Tony Shafrazi

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Before becoming an influential dealer in SoHo in the ‘80s, Iranian-born Tony Shafrazi was a kind of performance artist: In 1974, he famously sprayed the words "Kill Lies All" onto Picasso’s Guernica while it was hanging in MoMA, as a protest against U.S. action at Vietnam (somehow, the work was restored). But such outbursts have been relegated to the history books, and now Shafrazi’s name is associated more with the ‘80s Pop Art of Keith Haring and the overly emotional paintings of Sandro Chia. What’s more, Shafrazi is a bit of a celebrities’ dealer, representing the incredibly derivative works of the actor Dennis Hopper and the self-important portrait paintings of socialite Anh Duong. Add to that equation the highly glossy images of commercial fashion photographers David LaChapelle and Patrick Demarchelier, and things are not looking so good. That said, the gallery’s inaugural show in Chelsea in 2004 was an impressive, no-nonsense show of paintings by Francis Bacon, Picasso and Jean-Michel Basquiat: not a bad way to start over. — Alex Mar