Serge Sorokko
Encyclopedia
Serge Sorokko is an American
art dealer
, publisher and owner of the Serge Sorokko Gallery in San Francisco. He played a major role in establishing the first cultural exchanges in the field of visual arts between the United States and the Soviet Union during the period of perestroika
. Sorokko is the recipient of international honors and awards for his contributions to culture.
. He was born in Riga
, Latvia, then illegally part of the Soviet Union and now part of the EU. His mother was a lawyer and father an architect and art collector, recognized for designing, in the 1960s and 1970s, some of Riga's most prominent public buildings. Sorokko graduated magna cum laude from the Latvian State University (now University of Latvia
) in 1977 with an advanced degree in English literature. In 1978, at the age of 24, he emigrated to the United States and settled in San Francisco. He became a naturalized American citizen in 1984.
, in Beverly Hills. The Sorokko galleries, which by 1987 also included a location in New York City, exhibited works by the School of Paris
artists such as Henri Matisse
, Marc Chagall
, Pablo Picasso
, Jules Pascin and Joan Miro
, as well as the next generation of European painters, such as Pierre Alechinsky
, Jacques Doucet, Roger-Edgar Gillet, Karel Appel
, Carlo Mattioli, Mick Moon and David Hockney
, among others.
One of Sorokko's main initiatives was advancing the virtually nonexistent public profile of the underground art movement taking place in the Soviet Union, which included the work of expatriates who had since relocated to the West, as well as the multitude who remained. With the advent of glasnost
, in 1988, Sorokko orchestrated and sponsored an unprecedented return to the Soviet Union of the exiled Russian artist Mihail Chemiakin
, for a retrospective exhibition at the Moscow Tretyakov Gallery
. It was then that Sorokko met Tair Salakhov, First Secretary of the Union of Soviet Artists. Together with Salakhov, Sorokko has been directly involved with bringing art exhibitions to museum venues in Russia and, in exchange, showing established, but never before seen in the West, Russian artists in his galleries in the U.S. Among various Sorokko's endeavors was staging of the premiere exhibition of works of the Soviet artist and fashion designer, Slava Zaitsev
, whose paintings and drawings were displayed at Sorokko galleries in New York, San Francisco and Beverly Hills, as well as producing an exhibition of the expatriate Russian painter Yuri Kuper, at the Pushkin Museum
in Moscow.
In 1989, Sorokko was sought out by the Soviet Union’s Ministry of Culture
, to become its intermediary to the New York art scene, for the first ever exhibition of paintings of contemporary New York artists in Moscow, at the Kuznetsky Most Exhibition Hall. The show, which drew mixed reviews, was curated by Donald Kuspit
and entitled "Painting Beyond the Death of Painting." The participating artists included Alex Katz
, Julian Schnabel
, David Salle
, Eric Fischl
, George Condo
, William Wegman
, Lucas Samaras
, Robert Yarber
and Jeff Koons
, to name a few.
, in New York City's SoHo
district. The inaugural show in New York, which, according to David Schonauer, editor of American Photo
magazine, became "the inspiration for the special issue of American Photo," was the critically acclaimed multimedia
and photography exhibition entitled, “The Last Party: Nightworld in Photographs.” The show was timed to coincide with the would-be 20th anniversary of Studio 54
and release of Anthony Haden-Guest
’s nightlife chronicle, “The Last Party: Studio 54, Disco and the Culture of the Night.” The diverse group of American and European artists on exhibit spanned an entire century and included Tina Modotti
, Diane Arbus
, Henri Cartier-Bresson
, Elliott Erwitt
, Lisette Model
, Weegee
, Garry Winogrand
, William Klein
, Harry Benson
, Richard Avedon
, Irving Penn
, Helmut Newton
, Guy Bourdin
, David LaChapelle
, Nan Goldin
, Robert Doisneau
, Brassai
, Ron Galella
, Patrick McMullan
, Roxanne Lowit
, Christopher Makos
and Andy Warhol
, among others. According to the British Independent, the "opening gala of the Serge Sorokko Gallery in SoHo was so crowded that even Spike Lee
cooled his heels on the sidewalk rather than brave the crush. The gallery featured an exhibition of hundreds of photographs of the club scene by Diane Arbus, Weegee, Irving Penn, Helmut Newton and assorted paparazzi, serving as photographic crib sheets for the thousands of guests at the opening. There were photos of Mick Jagger
and Jerry Hall
; of Cher
and of Eddie Murphy
; of bare-breasted teenage club-girls with glitter on their faces; of deeply stoned couples in hotpants and afros, goosing each other in front of punk clubs; and of fashion-world luminaries staring at naked, writhing performance artists." Describing the "mob of guests kept out of the overpacked gallery by bouncers," columnist Bob Morris wrote in The New York Times
: "And this door scene was bad. Tina Louise
was shut outside far too long for a Gilligan's Island
icon. Richard Johnson, the editor of the New York Post
s Page Six, was stuck outside for a while, too... Robert Altman
couldn't get in either. What could be more delicious than looking out on someone that important among a crowd being squished against the gallery window like insects on a windshield?"
Other notable shows included U.S. premiere exhibitions of the Czech artists Jiří Kolář
and Jan Saudek
, and French painter Paul Rebeyrolle
, as well as shows of the American artist James Brown
, Spanish artists Pablo Picasso
and Antoni Tàpies
, British pop artist Allen Jones
, and fashion photographers Sante D'Orazio
, Marco Glaviano
and Andrea Blanch
. According to the New York Daily News, the gallery soon became "the place where celebrities hang out," and in 1998, Woody Allen
used the Sorokko gallery to shoot an art opening scene for his film Celebrity
.
The San Francisco gallery exhibited works of European and American artists such as Sol LeWitt
, James Rosenquist
, Andy Warhol
, Alex Katz
, David Salle
, Eric Fischl
, Donald Sultan
, Sean Scully
, Mimmo Paladino
, Jannis Kounellis
, Francis Bacon, Howard Hodgkin
, David Hockney
, Michael Craig-Martin
, Henry Moore
, Leonard Baskin
, Pablo Picasso
, André Marfaing, Yuri Kuper, Jan Dibbets
, Gunter Forg, Jim Marshall
, Stephen Sumner, James Galanos
, Ralph Rucci, André Rau and David Nash
. In March 2007, Sorokko staged a U.S. premiere of "New Religion", the multimedia installation of the British artist Damien Hirst
, and in September 2007 – a world premiere of rare drawings by the renowned 16th century Italian artist Jacopo Strada
. Entitled "Jacopo Strada (1510 – 1588). Mannerist Splendor: Extravagant Designs for a Royal Table," the exhibition was accompanied by a hard cover catalogue authored by Dr. Sarah Lawrence, director of the Master of Arts Program in Decorative Arts and Design at the Cooper Hewitt National Design Museum in New York.
In 2010, Serge Sorokko Gallery moved from its location on Grant Avenue to a much larger ground floor space at 55 Geary Street, on Union Square in San Francisco. The new gallery's inaugural exhibition was a world premiere of a site-specific installation of paintings, trompe l'oeil
works on paper and sculptures of the renowned Belgian artist Isabelle de Borchgrave
.
(BAM). The portfolio included pieces by well known contemporary artists such as Richard Avedon
, Adam Fuss
, Annie Leibovitz
, Jack Pierson
, William Wegman
, Ralph Gibson
, Timothy Greenfield-Sanders
, Nan Goldin
, Cindy Sherman
, Richard Prince
and Andres Serrano
. This publishing venture was followed in 2004, by the publication of the BAM Photography Portfolio II, which included images by John Baldessari
, Sally Mann
, Lillian Bassman
, William Eggleston
, Vanessa Beecroft
, Sheila Metzner, Wolfgang Tillmans
and Thomas Struth
. In 2008, Sorokko unveiled the BAM Photography Portfolio III, which showcased original works by twelve contemporary artists such as Massimo Vitali
, Candida Höfer
, Tina Barney
, Sophie Calle
, James Casebere
, Nicholas Nixon
, Catherine Opie
, Laurie Simmons
, Lorna Simpson
, James Welling
, Tanyth Berkeley
and Rineke Dijkstra
.
Also in 2008, Sorokko published "10 Iris Prints", a portfolio of photographs by the American fashion designer turned photographer James Galanos
.
• In 2005, the government of France recognized Sorokko’s contribution to culture, by bestowing upon him the honor of Chevalier des Arts et des Lettres (Knight of the Arts and Letters).
, in Beverly Hills, California. They reside in the San Francisco Bay Area
.
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
art dealer
Art dealer
An art dealer is a person or company that buys and sells works of art. Art dealers' professional associations serve to set high standards for accreditation or membership and to support art exhibitions and shows.-Role:...
, publisher and owner of the Serge Sorokko Gallery in San Francisco. He played a major role in establishing the first cultural exchanges in the field of visual arts between the United States and the Soviet Union during the period of perestroika
Perestroika
Perestroika was a political movement within the Communist Party of the Soviet Union during 1980s, widely associated with the Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev...
. Sorokko is the recipient of international honors and awards for his contributions to culture.
Early life
Serge Sorokko turned a lifelong appreciation for art into eponymous fine art galleries featuring many of the world's leading contemporary artistsContemporary art
Contemporary art can be defined variously as art produced at this present point in time or art produced since World War II. The definition of the word contemporary would support the first view, but museums of contemporary art commonly define their collections as consisting of art produced...
. He was born in Riga
Riga
Riga is the capital and largest city of Latvia. With 702,891 inhabitants Riga is the largest city of the Baltic states, one of the largest cities in Northern Europe and home to more than one third of Latvia's population. The city is an important seaport and a major industrial, commercial,...
, Latvia, then illegally part of the Soviet Union and now part of the EU. His mother was a lawyer and father an architect and art collector, recognized for designing, in the 1960s and 1970s, some of Riga's most prominent public buildings. Sorokko graduated magna cum laude from the Latvian State University (now University of Latvia
University of Latvia
University of Latvia is a university located in Riga, Latvia. Being established in 1919, University of Latvia is the biggest university in the Baltic states.-History:...
) in 1977 with an advanced degree in English literature. In 1978, at the age of 24, he emigrated to the United States and settled in San Francisco. He became a naturalized American citizen in 1984.
Career
Shortly after Sorokko's arrival in the U.S. in 1979, he began work as an art consultant for a San Francisco contemporary art gallery. In 1982, he became co-owner of the "Bowles/Sorokko Galleries" in San Francisco and, together with his business partner, Franklin Bowles, opened a new two floor gallery on Rodeo DriveRodeo Drive
Rodeo Drive of Beverly Hills, California is a shopping district known for designer label and haute couture fashion. The name generally refers to a three-block long stretch of boutiques and shops but the street stretches further north and south....
, in Beverly Hills. The Sorokko galleries, which by 1987 also included a location in New York City, exhibited works by the School of Paris
School of Paris
School of Paris refers to two distinct groups of artists — a group of medieval manuscript illuminators, and a group of non-French artists working in Paris before World War I...
artists such as Henri Matisse
Henri Matisse
Henri Matisse was a French artist, known for his use of colour and his fluid and original draughtsmanship. He was a draughtsman, printmaker, and sculptor, but is known primarily as a painter...
, Marc Chagall
Marc Chagall
Marc Chagall Art critic Robert Hughes referred to Chagall as "the quintessential Jewish artist of the twentieth century."According to art historian Michael J...
, Pablo Picasso
Pablo Picasso
Pablo Diego José Francisco de Paula Juan Nepomuceno María de los Remedios Cipriano de la Santísima Trinidad Ruiz y Picasso known as Pablo Ruiz Picasso was a Spanish expatriate painter, sculptor, printmaker, ceramicist, and stage designer, one of the greatest and most influential artists of the...
, Jules Pascin and Joan Miro
Joan Miró
Joan Miró i Ferrà was a Spanish Catalan painter, sculptor, and ceramicist born in Barcelona.Earning international acclaim, his work has been interpreted as Surrealism, a sandbox for the subconscious mind, a re-creation of the childlike, and a manifestation of Catalan pride...
, as well as the next generation of European painters, such as Pierre Alechinsky
Pierre Alechinsky
Pierre Alechinsky is a Belgian artist. He has lived and worked in France since 1951. His work is related to Tachisme, Abstract expressionism, and Lyrical Abstraction.Alechinsky was born in Brussels...
, Jacques Doucet, Roger-Edgar Gillet, Karel Appel
Karel Appel
Christiaan Karel Appel was a Dutch painter, sculptor, and poet. He started painting at the age of fourteen and studied at the Rijksakademie in Amsterdam in the 1940s...
, Carlo Mattioli, Mick Moon and David Hockney
David Hockney
David Hockney, CH, RA, is an English painter, draughtsman, printmaker, stage designer and photographer, who is based in Bridlington, Yorkshire and Kensington, London....
, among others.
One of Sorokko's main initiatives was advancing the virtually nonexistent public profile of the underground art movement taking place in the Soviet Union, which included the work of expatriates who had since relocated to the West, as well as the multitude who remained. With the advent of glasnost
Glasnost
Glasnost was the policy of maximal publicity, openness, and transparency in the activities of all government institutions in the Soviet Union, together with freedom of information, introduced by Mikhail Gorbachev in the second half of the 1980s...
, in 1988, Sorokko orchestrated and sponsored an unprecedented return to the Soviet Union of the exiled Russian artist Mihail Chemiakin
Mihail Chemiakin
Mihail Chemiakin is a Russian painter, stage designer, sculptor and publisher, and a controversial representative of the nonconformist art tradition of St. Petersburg.-Early life:Chemiakin was born to a military family...
, for a retrospective exhibition at the Moscow Tretyakov Gallery
Tretyakov Gallery
The State Tretyakov Gallery is an art gallery in Moscow, Russia, the foremost depository of Russian fine art in the world.The gallery's history starts in 1856 when the Moscow merchant Pavel Mikhailovich Tretyakov acquired works by Russian artists of his day with the aim of creating a collection,...
. It was then that Sorokko met Tair Salakhov, First Secretary of the Union of Soviet Artists. Together with Salakhov, Sorokko has been directly involved with bringing art exhibitions to museum venues in Russia and, in exchange, showing established, but never before seen in the West, Russian artists in his galleries in the U.S. Among various Sorokko's endeavors was staging of the premiere exhibition of works of the Soviet artist and fashion designer, Slava Zaitsev
Slava Zaitsev
Vyacheslav Mikhailovich Zaitsev , more commonly known as Slava Zaitsev , born 2 March 1938 in Ivanovo, Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic, is a Russian fashion designer, painter, graphic artist and theatrical costume designer.-Early life:...
, whose paintings and drawings were displayed at Sorokko galleries in New York, San Francisco and Beverly Hills, as well as producing an exhibition of the expatriate Russian painter Yuri Kuper, at the Pushkin Museum
Pushkin Museum
The Pushkin Museum of Fine Arts is the largest museum of European art in Moscow, located in Volkhonka street, just opposite the Cathedral of Christ the Saviour....
in Moscow.
In 1989, Sorokko was sought out by the Soviet Union’s Ministry of Culture
Ministry of Culture (Soviet Union)
The Ministry of Culture of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics , formed in 1936, was one of the most important government offices in the Soviet Union. It was formerly known as the State Committee on the Arts . The Ministry, at the all-Union level, was established in 1953, after existing as a...
, to become its intermediary to the New York art scene, for the first ever exhibition of paintings of contemporary New York artists in Moscow, at the Kuznetsky Most Exhibition Hall. The show, which drew mixed reviews, was curated by Donald Kuspit
Donald Kuspit
Donald Kuspit is an American art critic, poet, and Distinguished Professor of art history and philosophy at the State University of New York at Stony Brook and professor of art history at the School of Visual Arts. Kuspit is one of America's most distinguished art critics. He was formerly the A....
and entitled "Painting Beyond the Death of Painting." The participating artists included Alex Katz
Alex Katz
Alex Katz is an American figurative artist associated with the Pop art movement. In particular, he is known for his paintings, sculptures, and prints and is represented by numerous galleries internationally.-Life and work:...
, Julian Schnabel
Julian Schnabel
Julian Schnabel is an American artist and filmmaker. In the 1980s, Schnabel received international media attention for his "plate paintings"—large-scale paintings set on broken ceramic plates....
, David Salle
David Salle
David Salle is an American painter who helped define postmodern sensibility by combining figuration with a varied pictorial language of multi-imagery...
, Eric Fischl
Eric Fischl
Eric Fischl is an American painter, sculptor and printmaker.-Early life:Fischl was born in New York City and grew up on suburban Long Island; his family moved to Phoenix, Arizona in 1967...
, George Condo
George Condo
George Condo is an American contemporary visual artist.-Life and career:Condo works in the medium of painting and sculpture...
, William Wegman
William Wegman (photographer)
William Wegman is an artist best known for creating series of compositions involving dogs, primarily his own Weimaraners in various costumes and poses.-Life and career:...
, Lucas Samaras
Lucas Samaras
Lucas Samaras , is an artist, born in Kastoria, Greece. He studied at Rutgers University on a scholarship, where he met Allan Kaprow and George Segal. While at Rutgers, he joined Gamma Sigma . He participated in Kaprow's "Happenings," and posed for Segal's plaster sculptures...
, Robert Yarber
Robert Yarber
Robert Yarber is an American painter and Distinguished Professor of Art at Pennsylvania State University. He received a BFA from Cooper Union in 1971, and an MFA from Louisiana State University in 1973....
and Jeff Koons
Jeff Koons
Jeffrey "Jeff" Koons is an American artist known for his reproductions of banal objects—such as balloon animals produced in stainless steel with mirror finish surfaces....
, to name a few.
Serge Sorokko Gallery
In 1996, Sorokko sold his interest in the Bowles/Sorokko Galleries and opened the spacious, three-storey Serge Sorokko Gallery on Union Square, in San Francisco, and one year later, in 1997, a second three-storey gallery on West BroadwayWest Broadway (Manhattan)
West Broadway, not to be confused with Broadway, is a north-south street in the New York City borough of Manhattan separated into two parts by a park. The northern part begins at TriBeCa Park, near the intersection of Sixth Avenue, Walker Street and Beach Street in TriBeCa...
, in New York City's SoHo
SoHo
SoHo is a neighborhood in Lower Manhattan, New York City, notable for being the location of many artists' lofts and art galleries, and also, more recently, for the wide variety of stores and shops ranging from trendy boutiques to outlets of upscale national and international chain stores...
district. The inaugural show in New York, which, according to David Schonauer, editor of American Photo
Photo (French magazine)
Photo is a French magazine , about photography, previously published 10 times a year by Hachette Filipacchi Médias, and currently owned by Magweb. It concentrates on the artistic aspects of photography, rather than technical aspects...
magazine, became "the inspiration for the special issue of American Photo," was the critically acclaimed multimedia
Multimedia
Multimedia is media and content that uses a combination of different content forms. The term can be used as a noun or as an adjective describing a medium as having multiple content forms. The term is used in contrast to media which use only rudimentary computer display such as text-only, or...
and photography exhibition entitled, “The Last Party: Nightworld in Photographs.” The show was timed to coincide with the would-be 20th anniversary of Studio 54
Studio 54
Studio 54 was a highly popular discotheque from 1977 until 1991, located at 254 West 54th Street in Manhattan, New York, USA. It was originally the Gallo Opera House, opening in 1927, after which it changed names several times, eventually becoming a CBS radio and television studio. In 1977 it...
and release of Anthony Haden-Guest
Anthony Haden-Guest
Anthony Haden-Guest is a British-American writer, reporter, cartoonist, art critic, poet, and socialite who lives in New York and London. He is a frequent contributor to major magazines and has had several books published.-Family:...
’s nightlife chronicle, “The Last Party: Studio 54, Disco and the Culture of the Night.” The diverse group of American and European artists on exhibit spanned an entire century and included Tina Modotti
Tina Modotti
Tina Modotti was an Italian photographer, model, actress, and revolutionary political activist.- Early life :Modotti was born Assunta Adelaide Luigia Modotti Mondini in Udine, Friuli, Italy...
, Diane Arbus
Diane Arbus
Diane Arbus March 14, 1923 – July 26, 1971) was an American photographer and writer noted for black-and-white square photographs of "deviant and marginal people or of people whose normality seems ugly or surreal." A friend said that Arbus said that she was "afraid.....
, Henri Cartier-Bresson
Henri Cartier-Bresson
Henri Cartier-Bresson was a French photographer considered to be the father of modern photojournalism. He was an early adopter of 35 mm format, and the master of candid photography...
, Elliott Erwitt
Elliott Erwitt
Elliott Erwitt is an advertising and documentary photographer known for his black and white candid shots of ironic and absurd situations within everyday settings— a master of Henri Cartier-Bresson's "decisive moment"....
, Lisette Model
Lisette Model
Lisette Model was an Austrian-born American photographer.Lisette Model was born Elise Felic Amelie Stern in Vienna, Austria...
, Weegee
Weegee
Weegee was the pseudonym of Arthur Fellig , a photographer and photojournalist, known for his stark black and white street photography....
, Garry Winogrand
Garry Winogrand
Garry Winogrand was a street photographer known for his portrayal of America in the mid-20th century. John Szarkowski called him the central photographer of his generation....
, William Klein
William Klein
William Klein is a photographer and filmmaker noted to for his ironic approach to both media and his extensive use of unusual photographic techniques in the context of photojournalism and fashion photography...
, Harry Benson
Harry Benson
Harry James Benson, CBE, born in Glasgow, Scotland, is a photographer whose pictures have appeared in publications including Life, Vanity Fair, People and The New Yorker....
, Richard Avedon
Richard Avedon
Richard Avedon was an American photographer. An obituary published in The New York Times said that "his fashion and portrait photographs helped define America's image of style, beauty and culture for the last half-century."-Photography career:Avedon was born in New York City to a Jewish Russian...
, Irving Penn
Irving Penn
Irving Penn was an American photographer known for his portraiture and fashion photography.-Early career:Irving Penn studied under Alexey Brodovitch at the Philadelphia Museum School of Industrial Art from which he was graduated in 1938. Penn's drawings were published by Harper's Bazaar and he...
, Helmut Newton
Helmut Newton
Helmut Newton, born Helmut Neustädter was a German-Australian photographer. He was a "prolific, widely imitated fashion photographer whose provocative, erotically charged black-and-white photos were a mainstay of Vogue and other publications."-Early life:Newton was born in Berlin, the son of Klara...
, Guy Bourdin
Guy Bourdin
Guy Louis Bourdin , born Guy Louis Banarès, was a French fashion photographer.-Life and career:Guy Louis Banarès was born December 2, 1928, at 7 Rue Popincourt, Paris...
, David LaChapelle
David LaChapelle
David LaChapelle is a photographer and director who works in the fields of fashion, advertising, and fine art photography, and is noted for his surreal, unique, sexualized, and often humorous style.-Early life:...
, Nan Goldin
Nan Goldin
Nancy "Nan" Goldin is an American photographer.-Life and work:Goldin was born in Washington, D.C., and grew up in the Boston, Massachusetts suburb of Lexington, to middle class Jewish parents whose ideas, moderately liberal and progressive, were put to the test when on April 12, 1965 their eldest...
, Robert Doisneau
Robert Doisneau
Robert Doisneau was a French photographer. In the 1930s he used a Leica on the streets of Paris; together with Henri Cartier-Bresson he was a pioneer of photojournalism...
, Brassai
Brassaï
Brassaï was a Hungarian photographer, sculptor, and filmmaker who rose to international fame in France in the 20th century. He was one of the numerous Hungarian artists who flourished in Paris beginning between the World Wars...
, Ron Galella
Ron Galella
Ron Galella is an American photographer, known as a pioneer paparazzo. Dubbed "Paparazzo Extraordinaire" by Newsweek and "the Godfather of the U.S...
, Patrick McMullan
Patrick McMullan
Patrick McMullan is an American photographer, columnist, television personality and socialite. His photo work focuses on people, particularly A-list celebrities, Superstar fashion designers, models, actors, politicians, cultural icons and the power elite....
, Roxanne Lowit
Roxanne Lowit
Roxanne Lowit is a New York-based fashion and celebrity photographer who is said to have "become as much a celebrity as those she photographed." She is represented by Stockland Martel.- Career :...
, Christopher Makos
Christopher Makos
Christopher Makos is an American photographer and artist. He apprenticed with photographer Man Ray in Paris and collaborated with Andy Warhol, whom he showed how to use his first camera. He introduced Warhol to the work of both Jean-Michel Basquiat and Keith Haring...
and Andy Warhol
Andy Warhol
Andrew Warhola , known as Andy Warhol, was an American painter, printmaker, and filmmaker who was a leading figure in the visual art movement known as pop art...
, among others. According to the British Independent, the "opening gala of the Serge Sorokko Gallery in SoHo was so crowded that even Spike Lee
Spike Lee
Shelton Jackson "Spike" Lee is an American film director, producer, writer, and actor. His production company, 40 Acres & A Mule Filmworks, has produced over 35 films since 1983....
cooled his heels on the sidewalk rather than brave the crush. The gallery featured an exhibition of hundreds of photographs of the club scene by Diane Arbus, Weegee, Irving Penn, Helmut Newton and assorted paparazzi, serving as photographic crib sheets for the thousands of guests at the opening. There were photos of Mick Jagger
Mick Jagger
Sir Michael Philip "Mick" Jagger is an English musician, singer and songwriter, best known as the lead vocalist and a founding member of The Rolling Stones....
and Jerry Hall
Jerry Hall
Jerry Faye Hall is an American model and actress, also known for her long-term relationship with Mick Jagger, with whom she had four children.-Early life:...
; of Cher
Cher
Cher is an American recording artist, television personality, actress, director, record producer and philanthropist. Referred to as the Goddess of Pop, she has won an Academy Award, a Grammy Award, an Emmy Award, three Golden Globes and a Cannes Film Festival Award among others for her work in...
and of Eddie Murphy
Eddie Murphy
Edward Regan "Eddie" Murphy is an American stand-up comedian, actor, writer, singer, director, and musician....
; of bare-breasted teenage club-girls with glitter on their faces; of deeply stoned couples in hotpants and afros, goosing each other in front of punk clubs; and of fashion-world luminaries staring at naked, writhing performance artists." Describing the "mob of guests kept out of the overpacked gallery by bouncers," columnist Bob Morris wrote in The New York Times
The New York Times
The New York Times is an American daily newspaper founded and continuously published in New York City since 1851. The New York Times has won 106 Pulitzer Prizes, the most of any news organization...
: "And this door scene was bad. Tina Louise
Tina Louise
Tina Louise is an American actress, singer, and author. She is best known for her role as the "movie star" Ginger Grant on the television situation comedy Gilligan's Island .-Early life:...
was shut outside far too long for a Gilligan's Island
Gilligan's Island
Gilligan's Island is an American television series created and produced by Sherwood Schwartz and originally produced by United Artists Television. The situation comedy series featured Bob Denver; Alan Hale, Jr.; Jim Backus; Natalie Schafer; Tina Louise; Russell Johnson; and Dawn Wells. It aired for...
icon. Richard Johnson, the editor of the New York Post
New York Post
The New York Post is the 13th-oldest newspaper published in the United States and is generally acknowledged as the oldest to have been published continuously as a daily, although – as is the case with most other papers – its publication has been periodically interrupted by labor actions...
s Page Six, was stuck outside for a while, too... Robert Altman
Robert Altman
Robert Bernard Altman was an American film director and screenwriter known for making films that are highly naturalistic, but with a stylized perspective. In 2006, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences recognized his body of work with an Academy Honorary Award.His films MASH , McCabe and...
couldn't get in either. What could be more delicious than looking out on someone that important among a crowd being squished against the gallery window like insects on a windshield?"
Other notable shows included U.S. premiere exhibitions of the Czech artists Jiří Kolář
Jirí Kolár
Jiří Kolář was a Czech poet, writer, painter and translator. His work was divided between literary and visual art.- Life :Kolář came from a poor family of a baker and a seamstress...
and Jan Saudek
Jan Saudek
Jan Saudek is a Czech art photographer.- Life :Saudek's father was a Jew and the family was therefore persecuted by Germans. Many of his family members died in the Theresienstadt concentration camp during World War II. Jan and his brother Karel were held in a children's concentration camp located...
, and French painter Paul Rebeyrolle
Paul Rebeyrolle
Paul Rebeyrolle was a French painter.-Life and works:As a child he had tuberculosis of the bone, which caused for long periods of immobility. Later he studied in Limoges and joined the French Communist Party...
, as well as shows of the American artist James Brown
James Brown (artist)
James Brown is an American-born painter now active in Paris and Oaxaca . He was most well known in the 1980s for his rough painterly semi-figurative paintings, bearing affinities to Jean-Michel Basquiat and East Village painting of the time, but with influences from primitive art and classical...
, Spanish artists Pablo Picasso
Pablo Picasso
Pablo Diego José Francisco de Paula Juan Nepomuceno María de los Remedios Cipriano de la Santísima Trinidad Ruiz y Picasso known as Pablo Ruiz Picasso was a Spanish expatriate painter, sculptor, printmaker, ceramicist, and stage designer, one of the greatest and most influential artists of the...
and Antoni Tàpies
Antoni Tàpies
Antoni Tàpies i Puig, 1st Marquess of Tàpies is a Catalan painter. He is one of the most famous European artists of his generation. After studying law for 3 years, he devoted himself from 1943 onwards only to his painting...
, British pop artist Allen Jones
Allen Jones (sculptor)
Allen Jones RA is a British pop artist, best known for his sculptures. He lives and works in London.Jones was born in Southampton and from 1955 to 1961 studied at the Hornsey College of Art...
, and fashion photographers Sante D'Orazio
Sante D'Orazio
Sante D'Orazio is an American photographer.D'Orazio has exhibited in the Kunsthaus Munich, Kunsthauswien Vienna, the L.A. County Museum, Stellan Holm Gallery , Cameraworks Gallery Hilario Galguera Gallery and NRW Forum in Düsseldorf...
, Marco Glaviano
Marco Glaviano
Marco Glaviano is a reputable figure in the fashion industry as a premier photographer who has been sought after by famous supermodels such as Cindy Crawford, Paulina Porizkova, and Eva Herzigova. He has been the leading pioneer of digital photography and was the first to publish the first ever...
and Andrea Blanch
Andrea Blanch
Andrea Blanch , born in 1946, is a prominent portrait, commercial, and fine art photographer. Blanch was one of the first women to enter the male-dominated industry of fashion photography, shattering stereotypes by sensuously portraying her fellow females....
. According to the New York Daily News, the gallery soon became "the place where celebrities hang out," and in 1998, Woody Allen
Woody Allen
Woody Allen is an American screenwriter, director, actor, comedian, jazz musician, author, and playwright. Allen's films draw heavily on literature, sexuality, philosophy, psychology, Jewish identity, and the history of cinema...
used the Sorokko gallery to shoot an art opening scene for his film Celebrity
Celebrity (film)
Celebrity is a 1998 comedy-drama film written and directed by Woody Allen. The screenplay focuses on the divergent paths a couple takes following their divorce.-Plot:...
.
The San Francisco gallery exhibited works of European and American artists such as Sol LeWitt
Sol LeWitt
Solomon "Sol" LeWitt was an American artist linked to various movements, including Conceptual art and Minimalism....
, James Rosenquist
James Rosenquist
James Rosenquist is an American artist and one of the protagonists in the pop-art movement.-Background and education:...
, Andy Warhol
Andy Warhol
Andrew Warhola , known as Andy Warhol, was an American painter, printmaker, and filmmaker who was a leading figure in the visual art movement known as pop art...
, Alex Katz
Alex Katz
Alex Katz is an American figurative artist associated with the Pop art movement. In particular, he is known for his paintings, sculptures, and prints and is represented by numerous galleries internationally.-Life and work:...
, David Salle
David Salle
David Salle is an American painter who helped define postmodern sensibility by combining figuration with a varied pictorial language of multi-imagery...
, Eric Fischl
Eric Fischl
Eric Fischl is an American painter, sculptor and printmaker.-Early life:Fischl was born in New York City and grew up on suburban Long Island; his family moved to Phoenix, Arizona in 1967...
, Donald Sultan
Donald Sultan
Donald Sultan is an American artist, known for large-scale still life paintings executed with bold contrasts of bright color and deep black forms, tight, nearly abstract compositions, and unorthodox media....
, Sean Scully
Sean Scully
Sean Scully is an Irish-born American painter and printmaker who has twice been named a Turner Prize nominee. His work is collected in major museums worldwide.-Life and work:...
, Mimmo Paladino
Mimmo Paladino
Mimmo Paladino is an Italian sculptor, painter and printmaker.-Paintings and drawing:Mimmo Paladino was born Domenico Paladino in Paduli, Campania, southern Italy...
, Jannis Kounellis
Jannis Kounellis
Jannis Kounellis was born on March 23, 1936 in Piraeus, Greece. He studied in art college in Athens until 1956 and at the Accademia di Belle Arti in Rome....
, Francis Bacon, Howard Hodgkin
Howard Hodgkin
Sir Gordon Howard Eliot Hodgkin CH, CBE is a British painter and printmaker. His work is most often associated with abstraction.-Early life:...
, David Hockney
David Hockney
David Hockney, CH, RA, is an English painter, draughtsman, printmaker, stage designer and photographer, who is based in Bridlington, Yorkshire and Kensington, London....
, Michael Craig-Martin
Michael Craig-Martin
Michael Craig-Martin RA is a contemporary conceptual artist and painter. He is noted for his fostering of the Young British Artists, many of whom he taught, and for his conceptual artwork, An Oak Tree...
, Henry Moore
Henry Moore
Henry Spencer Moore OM CH FBA was an English sculptor and artist. He was best known for his semi-abstract monumental bronze sculptures which are located around the world as public works of art....
, Leonard Baskin
Leonard Baskin
Leonard Baskin was an American sculptor, book-illustrator, wood-engraver, printmaker, graphic artist, writer and teacher.-Life and work:...
, Pablo Picasso
Pablo Picasso
Pablo Diego José Francisco de Paula Juan Nepomuceno María de los Remedios Cipriano de la Santísima Trinidad Ruiz y Picasso known as Pablo Ruiz Picasso was a Spanish expatriate painter, sculptor, printmaker, ceramicist, and stage designer, one of the greatest and most influential artists of the...
, André Marfaing, Yuri Kuper, Jan Dibbets
Jan Dibbets
Jan Dibbets , is a Dutch conceptual artist.In 1994, he was commissioned by the Arago Association to create a memorial to the French astronomer François Arago, known as Hommage à Arago...
, Gunter Forg, Jim Marshall
Jim Marshall (photographer)
James Joseph Marshall was a photographer, often of rock stars...
, Stephen Sumner, James Galanos
James Galanos
James Galanos is an American fashion designer, widely considered to be one the world's foremost 20th century couturiers.-Early life:James Galanos was born September 20, 1924 in a Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, the only son of Greek-born parents...
, Ralph Rucci, André Rau and David Nash
David Nash (Artist)
David Nash, OBE RA is a British sculptor based in Blaenau Ffestiniog. Nash has worked worldwide with wood, trees and the natural environment.-Early life:...
. In March 2007, Sorokko staged a U.S. premiere of "New Religion", the multimedia installation of the British artist Damien Hirst
Damien Hirst
Damien Steven Hirst is an English artist, entrepreneur and art collector. He is the most prominent member of the group known as the Young British Artists , who dominated the art scene in Britain during the 1990s. He is internationally renowned, and is reportedly Britain's richest living artist,...
, and in September 2007 – a world premiere of rare drawings by the renowned 16th century Italian artist Jacopo Strada
Jacopo Strada
Jacopo Strada was an Italian polymath courtier of the 16th century, a painter, architect, goldsmith, inventor of machines, numismatist, linguist, collector and merchant of works of art...
. Entitled "Jacopo Strada (1510 – 1588). Mannerist Splendor: Extravagant Designs for a Royal Table," the exhibition was accompanied by a hard cover catalogue authored by Dr. Sarah Lawrence, director of the Master of Arts Program in Decorative Arts and Design at the Cooper Hewitt National Design Museum in New York.
In 2010, Serge Sorokko Gallery moved from its location on Grant Avenue to a much larger ground floor space at 55 Geary Street, on Union Square in San Francisco. The new gallery's inaugural exhibition was a world premiere of a site-specific installation of paintings, trompe l'oeil
Trompe l'oeil
Trompe-l'œil, which can also be spelled without the hyphen in English as trompe l'oeil, is an art technique involving extremely realistic imagery in order to create the optical illusion that the depicted objects appear in three dimensions.-History in painting:Although the phrase has its origin in...
works on paper and sculptures of the renowned Belgian artist Isabelle de Borchgrave
Isabelle de Borchgrave
Isabelle de Borchgrave is a prominent Belgian artist and sculptor, best known for her colorful paintings and intricately painted paper sculptures.-Early life:...
.
Publishing
Over the last decade Sorokko’s interest in photography has intensified. Beginning in 2000, the Serge Sorokko Gallery published its first photography portfolio, which benefited the Brooklyn Academy of MusicBrooklyn Academy of Music
Brooklyn Academy of Music is a major performing arts venue in Brooklyn, a borough of New York City, United States, known as a center for progressive and avant garde performance....
(BAM). The portfolio included pieces by well known contemporary artists such as Richard Avedon
Richard Avedon
Richard Avedon was an American photographer. An obituary published in The New York Times said that "his fashion and portrait photographs helped define America's image of style, beauty and culture for the last half-century."-Photography career:Avedon was born in New York City to a Jewish Russian...
, Adam Fuss
Adam Fuss
Adam Fuss is a British photographer.-Early life:Adam Fuss was born in England in 1961. His father manufactured woman’s coats and his mother was an Australian fashion model. Fuss’s father suffered a stroke in 1963 and required constant care until his death in 1968. Fuss lived in Australia with...
, Annie Leibovitz
Annie Leibovitz
Anna-Lou "Annie" Leibovitz is an American portrait photographer.-Early life and education:Born in Waterbury, Connecticut, Leibovitz is the third of six children. She is a third-generation American whose great-grandparents were Jewish immigrants, from Central and Eastern Europe. Her father's...
, Jack Pierson
Jack Pierson
Jack Pierson is a photographer and an artist. He studied at the Massachusetts College of Art in Boston. Pierson has made a name for himself with a body of work that includes photographs, collages, word sculptures, installations, drawings and artists books...
, William Wegman
William Wegman (photographer)
William Wegman is an artist best known for creating series of compositions involving dogs, primarily his own Weimaraners in various costumes and poses.-Life and career:...
, Ralph Gibson
Ralph Gibson
Ralph Gibson is an American art photographer best known for his photographic books. His images often incorporate fragments with erotic and mysterious undertones, building narrative meaning through contextualization and surreal juxtaposition.Ralph Gibson studied photography while in the US Navy and...
, Timothy Greenfield-Sanders
Timothy Greenfield-Sanders
Timothy Greenfield-Sanders is an American portrait photographer known for his strikingly intimate portraits of world leaders and major cultural figures. The majority of his work is shot in large format, 11x14 inch black-and-white film and 8x10 color film...
, Nan Goldin
Nan Goldin
Nancy "Nan" Goldin is an American photographer.-Life and work:Goldin was born in Washington, D.C., and grew up in the Boston, Massachusetts suburb of Lexington, to middle class Jewish parents whose ideas, moderately liberal and progressive, were put to the test when on April 12, 1965 their eldest...
, Cindy Sherman
Cindy Sherman
Cindy Sherman is an American photographer and film director, best known for her conceptual portraits. Sherman currently lives and works in New York City. In 1995, she was the recipient of a MacArthur Fellowship. She is represented by Sprüth Magers Berlin London in and Metro Pictures gallery in...
, Richard Prince
Richard Prince
Richard Prince is an American painter and photographer. Prince began appropriating photographs in 1975...
and Andres Serrano
Andres Serrano
Andres Serrano is an American photographer and artist who has become notorious through his photos of corpses and his use of feces and bodily fluids in his work, notably his controversial work "Piss Christ", a red-tinged photograph of a crucifix submerged in a glass container of what was purported...
. This publishing venture was followed in 2004, by the publication of the BAM Photography Portfolio II, which included images by John Baldessari
John Baldessari
John Anthony Baldessari is an American conceptual artist known for his work featuring found photography and appropriated images. He lives and works in Santa Monica and Venice, California...
, Sally Mann
Sally Mann
Sally Mann is an American photographer, best known for her large black-and-white photographs—at first of her young children, then later of landscapes suggesting decay and death.-Early life and education:...
, Lillian Bassman
Lillian Bassman
- Life :Her parents were Jewish intellectuals who emigrated from Russia to the United States in 1905 and settled in Brooklyn, New York. She studied at the Textile High School, with Alexey Brodovitch, in Manhattan and graduated in 1933...
, William Eggleston
William Eggleston
William Eggleston , is an American photographer. He is widely credited with increasing recognition for color photography as a legitimate artistic medium to display in art galleries—which, until the 1970s, often tended to privilege work by photographers making black-and-white prints.- Early years...
, Vanessa Beecroft
Vanessa Beecroft
Vanessa Beecroft is an Italian contemporary artist living in Los Angeles.-Artistic practice:Beecroft's work is a fusion of conceptual issues and aesthetic concerns, focusing on large-scale performance art, usually involving live female models...
, Sheila Metzner, Wolfgang Tillmans
Wolfgang Tillmans
Wolfgang Tillmans is a German Fine-art photographer and artist. His comprehensive and diverse body of work is distinguished by observation of his surroundings and an ongoing investigation of the photographic medium’s foundations. In 2000, Tillmans was the first photographer and also the first...
and Thomas Struth
Thomas Struth
Thomas Struth is a German photographer whose wide-ranging work includes depictions of detailed cityscapes, Asian jungles and family portraits. He is one of Germany's most widely exhibited and collected fine art photographers...
. In 2008, Sorokko unveiled the BAM Photography Portfolio III, which showcased original works by twelve contemporary artists such as Massimo Vitali
Massimo Vitali
Massimo Vitali is a photographer, born in Como, Italy in 1944. Vitali studied photography in London; he first worked as a photojournalist in the 1970s and then worked later as a movie camera operator...
, Candida Höfer
Candida Höfer
Candida Höfer is a Cologne, Germany-based photographer and a former student of Bernd and Hilla Becher. Like other Becher students – Andreas Gursky, Thomas Ruff, Thomas Struth – Höfer's work is known for technical perfection and a strictly Conceptual approach...
, Tina Barney
Tina Barney
Tina Barney is an American artist photographer best known for her large-scale portraits of her family and close friends, many of whom are well-to-do denizens of New York and New England....
, Sophie Calle
Sophie Calle
Sophie Calle is a French writer, photographer, installation artist, and conceptual artist. Calle's work is distinguished by its use of arbitrary sets of constraints, and evokes the French literary movement of the 1960s known as Oulipo. Her work frequently depicts human vulnerability, and examines...
, James Casebere
James Casebere
James Casebere is an American contemporary artist and photographer living in New York.-Biography:James Casebere, born in Lansing, Michigan, grew up outside of Detroit. He attended Michigan State University and graduated from the Minneapolis College of Art and Design with a BFA in 1976...
, Nicholas Nixon
Nicholas Nixon
Nicholas Nixon is a photographer, known for his work in portraiture and documentary photography, and for championing the use of the 8x10 inch view camera.-Biography:...
, Catherine Opie
Catherine Opie
Catherine Opie is an American artist specializing in issues within documentary photography. Throughout her work she has investigated aspects of community, making portraits of many groups including LGBT community; surfers; and most recently high school football players. She is also interested in...
, Laurie Simmons
Laurie Simmons
Laurie Simmons is an American artist and photographer currently working in New York.- Personal life :Laurie Simmons was born in Long Island, New York, in 1949. She received a BFA from Tyler School of Art in 1971...
, Lorna Simpson
Lorna Simpson
Lorna Simpson is an African American artist and photographer who made her name in the 1980s and 1990s with artworks such as Guarded Conditions and Square Deal. Her work often portrays black women combined with text to express contemporary society's relationship with race, ethnicity and sex...
, James Welling
James Welling
James Welling earned both a BFA and an MFA at California Institute of the Arts in Valencia , where he studied with, among others, Dan Graham. He emerged in the 1970s as an artist for whom photographic norms and the representational field itself were and remain contested and problematized...
, Tanyth Berkeley
Tanyth Berkeley
Tanyth Berkeley is an artist based in Brooklyn, NYBerkeley was born in Hollywood, CA. She is best known for her portraits. Her subjects have included transgendered women, buskers, albinistic people, and people she met on the subway in New York...
and Rineke Dijkstra
Rineke Dijkstra
Rineke Dijkstra is a female Dutch photographer.-Life and work:Dijkstra concentrates on single portraits, and usually works in series, looking at groups such as adolescents, clubbers, and soldiers. Her subjects are often shown standing, facing the camera, against a minimal background...
.
Also in 2008, Sorokko published "10 Iris Prints", a portfolio of photographs by the American fashion designer turned photographer James Galanos
James Galanos
James Galanos is an American fashion designer, widely considered to be one the world's foremost 20th century couturiers.-Early life:James Galanos was born September 20, 1924 in a Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, the only son of Greek-born parents...
.
Awards
• In 2004, the Russian Academy of Arts presented Sorokko with its Medal of Merit for his work in the arts.• In 2005, the government of France recognized Sorokko’s contribution to culture, by bestowing upon him the honor of Chevalier des Arts et des Lettres (Knight of the Arts and Letters).
Personal life
Sorokko's first marriage ended in divorce. He has one daughter. In 1992, he married the Russian model Tatiana SorokkoTatiana Sorokko
Tatiana Sorokko is a Russian-born American model, fashion journalist and haute couture collector. She walked the runways for the world's most prominent designers and fashion houses, appeared on covers of leading fashion magazines, and became the first Russian model of the post-Soviet period to gain...
, in Beverly Hills, California. They reside in the San Francisco Bay Area
San Francisco Bay Area
The San Francisco Bay Area, commonly known as the Bay Area, is a populated region that surrounds the San Francisco and San Pablo estuaries in Northern California. The region encompasses metropolitan areas of San Francisco, Oakland, and San Jose, along with smaller urban and rural areas...
.