“I actually grew up in this business,” said Mark Borghi. “My father had two galleries, one in Los Angeles and one in Beverly Hills, selling to Frank Sinatra, Sammy Davis Jr., and at the age of 10, I went to work for him. We did a celebrity art show for Xavier Cugat and I met Charo!”
Such are the routine celebrity and boldface names that fall effortlessly and graciously from the man who owns three area art galleries. Mark Borghi Fine Art is in Manhattan, Sag Harbor, and Bridgehampton, where we are discussing old and new media.
“We eventually moved back east in 1968, and he had galleries in New York and New Jersey. I went straight back into the business from high school when I was 17.”
Wife Marisa runs the Sag Harbor gallery. “I went to work for Mark 18 years ago and never left. Mark is in charge of buying, selling, and history lessons. I take care of pretty much everything else,” she said. Those “history lessons” include tales and sales of Rothkos, Basquiats, Warhols, NFTs, and the practices of other galleries.
“I opened in Soho in ’96, then on the East Side in 2001. And then out here in 2003. The store rent in Bridgehampton was basically the same price as a print ad in a magazine so I thought ‘Why not?’ I was dating a girl who lived out here.”
Did he run with the artists who spent summers on Long Island? He knew them. “Beard and Warhol were more Montauk. Julian Schnabel too. Bridgehampton had the literary crowd. Larry Rivers, Edward Albee. He had great taste in art. Albee would come in all the time. I sold my first painting the first week I was out here. Then I started selling more expensive paintings. Can I sell $10,000? Yes. Then $25,000? Yes. $50,000? $200,000? Yes. So every year I kept upping the level of quality. I only sell blue chip art.”
He’s not bragging. These are simply the facts. He’s honest. Wall Street guys with good taste are his favorite clients. Celebrities? Spoiler alert: They’re needy.
“Michael Jackson was really interested in art. Sylvester Stallone too. Hollywood people are impossible to deal with. Michael had ‘Thriller’ money. He wanted this one painting so I found it. Got it to the gallery. And he said, I can’t get my voice that high, but he said ‘Oh my god, how much is it?’ and I said $275,000 and he goes ‘I don’t think I can afford it.’ And I said ‘I just read you spent $80 million to buy the Beatles catalog.’” The Bouguereau of a woman with winged angels that he couldn’t afford is worth millions today. “I did sell Johnny Depp a Giacometti drawing once,” Borghi said.
He speaks in a laid-back manner that feels nothing like a “closer.” He’s wearing a t-shirt. A nice one, but still. His gallery workers greet people but don’t circle them like fresh chum off Sandy Point. The atmosphere is very chill.
A man and his wife come in with a lot of questions about a pencil drawing for $27,000 and Mark is extremely cordial, spending almost a half hour with them when it’s clear they are just looking. “They will be back,” he said with a smile when he rejoins me.
His wife agrees. She says they see many of the same faces every year which “makes me smile.” And she says her husband is right about the market here. “I think Hamptons galleries are way more relaxed. It’s people in vacation mode, taking a walk in town. Primarily people from New York City, so they know what they are looking at and what they like or don’t like,” she added.
Mark echoes his wife’s sentiment. And for the record, I speak to them separately but they’re on the same page. “People in the financial services generally know art and know what they are looking at,” he said, “especially if they’ve been coming in here. I’ve built numerous collections out here from scratch. I become kind of like a psychiatrist. I have a client who calls me every day, and we have a ‘session.’ So you become close.”
The most expensive thing he’s sold is a $6 million Richard Prince painting. I don’t ask who bought it because he probably wouldn’t tell me. Is modern art a better investment than the stock market? I keep reading that in the Wall Street Journal and they mostly report on stocks. He points to an abstract watercolor on the wall. “Five years ago that would have been $30,000. Three years ago it would have been $65,000. Now it’s $385,000.”
I need a time machine. Like yesterday.
The Bridgehampton gallery currently has works that start at “around $30,000 and go up to a million.” One hundred grand to two hundred is kind of the sweet spot. So this place isn’t for everybody. But Borghi says nine out of 10 people walking in could probably spot the million-dollar piece. It’s a Richard Prince contemporary next to the Keith Haring subway graffiti.
Borghi intentionally doesn’t put descriptions or prices next to the art. “It starts a conversation. Makes it a deeper experience for them.” Part of that conversation? Was the artist important when they were alive? Did they have shows? Were they recognized? And is it a complete body of work that makes sense? Women and minority artists are still largely undervalued. There’s pay disparity in the art world too. It’s all part of the conversation.
“There’s easily houses out here with 500 to 600 million dollars’ worth of art in it.” He laughs when I ask for addresses. And while he still has a gallery in the city, he and his wife live out here full time. The squatted-in artists’ lofts are long gone. Some moved to Harlem. Many to upstate New York. “They threw them all out of Brooklyn when it became gentrified. Time marches on.”
Borghi respects houses like Sotheby’s and Christie’s joining Phillips with outposts on the East End. Sort of. Says there’s room for everyone. But he shares a tale about one of them selling a documented copy of a painting 30 years ago and not exactly being upfront about it. “Their presence out here gets people interested. It’s like when we do Miami art week in December, you’re in a fair with 200 dealers. So if people like what you have they’ll buy from you. If you like my taste in art you buy it from me. I have to like everything hanging in my gallery. Art I don’t like annoys me.”
Something else that annoys him? The NFT space. “Digital art has been around forever. Andy Warhol did it on a Commodore 64. And they actually tried to create an NFT out of that. But I don’t want to see my art on my phone. Without a tactile surface, it’s all just pixels.”
Tactile surfaces. A few sculptures. A line drawing here and there. Borghi Fine Art likes what it likes. Stop in for a chat sometime.