Larry Gagosian changed the art business. It’s not that he invented the change; he simply figured it out. He intuited and then channeled the forces of the market and the forces of finance and accomplished what was probably inevitable. Somebody had to be Larry. Otherwise, like God, we would have had to invent him.

Larry is not the Art Market. Just like Jesus isn’t Christianity and Moses isn’t the Jews and Obama isn’t the Democrats. But it’s easy to confuse Larry and the Market because Larry made the Market, and he knows the Market better than it knows itself. He is its prophet and its exemplary profiteer, too, but since the Market is Art, and as Art is higher-minded activity, how can that be a bad thing? Larry is not bad. He is not bad at all. Well, he’s “good-bad, but not evil” as the Shangri-Las sang about “The Leader of the Pack.” Yes, he is a bad dude, as Shaft would say. But not evil. Larry Gagosian is not the devil.

Look at him. Larry looks exactly like what he is. A successful, rich, tasteful white guy who has seen it all. He radiates power. If he weren’t an art dealer — the art dealer — you could picture his face in a Cardinal’s habit in 1450, or a Field Marshall’s uniform in 1916. He is white haired — you cannot find a photo of Larry where he was not at least salt and pepper — but he is young faced, like Steve Martin. Since he has been gray for his adult life, he has a kind of ageless, maybe even immortal quality. He smiles a lot, but it’s almost a Warhol deadpan. The New York Times called him “unreadable.” He looks a bit inscruta- ble perhaps, but you really notice it when he doesn’t smile. He sort of turns to stone, which makes him even more art-like. A statue of Larry would likely be a very good statue.

Harry Goshen, the art dealer in Tom Wolfe’s new novel, has “eerie pale gray eyes like the slanted eyes of a husky.” But as is the case with many extraordinary men, people see what they want in Larry. Some people saw Andy Warhol as the man who painted Campbell’s Soup cans, some as the man who made the films Sleep and Blow Job, others as the artist who dined regularly at the White House. It’s the same with Larry. Michael Craig-Martin, a Gagosian artist, said: “He has an alert and eager look, but it’s also blank. He’s one of those people that you project on to.”

Andy Warhol prophesied the coming of Larry in his “Business Art” chapter in The Philosophy of Andy Warhol: From (A to B and Back Again). He wrote: “Being good in business is the most fascinating kind of art. During the hippie era people put down the idea of business — they’d say, ‘Money is bad,’ and ‘Working is bad,’ but making money is art and working is art and good business is the best art.”

Warhol seemed to be the first artist, indeed the first person in the art world, to recognize that the world of corporations needed a new model artist, a corporate artist. How could the old-fashioned painter, daubing alone in his garret, compete in a world ruled by titanic corporate persons who were theoretically immortal? Artists needed to adopt the techniques of the big companies that dominated virtually every other industry.

If Andy Warhol were alive today, he might drop dead of jealousy at what is going on in Jeff ’s painting and sculpture factories, all those talented people, the cream of the art schools, working so diligently, precisely and quietly painting Jeff’s paintings. Koons’ factories make the old Warhol Factory look like cottage industry. Jeff Koons works in a suit and tie. There is no paint on his shoes.

I can picture Andy counting heads at the Damien Hirst operation in London. Now that’s a company! “I think becoming a brand name is a really important part of life,” declared Hirst. And Takashi Murakami not only has over 100 employees, but he has his own gallery, manages other artists, and has his own art fair. But I have no doubt that the person the boss would be most jealous of, the one he would single out as the best business artist alive, would be Larry Gagosian. Now there’s an artist!

Larry is a photographer, although he doesn’t exhibit. He gets invited everywhere, and apparently when he sees something he likes, a painting or maybe even some furniture, he photographs it. Like the artist Louise Lawler, Larry likes to document art in situ. Besides, you never know when your host might want to sell it, especially if the offer is a nice surprise. Collector Douglas Cramer told The New York Times, “I was in Larry’s office once, and I saw Polaroids of pieces that were in my home.” He is polite enough to wait until his host goes to the bathroom, but he has to keep his wish list or mental catalog in order. …

Gagosian Gallery artists, according to figures available on Artprice.com, accounted for 47 of the top 500 artists by auction revenue in 2011. That’s even more impressive when one considers that 174 of the top 500 were Chinese artists, little known in the West. (Number one and two were Daqian Zhang and Qi Baishi, who accounted for more than a billion in sales.)

Larry rewrote the book. Everybody makes a big deal out of the fact that Gagosian had a poster gallery by the beach in L.A. When it came to real art, he learned from the best — Leo Castelli (1907-1999), who began dealing in New York in 1957, first showing European Surrealists, then American Abstract Expressionists, but who is best known as the king of contemporary art, as the dealer behind Pop (Robert Rauschenberg, Jasper Johns, Roy Lichtenstein, James Rosenquist, Andy Warhol, and Claes Oldenburg), Minimalism (Donald Judd, Dan Flavin, Robert Morris, Richard Serra, Ellsworth Kelly, Frank Stella, Keith Sonnier), and Conceptual Art (Joseph Kosuth, Douglas Huebler, and Lawrence Weiner) as well as Cy Twombly, Bruce Nauman, and Ed Ruscha.

Larry arrived in New York in 1979, and he managed to get next to the godfather of SoHo dealers who found him a very useful youth. They partnered in Castelli’s 65 Thompson Street Gallery, which became the Gagosian Gallery. Part of Larry’s genius was dealing with the things he felt Leo neglected, like Warhol’s dollar signs and piss paintings, and Cy Twombly.

Larry Gagosian has never been one to discover artists. His closest rival, David Zwirner, said: “I think he never wanted to be known as a talent finder. He wanted to be known as the guy who could really maximize the career.” Few if any of his many artists debuted at Gagosian. According to art consultant Sandy Heller, “For an artist, going to Gagosian is like playing for the Yankees. He has the most money and the best players, and he seems to pick up talent whenever he puts his mind to it.” The Independent reported on “his unorthodox techniques, including photocopying pages from magazines to offer works which may not actually be his to sell — and luring artists from other galleries by making them offers they can’t refuse.”

Larry has it all now. He has houses in St. Barth’s, East Hampton, Holmby Hills in L.A. Picassos hang over his dining room table in New York. They are not for sale. His Upper East Side townhouse is splendid, filled with exquisite modern furnishings, but it’s nothing compared to his next home, the Harkness Mansion, a fifty-foot-wide French-Renaissance-style home built in 1896 for a shipping magnate, which he purchased for $36.4 million. The total cost will be far more as it is being entirely renovated after a $4 million interior demolition. But who’s counting? Larry may be counting, but it’s art that he’s counting. Contemporary art posted its first billion-dollar auction season in 2013. What happens in the galleries and their backrooms is anybody’s guess, but it’s big business, bigger than ever.

Larry Gagosian isn’t just a big deal. He is THE big deal, the greatest art dealer ever. He makes Joseph Duveen, dealer to Morgan, Frick, Mellon, Rockefeller, and Hearst, look like small potatoes. His transformation of the art business is almost preternatural. Maybe it came from the stars. Let’s check his chart!

“Larry Gagosian, Fire is dominant in your natal chart and endows you with intuition, energy, courage, self-confidence, and enthusiasm! You are inclined to be passionate, you assert your willpower, you move forward, and come hell or high water, you achieve your dreams and your goals.” …

wait, what is art again?

Art starts out as magic. Hey, watch this. Did you ever see anything like this before?

The artist is trying to work something out. It’s a trick, but it’s not. If it works, then it’s a real work. But it’s only magic when it’s new. When you get used to it, when it gets “used,” it becomes art. When it changes hands, it become art. Then it sits there. People look at it. They think about it or not. Sometimes it still works, but mostly it just sits there, proof that it once worked. When they can’t stand to look anymore, they put it in storage. Maybe they sell it. Maybe the magic will work for somebody else.