Ningún artista, crítico, director de museo, galerista o coleccionista español figura en la relación del Wall Street Journal de las 100 personalidades más influyentes del mundo internacional del arte.

Se trata de una relación muy subjetiva. Pero sería absurdo y poco sensato rechazarla de plano, con un gesto altivo, denunciando la ignorancia de los abyectos capitalistas neoyorquinos. En esa relación hay no pocas arbitrariedades, algunas cosas absurdas (para mi sensibilidad), y no pocas verdades, que los artistas, críticos, directores de museos, galeristas y coleccionistas españoles quizá debieran reflexionar, por muy distintas razones.A título personal, de esa relación me quedo, entre otros, con Luc Tuymans, del que he hablado en dos ocasiones en este blog [Arco y la clerecía moderna, El champagne, Tuymans, Félix de la Concha, la Galerie Azahar y otras batallas].

A título de curiosidad, esta es la relación del WSJ, con algunos comentarios, muy resumidos:

Power 100
October 13, 2006

1. François Pinault

To his detractors, and he has a few, François Pinault — France’s
kingpin of luxury — is an insatiable omnivore who sends out fleets of
art advisers like deep-sea fishing trawlers, scooping and buying every
artwork in their path. To his fans, and he has plenty, he’s a tireless
devotee of contemporary art who keeps the market lively and buoyant. He
buys more than almost anyone, and he sells more, too..

2. Larry Gagosian

In a sea of dealers, Larry Gagosian remains the biggest shark.

3. Sir Nicholas Serota

This summer Sir Nicholas Serota, director of Tate Modern, unveiled plans
for a £165 million extension of the museum, to be ready in time for the
London Olympics in 2012…

4. Glenn D. Lowry

Glenn D. Lowry became director of New York’s Museum of Modern Art in
1995. His many successes since then have included the 1999 merger with
P.S.1 and the completion of the museum’s $850-million extension, which
opened in 2004…

5. Samuel Keller

Participants in this June’s ArtBasel were dismayed to learn that the
fair’s charismatic director would be calling it a day after ArtBasel
Miami in December 2007…

6. Eli Broad

Los Angeles heavy hitter Eli Broad — collector, financier,
philanthropist and developer — sits on the boards of numerous museums,
including the Museum of Modern Art, the Smithsonian Institution, and the
Los Angeles County Museum of Art…

7. Charles Saatchi

After an argument with the landlord, Charles Saatchi moved his gallery
out of County Hall in London late last year, describing his years there
as «miserable»…

8. Matthew Slotover & Amanda Sharp

… but this year Matthew Slotover and Amanda Sharp not only celebrated the
100th issue of Frieze Magazine, of which they are co-publishing
directors, but they also are seeing the launch of the fourth year of the
Frieze Art Fair…

9. Bruce Nauman

Why is Bruce Nauman the No. 1 artist on this list? Probably because he
doesn’t have to try — generate huge sales figures, have massive museum
shows, be talked about in the mass media — to be the most influential
living artist; that’s just what he is…

10. Jeff Koons

The 1980s may have been his golden years, but these days aren’t bad for
Jeff Koons either: In the last quarter of 2005 he ranked No. 2 in sales
(after Cy Twombly) in the primary market…

11. Damien Hirst

After several sell-out shows, the auction of the contents of his
restaurant Pharmacy, and various other shrewd deals, Damien Hirst, 41,
is said to be worth about £100 million…

12. Amy Cappellazzo & Brett Gorvy

Amy Cappellazzo and Brett Gorvy have been International Co-Heads of
Postwar and Contemporary Art at Christie’s, New York, since May 2002…

13. Robert Storr

Robert Storr, who began as an artist and soon became a highly respected
critic, was a curator for 12 years at the Museum of Modern Art in New
York, where he mounted seminal shows of Gerhard Richter, Chuck Close,
Bruce Nauman, Robert Ryman and others…

14. Iwan Wirth

Based in Zurich, Hauser & Wirth was founded in 1992 by Iwan Wirth,
Ursula Hauser and Manuela Wirth…

15. Marian Goodman

Marian Goodman more-or-less single-handedly introduced European
contemporary art to America…

16. David Zwirner

If he weren’t known for being a consummate professional among the ranks
of major New York gallerists, David Zwirner’s signing of Chris Ofili,
Sue Williams and Lisa Yuskavage in the past year might be viewed as the
art world’s equivalent of a robber baron’s land grab.

17. Gerhard Richter

Despite being in his mid-70s, Gerhard Richter continues to be one of the
most influential artists working today…

18. Marc Glimcher

To the massive Pace empire of New York’s 57th Street, 25th Street and
Pace Wildenstein Greene Street, and Pace Wildenstein Los Angeles, the
Bellagio Gallery of Fine Art and the Collector’s Gallery in Las Vegas,
Marc Glimcher, son of Pace founder Arnold, added another huge gallery
space in Chelsea…

19. Jay Jopling

Despite Damien Hirst’s apparent unnerving creep over from White Cube to
Gagosian, Jay Jopling’s house is more than in order: It is expanding
rapidly…

20. Mike Kelley

Famously working-class Catholic, Mike Kelley grew up in Detroit —
America‘s Manchester — during the era of Iggy Pop and the MC5, and has
since grown into perhaps the most daring and best-regarded contemporary
artist in Los Angeles…

21. Paul Schimmel

Since announcing himself in 1992 with the noir-themed «Helter Skelter:
LA Art in the 1990s,» at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Los Angeles,
Paul Schimmel has become the city’s most provocative and daring curator…

22. Andreas Gursky

Andreas Gursky broke the auction record for contemporary photography at
Sotheby’s this year when his imposing «99 Cent» (1999), a digitally
manipulated photograph of a frighteningly well-stocked supermarket, went
for $2.25 million…

23. Tobias Meyer & Cheyenne Westphal

Tobias Meyer, Sotheby’s dapper world-wide head of contemporary art, has
impressive statistics: Among the 200 world-record auction prices he has
set at the podium is $23.8 million for David Smith’s «Cubi XXVIII»
(1965), the most expensive piece of contemporary art ever. The other
half of the Sotheby’s contemporary power duo, Cheyenne Westphal, was
responsible for selling the contents of Damien Hirst’s Pharmacy
restaurant in 2004 for a total of £11 million…

24. Barbara Gladstone

The impact this year of Barbara Gladstone, who runs one of the biggest
galleries in New York, has been significant…

25. Thelma Golden

«Postblack» was a term Thelma Golden coined in 2001 to help reframe how
we looked at African-American art and culture…

26. Victoria Miro

Victoria Miro has one of the largest commercial spaces in London, a
700-square-meter former furniture factory near Old Street…

27. Dakis Joannou

Known as the Golden Greek, Cypriot industrialist Dakis Joannou is a
collecting powerhouse…

28. Richard Prince

If his recent «Check Paintings» — made on a wallpaper-like repeated
pattern of canceled checks written by celebrities like Jack Kerouac, Sid
Vicious and Kim Gordon — brought Richard Prince closer to Andy Warhol
than ever, Mr. Prince confirmed during the past 12 months that, for him,
too, business is the best art…

29. Don & Mera Rubell

Over the last 40-odd years, Don and Mera Rubell have evolved into star
collectors, and they seem to shine brighter each year.

30. Donna De Salvo, Shamim M. Momin & Chrissie Iles

Although they undoubtedly form a power juggernaut in the raw sense of
power celebrated by this list, Donna De Salvo, Shamim M. Momin and
Chrissie Iles, the three curators of the Whitney Museum of American Art,
succeed through force of intellect and keenness of taste rather than by
leverage…

31. Daniel Birnbaum

Daniel Birnbaum is the rector of the Städelschule Art Academy and
director of its gallery, Portikus, in Frankfurt…

32. Steven A. Cohen

The symbolic king of a supposedly new and dominant class of collectors,
the hedge-fund guys…

33. Michael Govan

One of Michael Govan’s first acts upon appointment as director of the
Los Angeles County Museum of Art this year was to change a key detail in
Renzo Piano’s design for the museum’s expansion…

34. Simon de Pury

Simon de Pury and Daniella Luxembourg bought the auction house Phillips
de Pury & Company from the control of Bernard Arnault’s LVMH in 2003.
Since then, they have pushed to establish themselves as the auction
house of choice for younger collectors, thanks to the charismatic Simon
de Pury…

35. Sadie Coles

One of the foundation stones of Sadie Coles’s success as a London dealer
has been the strong relationship she has built with her artists…

36. Robert Gober

Last year, Robert Gober mounted his first U.S. show in nearly seven
years at the Matthew Marks Gallery and saw the publication of «A Robert
Gober Lexicon» (Steidl, 2005), a comprehensive accompaniment to his new
round of theologically inspired sculpture…

37. Eugenio López Alonso

Collector Eugenio López Alonso splits his time between Los Angeles and
Mexico City. Inheritor of the Jumex fortune, he is a major collector of
Latin American art and a force to be reckoned with on the international
contemporary circuit…

38. Bruno Brunnet, Nicole Hackert & Philipp Haverkampf

Contemporary Fine Arts is an anchor of supreme quality in the trendy
Berlin art district of Mitte: representing luminaries such as Peter Doig
and Daniel Richter, as well as the piping hot young American painter
Dana Schutz, Gagosian favorite Cecily Brown and performance
artist/painter Jonathon Meese. The gallery, started by Bruno Brunnet and
Nicole Hackert in 1994 and then joined by co-director Philipp
Haverkampf, moved to Mitte in 1996 from what Ms. Hackert called a
«rathole» in Charlottenburg. They are now indispensable on the
international scene and did a roaring trade at Basel this year…

39. Francesca von Habsburg

Francesca von Habsburg, the philanthropist daughter of the legendary
collector Baron Hans-Heinrich Thyssen-Bornemisza and wife of the
Archduke Karl of Austria, in 1989 became chief curator of special
exhibitions of her father’s vast collection at the Villa Favorita in
Lugano…

40. Jeffrey Deitch

New Yorker Jeffrey Deitch has spent over three decades sharpening his
sense of what’s hot…

41. Nicholas Logsdail

Since he launched the Lisson Gallery 40 years ago, Nicholas Logsdail has
emained committed to his artists…

42. Thomas Hirschhorn

Thomas Hirschhorn’s show this year at Barbara Gladstone in New York
cemented his status as a midcareer artist to be reckoned with…

43. Iwona Blazwick

Iwona Blazwick will revolutionize the Whitechapel Art Gallery next year
when it implements its £10 million plan to incorporate the old library
next door… So, following its beautifully paired shows of Hans Bellmer
and Pierre Klossowski this autumn…

44. The Wrong Gallery

The Wrong Gallery started small — just a doorway in the Chelsea
neighborhood of New York, through which an entire 75 centimeters of
gallery was on display…

45. Jeff Wall

Artist Jeff Wall has been casting a curious eye across his native
Vancouver — and occasionally elsewhere — for almost 30 years,
developing a complex vision based on a blend of cinema, art history and
the contemporary spectacle…

46. Hans Ulrich Obrist

He is the most ubiquitous man in art, sleepless in the Serpentine,
roaming the world in search of a good space and an artist to interview.
Hans Ulrich Obrist, the busiest curator in Europe…

47. Ingvild Goetz

Ingvild Goetz’s collection of contemporary art may have been described
as Munich’s best-kept cultural secret, but in the art world, the lady is
a cause célèbre…

48. Pierre Huyghe

The New York-based, Paris-born artist hit the international big time
this year by showing at both the Whitney and Tate Modern over the
summer…

49. UBS

When MoMA reopened in late 2004, it was with a flourish provided by
art-world mega-sponsor UBS. In exchange for the donation of 44 works,
MoMA gave the new sixth-floor galleries over to the Swiss investment
bank’s enormous contemporary collection…

50. Deutsche Bank

Every year, Deutsche Bank chooses an «artist of the fiscal year.» This
year it is Cai Guo-Qiang: He was given an exhibition at the Deutsche
Guggenheim, which is in the Deutsche Bank building in Berlin. With
50,000 works spread across 1,000 locations, Deutsche Bank has the
largest corporate art collection in the world, and one of the largest
collections in Germany…

51. Tracey Emin

What can you say about Tracey Emin that hasn’t already been said better
and more sensationally by a tabloid newspaper?

52. Gilbert & George

Some say that Gilbert Proesch and George Passmore have slumped since
their heyday in the 1980s. They have never been short of shows, but
critics have lost enthusiasm for their vivid photographic tableaux…

53. Robert Mnuchin & Dominique Levy

The collector-turned-dealer Robert Mnuchin and the art consultant and
former head of private sales at Christie’s Dominique Levy fused their
expert knowledge to form L&M Arts…

54. Harry Blain & Graham Southern

55. Roberta Smith

Roberta Smith is senior art critic for the New York Times…

56. Herzog & de Meuron

Herzog & de Meuron is enjoying a reputation as the most innovative
architecture firm on the planet.

57. Jerry Saltz

The widely admired Village Voice critic…

58. Frank Gehry

To many in the art world it may seem that Frank Gehry has been living
off the fumes of his Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao and hanging out with
Hollywood chum Brad Pitt for the past few years, but he remains one of
the most powerful architectural forces around…

59. Javier Peres

He began collecting at the tender age of 13, with an unusually
sophisticated taste in outsider art. Always an avid collector and art
lover, it is only in the past five years that Cuban-born dealer Javier
Peres has fortified his presence on the art scene…

60. Christine Macel

The Centre Pompidou’s curator for contemporary art set the cat among the
pigeons this spring when she put on a show called «Dionysiac»… Featuring
the work of 14 artists, the exhibition infuriated French feminists by
being 100% male in spite of having a female curator.

61. Eileen Harris Norton

Eileen Harris Norton split with Peter Norton in 2000, but this personal
change hasn’t subdued their immensely important role in the U.S. art
world. Los Angeles contemporary art collector Ms. Harris Norton…

62. Rosa & Carlos de la Cruz

Rosa and Carlos de la Cruz are the heavyweight collectors on the Miami
art scene…

63. Ralph Rugoff

As newly appointed director of London’s Hayward Gallery, Ralph Rugoff is
in charge of one of London’s most prestigious art spaces…

64. Max Hetzler

Max Hetzler made his name widely known as a gallery owner following the
international success of the artists he represented known as the «Fab
Four» — Martin Kippenberger, Günther Förg, Georg Herold and the Oehlen
brothers — during the 1980s…

65. Miuccia Prada

Listed among «The 50 Women to Watch» in 2005 by The Wall Street Journal,
fashion designer Miuccia Prada’s art-world clout has been increasing
steadily…

66. Neo Rauch

The main protagonist of the New Leipzig School of painting is really in
a class of his own…

67. Gerd Harry Lybke

As the established dealer for what has become known as the New Leipzig
School…

68. Carsten Höller

This year has been a big one for Carsten Höller. As big as the Tate
Modern’s Turbine Hall in fact — he has just filled it with five giant
slides (a work titled «Test Site») as the latest installment in the
museum’s Unilever Series…

69. Maureen Paley

Maureen Paley has moved slowly but steadily over the past three decades
into the powerful position she holds as a gallerist in London…

70. Zach Feuer

In New York’s Chelsea, the name Zach Feuer already sounds venerable…

71. Ai Weiwei

Compared with Cai Guo-Qiang’s ephemeral fireworks, Ai Weiwei is the
long, slow-burning fuse sparkling behind China’s artistic renaissance.
The son of a poet deemed a bourgeois intellectual by the Cultural
Revolution, he emerged from enforced isolation in the late 1970s to go
to the U.S., only returning to China in 1993. Since then, he has been
mixing life as an artist with his role as a chief animator of the
Beijing scene, co-founding the China Art Archives & Warehouse and
leading the development of studio and exhibition spaces…

72. Antoine de Galbert

Since opening in June 2004, Antoine de Galbert’s 2,000-square-meter
space on the Boulevard de la Bastille has become a mainstay of the
French contemporary art scene…

73. Richard Serra

Richard Serra’s giant sculptures are a fixture at the Guggenheim Museum
in Bilbao…

74. Paul McCarthy

In Los Angeles, nexus of artworld creativity right now, Paul McCarthy’s
over-the-top take on the dirtier side of human nature…

75. Okwui Enwezor

New York-based curator and poet Okwui Enwezor has gone West, literally
and figuratively…

76. William Acquavella

William Acquavella brokered what might have been the deal of 2005:
purchasing Vincent van Gogh’s «Peasant Woman Against a Background of
Wheat» (1890) and Paul Gauguin’s «Bathers» (1902) for around $110
million on behalf of hedge-fund billionaire Steven A. Cohen…

77. Matthew Marks

Last year Matthew Marks nabbed Jasper Johns and put on the first show of
his new paintings since 1996…

78. Michael Ringier

Swiss media magnate Michael Ringier…

79. James Lingwood & Michael Morris

Artangel, set up as a charitable venture by art historian Roger Took in
1985, rapidly gained profile when it was taken over by James Lingwood
and Michael Morris, who had previously worked together at the ICA in
London…

80. Thomas Krens & Lisa Dennison

It’s been a pretty standard year for Thomas Krens, director,
brand-builder and relentless expander of the Solomon R. Guggenheim
Foundation…

81. Matthew Higgs

Matthew Higgs is an artist, writer and curator who currently occupies
the post of director and chief curator at White Columns, New York…

82. Lorenz Helbling

Lorenz Helbling left Zurich for Shanghai in 1992 and opened the
ShanghART Gallery in 1996, at a time when the Chinese art scene was far
from established — there was no tradition of collecting contemporary
art…

83. David Adjaye

David Adjaye might not rank quite so highly among his peers were this
simply a list of the world’s most powerful architects, but when it comes
to the art world, the 40-year-old (that’s young for an architect) is one
of architecture’s most popular stars…

84. Anita and Poju Zabludowicz

Anita and Poju Zabludowicz have one of the leading private collections
in London, ranging from traditional oil paintings to video art and
photography…

85. Hou Hanru

Über-curator Hou Hanru has been recently appointed curator of the 10th
International Istanbul Biennial as well as the director of exhibitions
and public programs at the San Francisco Art Institute…

86. Gavin Brown

The 1990s were bullish Brit Gavin Brown’s heyday: Elizabeth Peyton and
Rirkrit Tiravanija were breaking, and Mr. Brown had the trendiest bar in
the world, Passerby, virtually inside his gallery…

87. Lynne Cooke

It’s been a tough year for the Dia Art Foundation, where Lynne Cooke has
been a curator since 1991…

88. Anselm Kiefer

Anselm Kiefer is no mere relic of 1980s Neo-Expressionism…

89. Jean-Marc Bustamante

Jean-Marc Bustamante has no doubt where the power lies in French art,
and that is with Marcel Duchamp…

90. Matthew Barney

Curator Ralph Rugoff recently said Matthew Barney was one of only two
contemporary artists who could pull off a blockbuster museum show (the
other was Damien Hirst)…

91. Rem Koolhaas

A former screenwriter and journalist, Rem Koolhaas was once better known
for his polemical writing on architecture (and, for the most part,
culture in general)…

92. Ann Philbin

The energetic and outgoing Ann Philbin, director of the Hammer Museum,
arrived in 1999 from New York’s The Drawing Center to revive the
underachiever of Los Angeles’s museum world…

93. Abigail & Leslie Wexner

Recently recognized as the wealthiest man in the state of Ohio, Leslie
Wexner is founder of the retail group Limited Brands, which employs over
18,000 people and reported a turnover of $9.6 billion in 2006…

94. Anish Kapoor

Bombay-born, London-based sculptor Anish Kapoor is in the happy position
of having a number of top accolades: Turner Prize winner (1991) and
winner of the Venice Biennale’s Premio Duemila (1990)…

95. Agnès b.

Although her name suggests chic street clothes and a profitable chain of
stores, Agnès b. (née Trouble) is also a noted mover on the
international art scene. She opened her first Paris gallery, Galerie du
Jour, in 1984; now the ex-art student has showing spaces in Hong Kong
and Manhattan’s SoHo as well…

96. Luc Tuymans

Luc Tuymans is one of the most influential contemporary painters and one
of the key figures in establishing figurative painting’s current
renaissance, marked by a major retrospective at Tate Modern in 2004 and
his inclusion in Charles Saatchi’s «The Triumph of Painting.» The
48-year-old Belgian, who briefly gave up painting for filmmaking during
the early 1980s, has introduced many techniques from the latter medium
(cropping, close-ups, etc.) into the former. Such is Mr. Tuyman’s
influence on painting today that many critics now talk of the
«post-Tuymans generation.»

97. João Oliveira Rendeiro

The Ellipse Foundation opened this month in Cascais, Portugal, having
been established in 2004 and largely financed by the collector João
Oliveira Rendeiro, chairman of Lisbon’s Banco Privado Portugues…

98. Takashi Murakami

«Little Boy,» Japanese artist and entrepreneur Takashi Murakami’s
curatorial diagnosis of a culture addicted to infantile fantasy…

99. Cai Guo-Qiang

Until recently, Cai Guo-Qiang was the best-known Chinese contemporary
artist, with his pyromaniacal tendencies and resultant artistic firework
displays (including one that failed spectacularly outside Tate Modern at
the Millennium). In 1999 he won the Golden Lion at the Venice Biennale
and went on to curate the first Chinese Pavilion at Venice in 2005…

100. Google

Google, the popular search engine, has revolutionized communication in
its mere decade of life…