If there is a art to dealing in art—and any experienced gallerist, collector, or museum director will tell you that there most certainly is—then one of its greatest practitioners is Larry Gagosian. Over the last three decades, Gagosian has built one of the art world's most expansive (and frequently emulated) global enterprises.

Gagosian Gallery in New York, which Gagosian first opened in 1985 in the then-art-barren neighborhood of Chelsea, now boasts 12 outposts worldwide (three in New York, two each in London and Paris, and one apiece in Beverly Hills, Rome, Athens, Geneva, and Hong Kong)—the newest, a cavernous space near Le Bourget airport just north of Paris, which opened in October with an exhibition of Anselm Kiefer paintings and sculptures. The roster of talent that Gagosian has exhibited reads like a who's who of modern and contemporary art, including the likes of Jeff Koons, Richard Prince, Ed Ruscha, Richard Serra, and Cy Twombly, younger artists such as Taryn Simon and Urs Fischer, and iconic masters such as Francis Bacon, Constantin Brancusi, Roy Lichtenstein, Pablo Picasso, Jackson Pollock, Robert Rauschenberg, and Andy Warhol, among others. Museum-quality historical shows have also always played a major role in the gallery, with rigorously curated exhibitions focusing on specific moments in art or thematically arranged groups of work, and featuring pieces on loan from a variety of institutions and private collections (which are very often not for sale). But while representing artists and the estates of artists remains the gallery's primary function, Gagosian has also been heavily involved in art's so-called "secondary" market: facilitating the private resale of works between collectors and institutions. It's a part of the art business that remains a point of near-constant speculation, if only because it occurs largely behind the scenes and thus encourages debate as to who is selling what and why. But it's an area in which Gagosian—with his extensive network of contacts, deep well of resources, and uncanny ability to source and deliver hard-to-get pieces—has long been a dominant player, brokering deals that have been reported to reach nine figures for a single work. In addition, Gagosian is himself a collector, and has invested in several other art-related projects, including Art.sy, a recently launched website dedicated to selling art online.

The interconnected nature of all of Gagosian's various art-related activities has helped fuel the gallery's growth, which has very neatly occurred in tandem with the globalization of the art market, as attendance at international art fairs booms and new segments of collectors continue to emerge from places like Asia and Latin America. But more than sheer size or clout, it's the model around which Gagosian and his gallery operate that has permanently altered the landscape of the art-dealing business.

Gagosian, 67, very rarely gives interviews. Nevertheless, he agreed to sit down recently at his office at 980 Madison Avenue with Interview's chairman, Peter M. Brant, a longtime friend, for a wide-ranging conversation about, among other topics, his entrée into the art world, the evolution of the art business, his plans for the future, and, perhaps most importantly, the work at the center of it all.

PETER M. BRANT: We've known each other and done business together for more than 30 years, but I wanted to start at the very beginning. What was it like for you growing up in L.A.? Was there ever any sign that you would wind up choosing this life?

LARRY GAGOSIAN: Honestly, I grew up in pretty modest circumstances. We were a middle-class family. I think at one point my mother might have been lent a couple of little seascapes by a friend, but we didn't really have any art at home. I don't even remember if I went to a museum before I graduated from college. I may have gone to the L.A. County Museum of Art once or twice, but that would've been it.

BRANT: Your mom was an actress, wasn't she?

GAGOSIAN: My mom was an actress. She wasn't a big actress, but she made a handful of movies. She was in one called Journey Into Fear [1943], which starred Joseph Cotten. She played a nightclub singer. The film was produced by Mercury Productions, which was Orson Welles's company. Orson Welles didn't direct it, but he was in it and involved in it, and Joseph Cotten wrote it. He worked very closely with Welles.

BRANT: And your dad was an accountant, right?

GAGOSIAN: My dad was an accountant for the city of Los Angeles. He was a civil servant.

BRANT: So when did you first start thinking about art? What were the first things that got your attention?

GAGOSIAN: Clothes. I was always very focused on how people dressed. Appearances. But as far as getting into fine art, I'll tell you a funny story: I was an English literature major at UCLA, and I had a class with a professor who, for some reason, was sort of anti-avant-garde art. When I look back on it now, I realize he probably just didn't like abstract art. But I didn't even know what abstract art was at the time. So one day in class we were having a conversation that went from talking about literature to talking about aesthetics, and he was basically saying, in so many words, that contemporary art and abstract art were not worthy of serious consideration—that they were superficial and overrated, which was a funny comment to hear in an English class at UCLA. To illustrate the point, he said, "If you look at this da Vinci or this Raphael, you can go from the eyes to the woman's navel and there is a perfect triangle. But now we have artists who paint a triangle and they call that art." For some reason it just bugged me, that comment. So I stuck my hand up, which I didn't do very often, and said, "Maybe sometimes you just want to look at a triangle." But that sticks out in my memory as something that got me thinking about aesthetics.

BRANT: How old were you then?

GAGOSIAN: I was probably 18.

BRANT: You swam at UCLA, didn't you?

GAGOSIAN: Yeah. I swam and played water polo. I swam in high school and for my first two years at UCLA, but I was just outgunned. I was a good high-school swimmer, but UCLA had a national-caliber team, so after two years I quit.

BRANT: You finished college in '67 or '68?

GAGOSIAN: Actually, in '69, because I dropped out a couple of times. Took me six years to graduate, then I had a series of what you might call odd jobs. I worked at a free-press bookstore. I worked at a record store.

BRANT: You worked at William Morris Agency.

GAGOSIAN: William Morris was my only real job. That lasted a little over a year. I just wasn't cut out to be a theatrical agent, but I worked briefly for Mike Ovitz—I was his secretary. I also worked for a terrific agent named Stan Kamen. That was really the highlight of my career there because Stan represented Warren Beatty and Steve McQueen. Stan had everybody. So that was a very dynamic place to work, but I just didn't have my heart in it. I didn't really thrive in that kind of competitive office atmosphere. I just wasn't wired that way.

BRANT: How did you get into selling posters?

GAGOSIAN: Well, that was kind of a fluke. I'd been fired from the William Morris Agency, so I was parking cars—that was my job—but I didn't really have any particular ambitions or financial aspirations. I think at that point I was living in a walk-in closet in somebody's house in Venice Beach, and I was just happy to have some good friends. But I had no money, so I got into selling posters after seeing somebody selling posters on the sidewalk. I just basically copied this guy's business. I even went to the same place he went to buy his posters, Ira Roberts of Beverly Hills, which was a company owned by the father of Michael Kohn, who has a gallery in Los Angeles. They were publishers of these low-end posters that you could buy for about a dollar, put a frame on, and try to sell for $15. But I didn't get into selling posters because I thought it would be a path to becoming an art dealer. I didn't really conceptualize at that point that being an art dealer was a profession. But then I started selling some more expensive posters.

BRANT: And your business started to evolve . . .

GAGOSIAN: If you want to call it evolving. I just sort of worked it up. I remember that Ira Roberts would print these little pamphlets to advertise the schlock posters they were selling, but on the last page they'd have posters that were more expensive, so I started trying to see if I could put a frame on one of those and maybe get $200 or $250. But that's what really got me excited about art. It was really kind of a street business for me. Then I got my own frame shop. Kim Gordon from Sonic Youth was my framer. In fact, she came to New York around the same time I did, and that's when she started her band.

BRANT: But as far as learning about art, from that point on, you were really just self-taught.

GAGOSIAN: Exactly. I never really took a proper art class in college. I just started reading art magazines and going to galleries. I was really drawn to it.

BRANT: When did you start the Broxton Gallery?

GAGOSIAN: I started that in '76, I believe. My first show at the Broxton Gallery was Ralph Gibson. The reason I got that show was I'd seen a reproduction of one of Ralph's photographs in an art magazine, so I tracked Ralph down by calling information in New York.

BRANT: I've always read about this show you had at Broxton in the mid-'70s called "Broxton Sequences: Sequential Imagery in Photography," which included work by people like John Baldessari and Bruce Nauman. You showed a lot of photography early on at Broxton.

GAGOSIAN: Whether it was a William Wegman or Chuck Close or Jan Dibbets, I just liked the way the format of photography looked-the structure and purity and coolness of it. At that point, it was just something that caught my eye. But my first show that wasn't photographic was Vija Celmins. I really loved Vija Celmins's work, and I was able to assemble her entire oeuvre of graphic work. Then I started buying Ed Ruscha's books. I got Alexis Smith. Chris Burden was an early show. I just went into the L.A. art scene at the time, and, luckily, it was a city where there were a lot of great artists.

BRANT: How did you end up coming to New York?

GAGOSIAN: That actually goes back to Ralph Gibson. I initially thought that Ralph lived in L.A., but I eventually got him on the phone and said, "I've got this poster gallery in Westwood. Would you consider giving me a show?" Of course, he'd never heard of me, but he was a nice guy, so he said, "Well, you have to come to my studio." I'd only been to New York once before to visit my aunt and uncle for three days. But I went and visited Ralph's studio on West Broadway, and he was very open to me. Turned out Ralph was represented by Leo Castelli, so I met Leo through Ralph, which was also very fortunate.

BRANT: How did you meet [art dealer and gallerist] Annina Nosei?

GAGOSIAN: I'd started buying some small works and drawings. I'd bought a Brice Marden piece. I'd bought a Sol LeWitt drawing. I was still kind of drawn to minimal art. It was more accessible at the time—by which I mean, less expensive. So at that point I was scraping around trying to do some art deals, and Annina called me up one day and said, "You've been buying work from people that I represent. We should meet."

BRANT: She was married to [gallery owner] John Weber at the time?

GAGOSIAN: I think they might have been separated or divorced at the time; I don't recall. In any case, Annina and I hit it off. I didn't know who she was, but she was a very warm, intelligent woman. I'd just gotten this loft on West Broadway, which Peter Marino designed for me . . . Well, to say that Peter Marino designed it is misleading because it involved, like, a can of paint. But Peter and I are still friends, so it was a nice start for that friendship as well. He was just starting to do his own thing back then. He looked very Ivy League.

BRANT: Who would you say was your first big client?

GAGOSIAN: There were a couple of people. Eli Broad was probably my first client in California. We're still good friends, and he's been a great support for my gallery. In New York, I'd say that Si Newhouse was probably my first big client. I bumped into him on the street with Leo Castelli. Some other art dealer might have hustled me across the street, but Leo made a very nice introduction—that's just the way Leo was. I think I called up Newhouse the next day.

BRANT: Wasn't [ad exec and television producer] Doug Cramer an early client?

GAGOSIAN: Doug Cramer was a client very early on—maybe even before Eli, now that I think about it. [TV executive] Barry Lowen was also a great client—in fact, he and Doug were always in competition. Unfortunately, Lowen died many years ago. But that taught me a little bit about the art business, about how collectors are competitive, and how, as a dealer, you could sometimes use that to your advantage.

BRANT: One of the first shows you did in New York was the David Salle show in your loft that you did with Annina. How did that happen?

GAGOSIAN: That was in 1979. I'd just gotten the loft, which I'd fixed up pretty much on the cheap, and I'd seen a photograph of a David Salle painting in a magazine. It was a 1978 painting from when he was just starting, where he'd overlay images. I thought it was really beautiful, so I called Annina and she said, "Oh, I know David Salle. We could go to his studio." Salle was living in Brooklyn at the time, so we went to his studio, and he had seven or eight of these paintings from the same series. On the spot, I said to Annina, "Let's do a show in the loft," and that was the first show I did in New York. It got reviewed in Art in America. Bruno Bischofberger bought a painting. Charles Saatchi bought one. The de Menil family bought one. A lot of people came to see the show, so it was a nice way to get a little traction in the art world in New York. I think the paintings were about $2,000 each. I kept one. I still have it.

BRANT: You were one of the first people to really recognize Jean-Michel Basquiat's work. How did you meet Jean-Michel?

GAGOSIAN: I was in my loft, and I got a phone call one afternoon from Barbara Kruger, who I'd gotten to know, and she said, "Larry, I'm in a group show at Annina Nosei's. The opening is this afternoon. I'd love to have you come over and see it." So I walked over to Annina's gallery on Prince Street. As I recall, the way Annina's gallery was set up was that there were two rooms, one larger and one smaller, that led to her office in the back. In the room that was closest to Annina's office, there were these paintings that just electrified me. I'd never heard the name Jean-Michel Basquiat before. I didn't know if it was a man or a woman, to be honest with you. But I met Jean-Michel that night because he was in Annina's office. I was startled when I saw him because he wasn't what I was expecting to see. He was this great-looking young black guy with hair that stood straight up. I think he was wearing white painter's pants that were splattered. But I liked him immediately and we became friends, so I went on to show his work in Los Angeles.

BRANT: How long after you met him did you first show his work?

GAGOSIAN: It was less than a year. He was painting in Annina's basement at that time. It was just wild to go down there and see what he was working on.

BRANT: Jean-Michel came out to live with you in L.A. for a while, didn't he?

GAGOSIAN: Yeah. We came out to L.A. when we did that first show, and I think he liked it there. He'd never been to L.A. before, and it was a change of scene, different people. So he came out and moved into my house for about a year.

BRANT: Tell me about the flight you took with Jean-Michel back to California.

GAGOSIAN: Oh, jeez. Can I tell you that? [laughs]

BRANT: Didn't he and some friends light up a spliff in first class?

GAGOSIAN: Jean-Michel was smoking a little bit of everything at that point, and he lit up a joint in the first-class lounge. I remember the stewardess didn't really know what to do with these guys—I mean, these were serious, urban-looking guys. One of them was Rammellzee, who had on a white leather trench coat and ski goggles. So we were having a good time, and the stewardess came up and said, "You can't do what you guys are doing in here." So Jean-Michel goes, "I'm sorry. I thought this was first class?" [both laugh]

BRANT: Jean-Michel was hanging out with Madonna at that point, right?

GAGOSIAN: Well, that's interesting because everything was going along fine—Jean-Michel was making paintings, I was selling them, and we were having a lot of fun. But then one day Jean-Michel said, "My girlfriend is coming to stay with me." I was a little concerned-one too many eggs can spoil an omelet, you know? So I said, "Well, what's she like?" And he said, "Her name is Madonna and she's going to be huge." I'll never forget that he said that. So Madonna came out and stayed for a few months, and we all got along like one big, happy family. There was a guy named John Seed, who was Jean's assistant, and he was, like, our cook. He was a great cook.

BRANT: You used to drive Jean-Michel around, right?

GAGOSIAN: Used to drive him around . . . But I lost my license or something at one point, and Madonna actually became our driver for a while. Madonna drove us around. [both laugh] But she was no joke. Even then you could see the discipline and focus and ambition. She'd go running every morning. She'd do yoga. She'd be on the phone with her people. You got the sense she was serious. I wouldn't say that we're really friends anymore, but whenever I see her, we have this nice history.