ROBERT & ETHEL SCULL

A half-century ago, before the phrase “Pop Art” was even coined, a taxi tycoon named Robert C. Scull started buying up dozens of works by artists like Jasper Johns, Robert Rauschenberg and Andy Warhol. When Mr. Johns had an exhibition at Castelli Gallery, and none of it was selling, Mr. Scull bought the whole show. He commissioned Warhol’s first portrait. He gave James Rosenquist his first sale after a visit to his studio. He gave John Chamberlain enough money to let him quit his hairdressing job and focus exclusively on being a sculptor.As much as anyone, Mr. Scull and his wife, Ethel — a fashion plate and socialite whom everyone called Spike— created the market for Pop, making it the occasion for lavish parties, an emblem of high society and the new face of art in the 1960s. Then, in 1973, they auctioned off a huge chunk of it — 50 paintings and sculptures — and walked away with $2.2 million, dozens of times more than they had paid. Much of the art world was scandalized. New York magazine’s art critic railed at the “banal, nouveau riche” Sculls, whose “greed,” “shamelessness,” and “sheer, unadulterated chutzpa” killed contemporary art “not with a whimper but with a bid.”

New York Times
April 9 2010