Ruscha’s Mr. Chow L.A. (1973), which takes the restaurant’s name quite literally. Ruscha painted it using ingredients from the kitchen, including egg yolk, soybean paste, beets, and coconut milk. Haring also took a culinary approach. His Mr. Chow as Green Prawns in a Bowl of Noodles (1986) depicts three versions of Chow swimming among the ingredients of one of his restaurant’s signature dishes.
Warhol’s Portrait of Michael Chow (1984) shows the restaurateur across two panels coated in the artist’s trademark diamond dust. Another Warhol work, a folding screen from 1959 featuring a drawing of a dessert and a playful recipe, had for years stood near the dessert section of the Beverly Hills restaurant.
Basquiat painted Chow in 1985, producing a portrait that, according to Chow, took an unexpected turn during the sitting. “I sat for Jean-Michel,” Chow recalled in the announcement. “He made this powerful image and then ferociously painted over the picture without looking at me or the canvas.”
There are also portraits by Peter Blake, Hockney, and Schnabel, the last of whom incorporated broken plates and fine china from the restaurant into his work. An Urs Fischer candle sculpture will also be included.
One work will include the names of even more artists: An Artist Drawing Book, filled with drawings and inscriptions made by guests over the years. Its contributors include Francis Bacon, Jasper Johns, Cy Twombly, Louise Nevelson, Francesco Clemente, and Mark Grotjahn, among others.
“Art and artists have been at the heart of my life,” Chow said in a statement. “The privilege of living with these treasures and sharing them with the public has brought me great joy.”
As for his decision to part with them, Chow offered a characteristically theatrical explanation: “Now, it’s time to see them go out into the world and have my fifteen minutes.”