NAME: Daniel Templon
AGE: 69
HAILS FROM: Bois-Colombes, Paris
PRESIDES OVER: Galerie Daniel Templon, 30 Rue Beaubourg, 75003 Paris, and Rue Veydt 13A, 1060 Brussels
GALLERY’S SPECIALTY: Contemporary art
ARTISTS SHOWN: Anthony Caro, Jim Dine, Atul Dodiya, Jan Fabre, Gérard Garouste, David LaChapelle, Jonathan Meese, Ivan Navarro, Pierre et Gilles, Joel Shapiro, Chiharu Shiota, Tunga, Kehinde Wiley, Yue Minjun, and others
FIRST GALLERY SHOW:“Spring in Paris,” a 1966 group show featuring seven young artists living in Paris
Tell us about your background and the first work of art that captured your attention.
I am completely self-taught. The first time I entered a museum, I was 20. I remember the shock and awe I felt when I saw, above the main staircase at the Musée National d’Art Moderne in Paris, a painting by Georges Mathieu.
What drew you into the business and to the artists you show?
When I started out, I was led by a taste for adventure and the desire to discover young artists. I was nobody at the time, inexperienced, and penniless. A friend introduced me to an antiques dealer on Rue Bonap who offered me the basement of his shop for free, to show art. Two years later I took over the main floor, too. As a gallerist, if you are honest with yourself, it is impossible to promote artists you don’t like. But my tastes are very eclectic. I started with Conceptual and Minimalist artists like Art & Language and Sol LeWitt. Today, if you ask me who the greatest artists are, I would answer, among others, Balthus, Lucian Freud, and Roy Lichtenstein.
What sets your gallery apart?
My gallery was one of the first in France to exhibit important American artists like Carl Andre, Jean-Michel Basquiat, Willem de Kooning, Keith Haring, Donald Judd, and Richard Serra.
How has the art landscape changed since you began? Where do you see it going?
The art market changed greatly after the 1990 crisis. First, it became global. Second, the business aspect took over the cultural aspect. Many galleries started exhibiting artists solely for financial profitability, not to promote real talent. I am afraid in the future it will get even worse. It’s a mad race for novelty, always more, always faster.
What has been your most memorable experience in the art trade?
My trip to the 1968 Documenta in Kassel, Germany. At that time in France, people were still convinced that Paris was the center of the art world. It was at Kassel that I realized this was wrong.
Have there been any works that were painful to part with?
I’ve sold so many works I regret; that is the fate of the art dealer. I still think about a 1966 Andy Warhol black-and-silver self-portrait that hung in my living room. I did not want to sell it, but in 1992, when the art market’s crisis was at its worst, I had to.
What is the best advice you’ve been given about buying or selling art?
I had a very close relationship with Leo Castelli from the moment we met, in 1971, until his death in 1999. His only recipe was to believe in your own taste, share it with others, and try to persuade them of it. He always recommended patience and had this great formula: “De fil en aiguille” [“One thing leads to another”].
What has been your proudest moment as an art dealer?
When I celebrated the 40th anniversary of the gallery in 2006, I published a 680-page catalogue with more than 400 exhibitions by 300 artists. While skimming through it, I realized that, in the end, I might have made fewer mistakes than the others.
What was the last exhibition outside your own gallery that made you jealous?
Two shows I saw at Gagosian: in 2013 a stunning Georg Baselitz show with large-scale paintings at the Chelsea location, and in 2006-07 a John Currin show with his “erotic” series, on Madison Avenue.
If you could own any artwork in the world, with price being no object, what would it be?
The Francis Bacon triptych Three Studies for Figures at the Base of a Crucifixion [circa 1944]. Now it hangs at the Tate Britain in London. I consider Bacon the greatest artist of the second half of the 20th century. No one could capture the human condition in such a poignant and powerful manner.
If you were not an art dealer, what would you be doing?
In another life, I would have liked to be an architect. They leave the most significant and visible mark on civilization. Mies van der Rohe, Louis Kahn, Philip Johnson, and Frank Gehry, among many others, prove that. Architecture is where all art begins.
A version of this article appears in the June 2014 issue of Art+Auction magazine.
