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November 2, 2003
TT: Cash and carry
Courtesy of artsjournal.com, my invaluable host (which you can visit by clicking on the artsjournal.com logo in the upper left-hand corner of this page), this wonderful story from ARTnews Online about the ten works of art currently in private hands that are most coveted by collectors and curators. The piece includes some jaw-dropping numbers:"We all have our wish lists but we don't go around talking about them. It gets in the way of our getting the work," says Miami art collector Donald Rubell. "We hope that when our friends die, their children won't like their art. Those are our silent wishes."
Jackson Pollock's Lucifer, a prime 1947 drip painting owned by the Anderson Collection in San Francisco, is so coveted it could fetch $50 million or more, sources say, were it ever to come on the market. (Don't hold your breath: entertainment mogul David Geffen, who owns Pollock's coveted Number 5, 1948, offered the Andersons $50 million for Lucifer in the mid-1990s, according to sources, and was rejected.)
Shipping magnate George Embiricos owns Cézanne's The Cardplayers (1892–93), the only work in the series in private hands, which experts say could be worth as much as $100 million. Canadian publisher Kenneth Thomson and his son, David, recently paid $76 million for Rubens's recently discovered The Massacre of the Innocents (ca. 1609–11) at Sotheby's, against competition from the J. Paul Getty Museum in Los Angeles.
Yet Rembrandt's 1654 portrait Jan Six (owned by the Six family foundation in Amsterdam), says New York dealer Otto Naumann, is possibly the most wanted Old Master painting in private hands. "It is a killer," says Naumann. "It is worth in excess of $150 million easily."
Read the whole thing. Speaking as a guy who just placed his first bid at Sotheby's on Friday--for an infinitely more modest sum, needless to say--these numbers make my hands shake. If I had that much money to spare, would I want to spend it on one painting, no matter how good?
At the same time, owning art (albeit on a very, very minor scale) has caused me to realize what a lovely thing it is to get up each morning, look at something beautiful, and know that you can look at it as often as you want all day long, every day. But...a hundred million dollars? I think not. And stories like this have a way of making you forget that you don't need a hundred million dollars to spare, or even five thousand, in order to own something beautiful. Which is too bad.
Posted November 2, 2003 11:46 AM
