Nicholas Wilder
Nicholas Walter George Wilder was an American art dealer and owner of an eponymous contemporary art gallery in Los Angeles in the 1960s and 1970s. He later closed his gallery, returned to his native New York, and developed a second career as a painter.
Biography
Wilder was born in Rochester, New York. His father was a scientist for Kodak and helped develop Kodachrome film. His father died when Wilder was aged 11 from cancer, which Wilder believed was related to the industrial nature of his work. The Los Angeles Times says that Wilder was falsely believed to be an heir to the Kodak company, which helped create a mystique upon arrival in Los Angeles. He suffered from dyslexia throughout his life. He graduated from Amherst College in 1960, having studied under Henry Steele Commager. He developed an interest in art after working as a guard at Amherst College's museum and helping as a projectionist for slide lectures on art history. Wilder met Marcel Duchamp at Amherst when Duchamp lectured there when the college recreated the 1913 Armory Show. Determined to live in California, Wilder began a law degree at Stanford University, but immediately changed his degree to art history. Wilder worked at the Lanyon Gallery in Palo Alto before establishing his eponymous gallery in Los Angeles in 1965. Wilder moved his gallery from La Cienega Boulevard to Santa Monica Boulevard in 1970 and he entered psychotherapy. Despite his profligate spending on artists, he had difficulty paying bills in the late 1970s and he was pursued by the Internal Revenue Service as his taxes were three years late. In the last decade of his life, Wilder lived in New York on Manhattan's 11th Street and developed a second career as a painter, creating "abstract assemblages". He continued to sell art privately. Wilder's first solo show was at Los Angeles's James Corcoran Gallery in 1986, his last was in Chicago at the Compassrose Gallery in 1988.Wilder was friends with the British artist David Hockney and became Hockney's dealer in California. Hockney depicted Wilder in his 1966 painting Portrait of Nick Wilder. Hockney included a drawing of Wilder in Friends, his 1976 collection of lithographs of acquaintances.
Wilder was noted for his personal style and enjoyed chili dogs from Pink's Hot Dogs on La Brea Avenue. His obituary in the Los Angeles Times described him as "a genteel man of impeccable manners with a hippie bent" and that "...those who knew him best, particularly his artists, came away impressed with his modesty, frankness, humor and the purity of his passion for art. He seemed blessed with an ability to find gifted artists and home in on their best works". Wilder was gay and believed that this had a "certain sociological effect" due to the disenfranchisement that gay people experienced at that time. Wilder felt that despite his "natural instincts" being those of "a politician, entrepreneur and gambler" he had to look for a profession where he could be deemed acceptable and that "being an art dealer is an occupation for disenfranchised people" concluding that he "never knew a good one who wasn't a woman, Jewish or gay".
He died in 1989 of complications from AIDS. Wilder was sanguine about his AIDS diagnosis saying that "the bad news is that I have AIDS. The good is that I am going to live to be 80....I don't feel cheated. I never have. My whole life has been adventure and this is just one more". He was survived by his partner, Craig Cook, his mother and two siblings. Wilder's library was acquired by the Osaka Art Museum in Japan following his death.