The cubist: how Jay Jopling created the artist as superstar

After Edinburgh, Jopling moved to London and began his initiation into the mysteries of the art market. Encouraged by his experience in New York, he started to work as an intermediary, locating works of Minimalist art for collectors and taking a cut of whatever price they paid.

In the first of many astute moves, he then used his profits to back artists of his own generation. The first show he financed was an installation by Marc Quinn in a warehouse in Wapping in 1988. Nothing sold, but Jopling's hunch about Quinn later proved correct when he produced Self in 1991, the head of frozen blood that became one of the iconic works of the Young British Artists movement.

It was in 1990 that the first meeting took place between Jopling and Damien Hirst. 'It was in a restaurant in Charlotte Street, or it might have been a pub,' Hirst tells me over the phone. 'He seemed a bit of a toff, but he comes from near where I grew up, in Leeds, so we had some things in common. He didn't have a gallery but he put on shows, so I was interested. I went round to his house in Brixton - it might have been the same night; he lived near me - and I was impressed. He had a Donald Judd and a Richard Prince on the wall.'

Hirst, then a recent graduate of Goldsmiths College, had already caused a stir with Freeze, a group exhibition he had staged in a warehouse in 1988. Among the artists included in that show were Sarah Lucas, Gary Hume and Angus Fairhurst, all of whom went on to be key names in the YBA movement.

But it was Jopling who made it possible for Hirst to pull off his next coup when he raised the money for the artist to make The Physical Impossibility of Death in the Mind of Someone Living, better known as The Shark, in 1991. 'I showed Jay the drawings for it,' says Hirst, 'and he said, "Let's do it."' They sold the work to Charles Saatchi for £50,000 (it was then sold by Saatchi in 2005 to the New York fund manager Steve Cohen for a reported $12 million).

Artist Michael Craig-Martin, who taught Hirst at Goldsmiths, remembers when the pair first met. 'Something just clicked between them. It was very immediate. It was also a time of important change in London. What people like Jay did was to see that there was an alternative to the gallery system. He acted as an artist's agent and the idea of someone representing you like a manager was new.'

Now that Jopling had found his talent, he had everything he needed to become the consummate dealer. That included not just the Eton-honed charm and confidence and a killer sales technique, but other, more elusive qualities. 'I remember the first time I met him at a party,' recalls the writer and cultural commentator Michael Bracewell.

'It was like Fitzgerald says of Gatsby - you felt like you were the only person in the world he wanted to talk to.' Anthony Haden-Guest, the New York journalist, also met him in the early days: 'Jopling was so smooth, for some reason I thought he was part of the film world rather than the art world; there was a kind of easy glamour to him.'

This starriness has clearly contributed to Jopling's success. 'He's a real gentleman,' say Gilbert and George, the besuited artists who joined White Cube in 2000. 'Jay is from the upper echelons, so it's interesting that he became the broker for a populist movement. He is everything that Brian Epstein would have liked to have been,' adds Bracewell.

But there are other parts of the persona that have been carefully cultivated. There's Jopling's look, for example - he quickly established a trademark uniform of Savile Row suit, white shirt and tie, and black-framed glasses - and his shrewd handling of the media. The fact that he no longer gives interviews only adds to his allure.

Most critical to his success, however, has been his understanding of the work he sells. Like Daniel Kahnweiler, who spotted and sold Picasso, Jopling has a great eye. 'My experience is that people who are good dealers are astoundingly thoughtful about art,' says Michael Craig-Martin. 'They probably see more art than anybody else and they have to go on their own instinct.'

Jopling's sharp instinct had drawn him to Hirst, but just like many other talent/manager relationships, theirs could be tempestuous. 'Oh, we've had loads of arguments, says Hirst. When you think you can do anything, you're bound to. Also, he's a big lad, so he can drink more than me. I remember throwing up in a hotel sink in Paris and Jay was saying, "Come on, let's go out and drink some more."' An early moment of tension occurred when Hirst stole Jopling's girlfriend Maia, now the mother of his three children. 'It all got a bit messy for a while,' he remembers. 'Last year I saw one of my fish pieces in Jay's house and I said, "Did I give you that?" And he said: "Yes, I think it was in exchange for my girlfriend." It's worth over a million now.'

In 1993 Jopling opened his first gallery, called White Cube, in a tiny space donated rent-free by Christie's in Duke Street, St James's. While his main activity continued to be managing his growing stable of artists - which by now included Gary Hume, Gavin Turk and Marcus Harvey - he also staged small exhibitions of his own.

Among the first to show in the new space was Tracey Emin, another artist Jopling met at a party. The tale of how she agreed to send him three letters recounting the Rabelaisian story of her life for £10 is well known, but his response to the first one reveals his canny ability to spot a bestseller. 'It totally shocked me. Great art does kind of punch you in the tummy and spin your head and change the way you look at things. Getting those letters from Tracey was one of those moments.'

For the next 15 years the rise of Jopling and his growing band of artists seemed unstoppable. There were many highlights along the way. In 1994 he met the video artist Sam Taylor-Wood, also a Goldsmiths graduate, who had been the long-standing girlfriend of Jake Chapman. Taylor-Wood came from a bohemian but broken home and Jopling later said he didn't understand when she told him she had been 'a free school dinners kid'.

Taylor-Wood soon became Jopling's girlfriend and joined the White Cube roster. She was shortlisted for the Turner Prize in 1998 and their position as the first couple of the art world was confirmed in 1997 when they married and Taylor-Wood gave birth to their first child, Angelica (a second daughter, Jessie, was born in 2006).

Another pivotal moment in 1997 was the staging of Sensation, the show of work from the Saatchi Collection at the Royal Academy. Practically all the major works in the exhibition, including the Hirsts, Tracey Emin's tent and Marcus Harvey's controversial portrait of Myra Hindley, had been sold to Saatchi by Jopling.

By the time he opened his first large gallery, in Hoxton Square in 2000, Jopling had added Gilbert and George and the Chapman brothers to his stable. In 2006, with Shoreditch saturated with galleries, he opened a new purpose-built gallery in St James's. Around the same time he announced the addition of international superstars Chuck Close, Anselm Kiefer and Andreas Gursky to his list. The cycle was complete: White Cube had become the establishment.

But when you're at the top, detractors are always ready to knock you down. So with the news last year that Damien Hirst planned to sell 223 works at Sotheby's, rather than through Jopling, many art-world watchers assumed their relationship had turned sour. But Hirst, already reckoned to be worth over £500 million, says his reasons for the auction were about wanting to end a particular phase in his career with a bang. 'He didn't like it in the beginning,' he says of Jopling's reaction. 'But then he came round and started calling collectors and advising them on what to buy.'

In the post-sale reports, Jopling was said to have placed bids on many of the lots, with suggestions that he was attempting to shore up the value of his own holdings of Hirst's work. In fact, White Cube confirmed, the items he bought - including the portrait Young Damien (£1,049,250) and a cabinet of fish (£2.95 million) - were acquired on behalf of gallery clients.

Another feature of the Hirst sale, which reveals a recent shift in the art market, is the number of major pieces that went to Russian buyers. These include a calf in a glass case bought for over £10 million by the Ukrainian billionaire Victor Pinchuk, a big Hirst collector and White Cube customer. Jopling and Pinchuk are close; the dealer last year attended a Paul McCartney concert in Kiev as Pinchuk's guest.

A year after the sale, Hirst confirms that his long-term commitment remains to White Cube. 'It's been a roller-coaster ride,' he says, 'but I've always been with Jay. And only Jay is getting my new paintings.' These include a series of single panels, priced at up to £2.5 million, and triptychs, priced at around £10 million, which will go on sale in the Hirst show Nothing Matters, which opens at White Cube on 25 November 2009.

'The great thing about working with Jay,' adds Hirst, 'is that he calls me up and we talk about everything. He'll say, "I've got a collector and they're interested in three of your pieces, but they want a discount." We'll discuss it and then he'll say, "I think we should do it." I love all the talk about money and strategy.'

Hirst is also among Jopling's wide circle of loyal friends (others include Elton John, Guy Ritchie and Kate Moss) who have rallied round this year to support him after his break-up with Sam Taylor-Wood. The couple announced their separation last September, saying their marriage had come to a natural end and that no other parties were involved. 'Over the last year we have got close again,' says Hirst, 'because he has had a difficult time. It's been very emotional and art dealers are not very good with emotions.'

The divorce has now been finalised, with Jopling remaining in their art-filled Marylebone house, while Sam has moved into her own place. Suggestions of acrimony between the couple, after Jopling had a short relationship with the singer Lily Allen, proved unfounded when Taylor-Wood was welcomed at the White Cube opening of Tracey Emin's exhibition in May with her new boyfriend, 19-year-old actor Aaron Johnson. Taylor-Wood also remains a White Cube artist.

Another friend, the photographer Johnnie Shand Kydd, is keen to defend Jopling, now 46, from accusations that he has become so much part of the celebrity world that he has lost touch with the gritty reality that is the artist's milieu. 'A lot of people who achieve things are famous for a good reason,' he says. 'And many of those are Jay's friends. But he will also chat happily to the person next to him; there's not an atom of snobbery in the man.'

There was more negative press for Jopling in March this year when White Cube laid off 16 staff from a total of nearly 100. But speculation on the fragile state of the business appears to be exaggerated. 'It's such garbage,' says Matthew Slotover, co-director of the Frieze Art Fair.

'Jay owns both his galleries outright. He might have reduced his staff, but only in line with everybody else. At the level he's dealing in - with names like Kiefer and Gursky - the value of that work will only rise over the next 20 or 30 years. If anything, he's likely to make more money now.'

In fact, it is only after a full 20 years since Jopling began working as a dealer, claims Michael Bracewell, that we can really look back and understand his true impact. 'Jay's great achievement is that he brought together a constellation of artists who expressed a certain feeling in their work. When you think of Hirst, Emin, Marc Quinn, the common denominators are sex, violence and death. Those are all fin-de-siècle concerns.'

As Bracewell explains: 'The scholarly underpinning of Hirst is only just beginning. The Tate is planning a retrospective in two years' time.' By then, he says, even the £50 million diamond-encrusted skull For the Love of God - of which, for the record, Hirst tells me Jopling owns ten per cent, an investment group owns a third, and he owns the rest - will no longer be seen simply as 'bling art for oligarchs'.

Michael Craig-Martin, who has watched the whole story from the beginning, sums it up like this: 'Jay understood something that is characteristic of the 1990s - the idea that the artist could be a celebrity, that they could be famous as a person and not just for their work. That was normal in the film industry or in music, but in the art world that was new.

Now at least half a dozen of his artists have public faces. They have questions about Damien Hirst on Who Wants to be a Millionaire? and Jay is known as a dealer in the way that Steven Spielberg is known as a director. Maybe it was something that was waiting to happen, but he saw this and took advantage of it.'

When we discuss the likely effects of the economic crash, Craig-Martin laughs at the suggestion that it could topple the mighty White Cube. 'I'm not worried about Jay,' he says. 'I think his place in the history of art is secure.'