Hasta La Ideas

Just as you’re putting the finishing touches on your Larry Gagosian Halloween costume comes word that the uberdealer has climbed a few notches on the just-released ArtReview “Power 100,” edging out last year’s list leader, artist Ai Weiwei, to claim the #2 slot. Leading this year’s ranking of art world stars is–would you believe?–a curator! Carolyn Christov-Bakargiev made quite an impression with her shape-shifting Documenta 13, “spanning, as it did, the cities of Kabul, Banff, and Alexandria/Cairo after sprawling over Kassel [Germany] more than ever before, and encompassing screenings, performances, talks, essays, books, and disciplines that extend far beyond the field of art,” note the editors, who have published the annotated Power 100 in the November issue of ArtReview.

So how did they go about determining that artist Theaster Gates (#56) is more powerful than both Jeff Koons (#58) and Miuccia Prada (#93), and that Cindy Sherman trumps all of them at lucky #13? Entrants are ranked according to “a combination of influence over the production of art internationally, sheer financial clout (although in these times that’s no longer such a big factor) and activity in the previous 12 months,” according to ArtReview. See if you agree with their math by perusing the full list below, and then click over to the magazine’s website, which includes all ten previous Power 100s and a portfolio of portraits commissioned for each issue, among them work by photographers Juergen Teller, Ari Marcopoulos, and Roe Ethridge.

1. Carolyn Christov-Bakargiev
2. Larry Gagosian
3. Ai Weiwei
4. Iwan Wirth
5. David Zwirner
6. Gerhard Richter
7. Beatrix Ruf
8. Nicholas Serota
9. Glenn D. Lowry
10. Hans Ulrich Obrist & Julia Peyton-Jones continued…

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