Prints of Power
A Socialogical Study of the Artist LeRoy Neiman and 1,000 Neiman Collectors

By: David Halle and Louise Mirrer
Reprinted from The Prints of LeRoy Neiman, Volume I

Pour etre connus, les artistes doivent passent par un petite purgatoire mythologique: il faut qu'on puisse les associer machinalement a un object, a une ecole, a une mode, a une epoque dont ils sont, diton, les precurseurs, les fondateurs, les temoins ou les symboles; en un mot, il faut qu'on puisse les classer a moindres frais, les assujuettir a un nom commun, comme une espece a son genre.
- Roland Barthes

(In order to be famous, artists must pass through a little mythological purgatory: one must be able to automatically associate them with an object, a school, a style, an epoch of which they are seen as the precursors, the founders, the witnesses or the symbols; in a word, one must be able to classify them effortlessly, subject them to a common name, like a species to its genus.)

Part I. Introduction

I can identify with the energy he captures. I am an aggressive individual personally in business and in sports, and Neiman's work illustrates much of a similar kind of energy.
- Texas Neiman collector

My favorite Neiman is the "Stock Exchange" . . ..it looks like Battle . . . It's pure capitalism. The men there look durable, competitive, confident.
- Independent Trader-Neiman collector

The Neimans I like best are the sports scenes. To me they represent power in action.
- San Francisco Neiman collector

It is tempting to see in a nation's art and culture a reflection of its basic values ("the spirit of an age") or at least the values of its dominant class. Yet showing that this is the case for the art of a particular time in a particular society can be complicated. In twentieth-century America, for example, artistic movements that are considered to be at the cutting edge of art - above all, abstract art - are often not broadly popular, even among the dominant class. In general, high culture - the ballet, opera, classical music, abstract art, and so on - turns out to be popular among only a minority of even the social elite in America. It is, then, difficult to see how high culture can be accurately analyzed as a reflection of the values of society, or of its dominant class, either. Indeed the minority among whom high culture is popular is probably concentrated in that segment of the dominate class that is involved in the construction and distribution of culture - that is, museum curators, writers, art dealers, critics, university professors, etc. This group is often quite different from those who hold political and economic power. Thus it is not fruitful to reduce, for example, abstract art - the genre which has dominated the elite art world of the twentieth century - to the values of the ruling class or of American society, despite some interesting attempts to do so.

It is in the work of such a broadly popular artist as LeRoy Neiman, whose paintings are well liked by many wealthy and the middle classes, and whose popularity also extends further down the class structure, that one may search for the expression of central social values and ideals. Neiman's signed serigraphs hang in the homes and offices of many of the rich and the middle class; they are displayed in museums and galleries and in such disparate locations as ABC Television Studios, Playboy magazine, the New York Jets and San Francisco '49ers football team headquarters, the offices of the Pittsburgh Pirates and Los Angels Dodgers baseball teams, Burger King restaurants, neighborhood bars and social clubs; they depict whites and African-Americans, and are favored by young as well as older Americans.

The popularity of Neiman's work has allowed for the creation and flourishing of a distinctive gallery structure. Since 1975, Neiman's serigraphs have been distributed through a nationwide network of galleries that buy his work in volume from Knoedler Publishing, Inc. In 1989, about 3,000 Neiman prints were sold at a retail value of approximately nine million dollars.

Thus Neiman reaches a far larger audience than abstract artists who make prints, such as Frank Stella, Ellsworth Kelly and Sol LeWitt. It was Neiman's genius to understand that abstract art left a void amongst twentieth-century audiences.

But a theory of Neiman's popularity has to explain also his broad attraction to the less privileged as well as to the middle and upper classes.

This is a study of the reasons for Neiman's popularity. It looks at the broad appeal of his work amongst all social classes, examining this against the backdrop of contemporary American beliefs and attitudes towards work, leisure, art and culture. The study shows that Neiman's popularity derives largely from his threefold ability to portray a world of modern leisure; to glorify such central values of the occupational structure as competition, success, and power; and to depict a hierarchical social order which celebrates the successful while also providing a range of more ordinary types with which many viewers can personally identify. This threefold ability is also what distinguishes Neiman's work from other non-abstract artists such as Andy Warhol, Alex Katz, Erte, R.C. Gorman and McKnight, some of whom also sell prints in large volume. None of these artists focuses, as does Neiman, on a competitive and power-driven world of modern leisure. Nor can any of them be said to draw in the spectator in the manner of Neiman's socially varied depictions. Warhol paints ordinary household objects and celebrities isolated from any social context; Katz depicts quasi-cartoon like faces, Erte generally does stylized women, usually alone, in exquisite fashion garb; Jim Dine romanticizes the common objects of everyday life.

In his introduction to the 1981 edition, The Prints of LeRoy Neiman, F. Lanier Graham suggests that it would be "instructive" to do a sociological survey of the artist's many collectors. Graham points out that Neiman's admirers are passionate about the artist, and he theorizes that it is in part the accessibility of Neiman's work and in part Neiman's ability to capture for his audience "both the look and the feel of the world as they see it working" that makes Neiman's fans respond with such fervor. The design of the current study in part takes up this task.

This study is based on several data sources. First, there is a survey of a sample of 1,000 purchasers of Neiman's signed serigraphs. The survey was administered jointly by the Center for American Culture Studies at Columbia University in New York City and Knoedler Publishing, Co. Respondents were mailed a questionnaire which explored such areas as the topic of the prints purchased, the attitudes towards those prints, and the relation between the prints and the purchasers' lives. The sample was drawn at random from lists, held by the various galleries that distribute Neiman prints, of the people who had ever purchased a print. Large samples were drawn from the Hammer Gallery, which is the major distributor of Neiman signed serigraphs in New York, and from the Hanson, Upstairs, and Bowels/Sorokko galleries, which are the major distributors of Neiman serigraphs in Los Angeles and San Francisco. New York and California together account for forty-eight percent of the market for Nieman prints. Small samples were also drawn from almost all the other galleries that distribute Neiman prints in the United States. In return for completing the questionnaire, respondents were sent a complimentary Neiman poster signed by the artist.

The study also contains an analysis of the subject matter of the 261 signed serigraphs that Neiman produced between 1971 and 1987; and it relies on in-depth interviews with LeRoy Neiman, and on interviews with other persons important in the organization that markets and sells the work.

Neiman collectors are, by and large, members of the occupational elite. Sixty-four percent are professionals and twenty-four percent are managers. Their incomes are high; seventy-two percent of the sample have a household income that is over eighty thousand dollars per year and forty-seven percent have a household income that is over one hundred twenty thousand dollars per year. Forty percent of the collectors have four years of college, twenty percent have between five and six years of college, and nineteen percent have over seven years of college. Unusually for the art world, where pieces are typically bought by men and women together, most Neiman purchasers are men. Eighty percent of the sample are male.