Galleries: Robert Fraser

'The first art dealer to be as famous as the artists he represented. Fraser had almost all the attributes of a successful gallery owner. He had flair, knowledge and confidence in his own artistic taste. His 1962 Dubuffet opening show was acclaimed, and it was unsurprising that, four years later, Time magazine featured the gallery as the place to be in swinging London... Kenneth Anger's cult films were screened, Dennis Hopper took the artist photographs for the Los Angeles Now show and Terry Southern wrote the introduction to the Hans Bellmer catalogue...

Teasingly labelled a 'Belgravia pansy' by his friend Francis Bacon, Fraser had an old Etonian assurance that could irritate at times. He used it to dismiss the Beatles' initial choice of artist for the Sgt Pepper's record sleeve in favour of Peter Blake and Jann Haworth... Less constructive was his response to Detective Sergeant Beale, who told him that the Jim Dine Drawings on show were obscene: 'I am certainly not interested in the opinions of a tuppeny-ha'penny policeman.' The works were seized and the gallery fined 20 guineas under the Vagrancy Act of 1838.

... It was a shock to most of his circle when, in the notorious 1967 Redlands drugs bust, Fraser was discovered to have on him 24 tablets of heroin. It was a surprise even to Keith Richards and Mick Jagger, with whom he was arrested. He was sent to prison for six months. The storm of press coverage, including the photographs of Jagger and Fraser handcuffed together, inspired Richard Hamiltons iconic Swingeing London 67 series; a gesture of support to his art dealer and a protest at judicial overkill... Fraser opened a second gallery in Cork Street in 1983. It continued in his avant-garde tradition, introducing to London such artists as Jean-Michel Basquiat and Keith Haring... Sales were infrequent, and  by 1985 he was already suffering from the effects of Aids, as a result of which he died in 1986.

It is hard to think of an art-gallery owner who has been represented more often by his artists. Many of these portrayals wil appear in a new show at Pace London, including the Richard Hamilton collage from which the exhibition takes it's name. Curated by Brian Clarke, the show is a tribute to Fraser and to Clarke's own portrait of the man who had become his dealer and his friend.' - Harriet Vyner