“My good friend, Jim Rudolph, a gallerist from Ann Arbour, Michigan, was acting as consultant to the Arnold Katzen Gallery in New York`s East 57th Street. Jim had recommended to Arnold that he should present a Superhumanism exhibition. Arnold came to the Basel Art Fair, 1981, to make his offer. I played a little “hard to get” and at my suggestion, Arnold offered us a fifty thousand pound sales guarantee, to print a colour catalogue, and six different image posters for fly-posting up-town and down-town. He also agreed to buy 500 copies of the about to be published Superhumanism 2 and to bring 15 of the artists(some with partners) for an all expenses paid opening week trip to New York. Naturally I accepted the irresistible offer, agreeing to get together ninety best works for a month long exhibition during the following May and to come for ten days myself to set up the exhibition and help with publicity and sales in the first week. Eventually I stayed for the whole month and a further month when the exhibition was extended due to its exceptional success. We promoted it as the first art movement of the people (… about the people and for the people) – the democratic Americans loved this, and we had enormous publicity, including nine features on television, which brought in big crowds and a vast cross section of people. We sold more than fifty paintings and sculptures, including a group of works to Malcolm Forbes, the collector and publisher of Forbes Magazine. He became a regular, buying at both the Chiltern Street Gallery and Denne Hill. There was a memorable moment for me when half of the artists on this all expenses payed trip to the Big Apple, took the opportunity to form a committee, inviting me to one of their smart hotel rooms, to discuss with me what was wrong with my handling of their work. The other half of them gave me sympathy and plaudits and bought me drinks . All in All, that first week was another fascinating “Works Outing”(Galerie Ausflug) with some surprising friendships developing, and lots of gossip flying around, both during the trip and after it.”
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