Who

Meyer is the worldwide head of contemporary art at auction house Sotheby's, and the firm's biggest weapon in its ongoing battle with Christie's for dominance in the white-hot arena of contemporary art.

Backstory

The Vienna-born Meyer attended his first gallery show at the age of seven. He insisted that his mom bid on a Cy Twombly blackboard painting but she demurred, although if she'd listened to her son, it might have been the investment of a lifetime. Meyer started attending auctions on his own during his teenage years—his first purchase was six silver spoons that he bought for $8—an after-school recreational activity that left him, perhaps not surprisingly, with very few friends. He found a more hospitable environment when, at the age of 18, he took the entrance exam for an art course offered by Christie's in London. Rising up the auction industry ladder, in 1992 he was wooed by rival Sotheby's—one of the few occasions an auction house has poached an auctioneer—becoming, at 29, the youngest person ever to head the venerable auction house's London contemporary art department. Five years later he was bumped up to director of contemporary art for Sotheby's worldwide and shipped off to New York, following the resignation of Margery Stone.

Of note

Meyer isn't just responsible for conducting the sales (which he can do in German, English, French and Italian). He's also charged with picking out which works to sell and then persuading the owners to part with them. Known as a relentless schmoozer with collectors, dealers, and art advisors, beneath Meyer's considerable charm lurks a ruthless business mind, and he's racked up hundreds of millions in sales over the past few years. (One career highlight: when he brought the gavel down on Picasso's Boy with Pipe in 2004 for $104 million.) His judgment, though, isn't infallible. A major piece by Lichtenstein that Meyer picked for the auction house's 2006 spring sale failed to sell, although a side-deal with Bob Mnuchin and Dominique Lévy allowed him to gracefully sell the piece for a reasonable sum and arrange for a new buyer later. Sotheby's November 2007 auction proved substantially more disappointing: Amid the falling stock market, 20 of the 76 works offered failed to sell, including works by Picasso, van Gogh, and Miró.

In print

Meyer was the subject of an adulatory profile in the New Yorker in 2006, although the timing of the article was somewhat odd, considering Christie's had recently beat out Sotheby's for several coveted pieces. A number of art insiders—particularly those who bemoan what auction houses have done to the contemporary art market—were suitably offended. Jerry Saltz wrote an acidic letter to the mag, objecting to the "wet-kiss to big-money fast-action art-heroes who sell art works to the highest bidder."

The look

Described by more than one reporter as the "the James Bond of the art market," Meyer has no shortage of admirers. One groupie: Tom Ford. "If Tobias was naked, he'd be stylish; it's not just his clothes. It's that face. And the shape of his head, his nose, the way he stands-the way his chin is slightly up in the air-he has the most amazing posture; he's just so great looking, really sculptural," Ford hyperbolized to the New Yorker.

Personal

Meyer's partner is private art advisor Mark Fletcher, who previously worked at the Gladstone Gallery in New York and with Anthony d'Offay in London. In 2004 the couple paid $5.4 million for a three-bedroom condo on the 66th floor of the Time Warner Center's south building. (They live a few floors away from fellow art-world power couple Adam Lindemann and Amalia Dayan.) Meyer and Fletcher's apartment features a Warhol silkscreen of a .22-caliber pistol, a sculpture of a dollar sign by the British artists Tim Noble and Sue Webster, and a John Currin painting, The Clairvoyant.