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Two Poems, an Incident, and an Art Dealer:
Ted Cooper and the Currency of Knowledge

Two Poems
In 1916, American poet Erza Pound published “In a Station of the Metro,”
a poem that clearly illuminated the new direction Pound was taking in
his verse, a direction he had foretold in his Imagist manifesto and
especially in his poem, “Salutation the Second,” published in 1913. In
the latter poem, Pound expresses his contempt for the “quaint devices”
of poetry which appeal to the academic and the prude and which no longer
speak to the “practical people.” “In a Station of the Metro” provides a
powerful critique of the modern industrialized age in which man is
subordinated to the machine and the clock, both of which drain the
meaning and life out of urban living. The poem might seem entirely and
unspeakably bleak but for the startling innovation of Pound’s new
modernist verse. Stripped of exposition, the poem presents only an image
of commuters in the metro. In order to gain meaning and become
significant, the image requires the investiture of the reader, who, in
the act of reading, literally co-authors and completes the poem. This
technical achievement is the hallmark of modernism because it
felicitously shifts the paradigmatic agency of the text to involve, more
obviously, more crucially, and, ultimately, more importantly, its
reader. This shift has the effect of summoning the reader to participate
in the creation of the poem and of suggesting, quite poignantly, that
modern man might re-imagine his world, but only if he allows himself the
vision to do so.

An Incident
This last Christmas, a father overheard the conversation of two of his
daughters, both of whom did not know that he was listening to them. The
elder, long aware that one Mr. Santa Claus was a made up figure, was
giving counsel to her younger sister, whom had learned only recently
that very same fact.
“Don’t worry about it,” advised the elder to the younger. “You still get
the all stuff.”
There was a pause.
And then: “It’s not the gifts I like so much about Christmas. It’s
getting all dressed up on Christmas Eve and then going to church, where,
when they turn down the lights and the candles are passed out, we sing
“Silent Night” in the candlelight.”

And an Art Dealer
He was sitting in class. An art history class taught by his favorite
professor, Louis Palmer, Professor of Art History at Muskingum College.
There was something about the way the teacher was looking at the
painting. About the way he was trying to get his students to look at the
painting. Not just look at it. But looking at it to see something that
was there but they had never seen before. There was a kind of confusion.
A kind of uncertainly. And then a kind of focus. A new way of seeing.

The teacher was talking about the painting’s colors and its composition.
There was something about the positioning of the figures. The way they
seemed to…, what?

Ted was studying psychology. His grandfather wanted him to work for the
newspaper the same way he did. His father, who ran an electrical
distribution business, wanted his son to come home and one day take over
the business for him. Ted liked to think about people. He wanted to see
if he could understand them. And himself. He wanted to find ways of
learning how to understand. Studying psychology seemed to be a good way
of doing those things.

But he was looking at this painting now. Really looking at it. His
professor, charismatic and opinionated, was passionate about this
painting. He was looking at it. And looking at his students. He was
wanting to see the things in his students that would tell him that they
were seeing it, too. What he was trying to show them if they would only
look. See, he seemed to be insisting. Open your eyes and see! Design.
Color. Composition. Gesture. All the things he had seen and could not
stop talking about until his students had seen them, too.

Ted looked at the painting. There were lines. And movement. A kind of
collaboration with the color. He was starting to see. He was starting to
see something he had never seen before. It was there. Yes. Coming into
view. He could see the composition. See its constituent elements. There
was a kind of relationship there. A new kind of language. A new kind of
seeing. A new way of trying to understand.

Exhausted yet thrilled, Ted picked up his books when the class ended and
put them in a stack under his arm. He was going to study art. He was
going to find his advisor now and declare a second major.

Ted Cooper, born in Cleveland, Ohio, and educated at Muskingum College
and Indiana University, where he took a master’s degree in Art History,
has been looking at art ever since that day in class when he learned a
new way of seeing. And now, many years and much learning later, it’s how
he continues to see that really matters.

Ted Cooper is one of Washington, DC’s, finest gems. He spent the
earliest part of his career learning the business of running an art
gallery at Adams Davidson, Inc., where he worked for Elizabeth Powers.
He also learned a great deal about art and curatorship from Dr. Lester
Cooke, then Chief Curator at the National Gallery of Art, such that,
with little more than his wits and a small loan from his father behind
him, Ted was able to purchase Adams Davidson when Mrs. Powers determined
to sell the business.

In the years that followed, Ted gave the gallery its focus. Narrowing
the gallery’s inventory from antiques and fine art to only fine art, Ted
worked feverishly to reacquaint gallery contacts and clients alike with
the best artwork available. His first exhibition was a survey of 17th
century Dutch oils, and was quickly followed by exhibitions of French
impressionists and American landscapes from 1830-1880. The exhibitions
were a hit. Clients from across the mid-Atlantic were coming to
Washington, DC, to learn about and purchase fine art, and, increasingly,
they were coming to Adams Davidson to see Ted Cooper, who was an
emerging but already promising dealer, scholar, curator, and publisher
of fine art catalogues.

Adams Davidson continued to grow. Ted took on employees to keep up with
the work and the demands on his time. Still, he was eager to learn.
Traveling back and forth between New York City and Washington, Ted was
able to establish himself as both a very knowledgeable and good man of
business. Certainly, Ted enjoyed meeting and learning from the people he
encountered, and they enjoyed meeting and learning from him. During the
late 1970’s and for most of the 1980’s, Ted and his clients, both museum
and private, enjoyed remarkably productive and fruitful years.

But there was a downside to all of Ted’s success. It was called
administration. While Adams Davidson continued to grow, Ted was
increasingly drawn away from what he loved most—art and his clients—to
attend to the business of running a large and successful gallery.
In1989, feeling something of a sea change, Ted determined to close his
commercial space and relocate to a renovated apartment on 29th Street,
where he intended to make his living as a private dealer who saw clients
by appointment only. The idea was to get out from under the
administration of the old commercial space, get closer to the art and
the people he loved, and then to kindle and rekindle relationships with
knowledgeable dealers, curators, and collectors of art.

Today, Ted’s business is thriving, most obviously because Ted has been
able to translate his considerable knowledge of European and American
old masters, art restoration, appraisal, and art history and research
into a highly marketable, highly valuable, and highly sought after
expertise. This knowledge, this expertise adds considerable aesthetic,
historical, and economic importance to the art works, and it is
something—because it is concomitant with the artworks themselves—for
which intelligent clients are willing to pay. These clients know that to
truly appreciate a piece of art is to understand much more than the
appeal it has for them. It involves familiarity with the artist, his/her
complete body of work, the time period in which that piece was produced,
the exact context and cultural material of everything associated not
only with the piece, the artist, and his/her world, but also with those
who have owned, restored, and/or exhibited it. It means knowing art
history and its cognitive, social, psychological, religious, practical,
ideological, and other movements. Taken in its entirety, this
information is commonly referred to as provenance, and it can be
extremely difficult to obtain. Ted and his staff are currently
researching a rare 1906 Picasso which they have been seeking to document
fully for more than two and one half years.

I once asked Ted what exactly it is that art dealers do. The answer was
pure Ted Cooper. “Art dealers,” he said, “create appraisals for fair
market value, charitable donation, insurance, estate, and divorce
situations; guide clients for building their collections; keep clients
aware of developments in their collecting areas; provide collection
management services; regularly attend major art auctions; provide
conservation advice; advise clients on lighting, design, framing,
insurance, shipping, and installation; build and maintain resource
libraries; maintain inventories; work with curators on museum
de-accession programs; design advertisements; conduct and guide
research; publish catalogues; give lectures; teach classes on
connoisseurship; and occasionally learn how to lose money gracefully.”

A visit to Ted Cooper’s website (at www.adgal.com) reveals a dealer of
considerable standing and authority. He has more than 40 years
experience in the business. He deals in important works and has at his
disposal the resources to document the importance of those works. He is
academic, learned, urbane, sophisticated, warm, and inviting. His
opinions are rooted in tradition, canon, established genre, and
scholarship. For himself and his clients, he is interested in culling
the best art that has been produced and evaluated rather than in chasing
trends or fads. He has no interest in manufactured buzz. He likes people
and values his interaction with clients, new or old. More than anything,
he likes to study great art, to take a really good look at it.

Poet. Child. Art dealer. If we will let them, they can teach us how to see.



John A. Haslem, Jr. PhD
artlinePlus art critic