SPORTIN' WOOD Deitch character, Deitch (inset)
(Photo: Getty Images)

Turns out rapacious Russians and dubious sheiks from Dubai are maybe-probably going to prop up the boiling contemporary art market, even though the economy here might currently suck. And Deitch, the wizard dealer behind giant, multimillion-dollar toy sculptures and feces spattered canvasses, is the man piquing their interests.

Deitch, we learn, is 55, and his apartment "looks about right for a graduate student." He lives in two sad, scary rooms with bare walls on the Upper West Side packed with non-swanky paperbacks. He once staged a dinner party at which men in spike heels built some complicated wooden superstructure and then peed on other men with buckets on their heads from great heights. He gave Dash Snow and his friends phone books and they got high and drew on the walls on his fancy Grand street gallery! People call him the P.T. Barnum of art! But still, we kind of feel like we don't know much about this guy, except that he wears suits from the same tailor Gianni Agnelli used, and he was a pimp.

The only quote which really seemed to explain what the man is all about was buried on page 700 of the article, when nutty hippie artist Ashley Bickerton characterizes Deitch (a man who wears suits even while on a yacht in the Mediterranean) by saying, "This guy is so uptight... he has an iron rod from his anus all the way to his neck."

Or, as Deitch calls it, art. Bidding starts at $40 million.