From the December 2024 issue of Apollo. Preview and subscribe here.
In R.J. Cutler’s latest documentary, Martha (2024), about Martha Stewart, the woman who started her career as the ‘perfectly perfect’ caterer to New York (both the city and the state) before becoming America’s first woman billionaire and then going to prison, it becomes clear that art was fundamental to how Stewart thought about both living and working. During a conversation about the start of her catering business she says, ‘If you look at the Dutch Old Masters, and the great displays of food and fruits, all of that did inspire me tremendously.’
What is curious about the story of Martha Stewart is how closely entwined she was with the cultural world. Her husband was president of the publisher Harry N. Abrams. She hosted many dinner parties (‘I was thrilled to entertain’) before she began catering parties for clients such as the Museum of Modern Art, the Met and, as she puts it, ‘a cocktail party from six to eight at Sotheby’s, for 700 people’. In the heady days of 1980s New York, it is clear that conquering the art world was a key part of Stewart’s strategy – it gave her an edge among the wicked world of caterers. Perhaps, too, it helped that she had the same sensibility as her clients. ‘We tried to be a little outrageous; we wanted to catch people’s attention,’ she says. Success was clearly important to Stewart. Before catering she had worked on the New York Stock Exchange – she wanted to make money, she wanted to win. And, somewhat surprisingly, it was art that seems to have smoothed her path to victory.
It would ill behove the editor’s letter of an issue dedicated to the Apollo Awards to say anything against winning. Winning is what keeps the art market turning – winning deals, contracts, sales, the list goes on. From those inspirational Dutch Old Masters onwards, Stewart’s route to ultimate success has been, at the least, serpentine: she spent time in prison, became a media pariah and was rehabilitated by appearing on Comedy Central with Justin Bieber. Now her position as Queen of the Hamptons is virtually unassailable. But her career shows that winning can come in many shapes and sizes.
The Apollo Awards don’t necessarily reward the obvious people and, in a sense, the shortlisted nominees are already winners. The point of the Awards, as well as celebrating the people in the art world who have achieved something of particular note this year, is also to celebrate the unexpected and to support the variety and vibrancy of the art world. That way, in however small a way it is, Apollo aims to ensure that as many people as possible within the art ecosystem are winners.
From the December 2024 issue of Apollo. Preview and subscribe here.