Jay Jopling (born 1963) is a British contemporary art dealer and gallerist.
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Personal Life
Jay Jopling is the son of Lord Jopling, Margaret Thatcher's Agriculture Minister. He was brought up in Yorkshire and educated at Eton and Edinburgh University, where he studied art history.
He was married to the artist Sam Taylor-Wood; the couple had two daughters before announcing their amicable divorce on September 19 2008[1].
Career
As a university student, he visited Manhattan, where he forged links with post-war American artists, encouraging them to donate works for the charity auction New Art: New World. In the late 1980s he formed a friendship with the artist Damien Hirst. Hirst had already sold a number of works to the influential collector Charles Saatchi but Jopling enabled the artist to realise more ambitious projects including the sculpture 'The Physical Impossibility of Death in the Mind of Someone Living' and more recently the diamond skull 'For the Love of God'.
Initially Jopling only supported a small list of artists including Hirst, Tracey Emin, Antony Gormley and Marc Quinn, organising exhibitions in warehouses. In 1993 he opened White Cube gallery in Duke Street, St. James's, London. In 2000 the gallery opened a second larger space in Hoxton and in 2006 he opened a third gallery in Mason's Yard, off Piccadilly. Along the way, Jopling has acquired representation of a formidable list of young British artists including his ex-wife Sam Taylor-Wood, the Chapman Brothers, Gilbert & George and Gary Hume as well as major international artists including Chuck Close, Andreas Gursky, Anselm Kiefer, Christian Marclay, Gabriel Orozco, Doris Salcedo and Jeff Wall.
With his trademark rectangular frame glasses and Savile Row suits, Jopling is often portrayed as a svengali figure moulding and encouraging his artists. His business acumen has made him one of the most successful British gallerists in recent history.
Notes and references
- ^ Powerful art-world marriage ends BBC article retrieved September 20, 2008
External links
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