Real Clear Arts

Judith H. Dobrzynski on Culture

Collectors

Leonard Lauder’s Semi-Secret Obsession

You know Leonard Lauder as an unsurpassed collector of Cubism, but what turned him into a collector was something completely different. He actually began collecting as a boy of five or six, or maybe seven. As he tells the story, his father gave him five cents as an allowance, and he spent the whole thing buying five postcards of the Empire State Building — all the exact same image. “Five,” he told me, “is a collection.”

I tell this story, in slightly different form, in an article headlined The Pleasures of Postcards for The New Yorker.com, published as to coincide with the opening this past Wednesday of The Postcard Age: Selections from the Leonard A. Lauder Collection at  the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. Billed as “the first general exploration of the postcard as an artistic medium at a major museum,” the show contains about 700 postcards (all a promised gift to the MFA).

Last month, I visited Lauder in his office at Estee Lauder Cos., and paged through the catalogue with him — trying to get him to pick out favorites so that we could do a slide show for The New Yorker. Hah! I came home with at least 100 bright yellow post-it notes hanging out of the catalogue — that’s how he marked them. We actually ran through a pad of them, and had to ask for more.

Courtly and ever genial, Lauder protested “I love them all!” And when I urged him to be more selective, he countered, “Why should I do your job? I’m not even getting paid for this. Everything in here is my favorite.”

It seems the curators, Lynda Klich and Benjamin Weiss, had the same experience: the exhibit started out as 400 postcards, was quoted as 450 in the summer, and is now 700. Lauder certainly helped select and chose the cover card, a flirtatious blue-eyed redhead, swathed in black fur and fancy hat, that was the public face of Italys’s Mele department store chain circa 1920. “I got it from an Italian auction run by a dealer in Milano, about seven or eight years ago,” Lauder says. “I paid about $50.”

Lauder’s interests in postcards sometimes shift from theme to theme, with the most recent being Wiener Werkstatte post cards. That, he says, “has been for a long time now, and there’s nothing behind it yet.”

Still, you can see he loves these postcards — if you go to the slide show on The New Yorker site, you’ll find his comments on 14 of the ones we ended up choosing as representative of his favorites. (You can see them all on one PDF that the MFA made for me after Lauder and I spoke  [Lauder_The_Postcard_Age-Selections], but not the captions — maybe it will whet your appetite.)

Now why would Lauder, worth billions, keep buying postcards when he can afford Picassos?

When I asked him that, a trace of incredulity passed over his face. “I like beauty, and you can never surround yourself with enough beauty,” he said. Plus, postcards connect him to history, another of his interests. Lauder admits to being an incurable collector, and says he gets as much pleasure from postcards as he does from his paintings. “The paintings I buy relate to one another, and the postcards do, too,” he says. No matter what he’s buying, “the thrill for me is the hunt.”

Then, he added, “Many people collect to possess. I collect to preserve, and no sooner do I have a collection put together than I am looking for a home for it in a public institution.” As usual, he declined to say anything about where his magnificent collection of paintings will go.

I’ve posted the beautiful cover card and a funny one, that made Lauder laugh, here.

Photo Credits: Courtesy of the MFA

 

Loans From Van Otterloos Lead To Thoughts About Real Collectors

True collectors never stop buying and they go their own way, following what they love, not necessarily what’s fashionable. Rose-Marie and Eijk van Otterloo, whose collection of Dutch Golden Age Old Master paintings was on tour during 2011-12, provide an example once again.

Last spring, they made news when they bought Rubens’s Crucifixion at the TEFAF Maastricht art fair (see it here). At the time, Eijk told me that the painting was too dramatic for their home, and belonged in a museum.

Though they mainly live in Massachusetts and Florida, he said they would probably lend it to the Currier Museum in Manchester, N.H. for tax reasons.

And that’s what happened. The Currier confirmed shortly thereafter that the van Otterloos would lend The Crucifixion, as well as The Apulian Shepherd by Joachim Wtewael (1566–1638) and The Cardplayers by Jan Steen (c. 1625–1679) in connection with an exhibition opening Sept. 29 at the Currier titled Printmaking in the Age of Rembrandt (through January 6, 2013).

The other day, the Currier emailed me with news that five, not three, van Otterloo painting would be on loan. Two floral still-life paintings, one by Jacob van Walscapelle (about 1679) and the other by Jan van Huysum (about 1730), will also be there.

None of these works were on that international tour, and none has been exhibited previously in the U.S. 

This isn’t a separate exhibition, either. The van Otterloos’ works will hang alongside the Currier’s Old Master paintings collection, which includes works by Jacob van Ruisdael, Jan Molenaer and Balthasar van der Ast.

I’m showing four of them here (The Crucifixion can be seen at the link above). From top to bottom, they are the paintings by Wtewael, van Walscapelle, van Huysum and Steen.

 While we’re on the subject of collectors, I was talking the other day with a a major collector in a completely different field, a man whose name for the moment must remain undisclosed. He brought up the subject of what it takes to be a real collector, “not the so-called collectors. There are not many real collectors in the world.”  

What does it take to be a real collector — not an investor or a speculator, not someone looking to build social capital?

The collector in question cited five necessary criteria. “To be a collector,” he said, “you must collect, conserve, research, publish and exhibit” your treasures.

Photo Credits: Courtesy of the Currier Museum

 

 

 

 

 

A Confab To Sort Out The World Of Biennials

My favorite biennial is the Biennial at the End of the World (also here, in Spanish with pictures) That’s physical, not time-based. Not that I’ve been yet — it began in 2007 — but I love the billing. It takes place in  Ushuaia, the capital of Argentina’s Tierra del Fuego Province and of the Southern Atlantic Islands, and on its first go-round it

artistically joined both ends of the Earth in real time, by means of an electronic station located in Ushuaia and others in the North of Canada and Finnish Lapland. In key points of the participating cities, screens were installed for the passers-by to watch and witness the development of the video-artists’ work, to communicate, and also to participate in this multimedia performance.

Did you know that there are now more than 150 biennials “for art and related disciplines”? That number doesn’t include, obviously, art fairs or annuals or triennials. (No wonder curators are tired.)

But now comes a group called the Biennial Foundation with plans to bring together organizers, curators and supporters of biennials to discuss their challenges. From October 27th through the 31st, it’s hosting the first World Biennial Forum in Gwangju, South Korea coinciding with the 9th Gwangju Biennale  (7 September–11 November). And just in case that’s not enough, you can also attend the nearby Busan Biennale 2012 (22 September–24 November) and the 7th Mediacity Seoul (11 September–4 November). That shows a bit of the problem right there: when does synergy turn into subtracting rather than adding to the combined whole?

While the Forum says it aims to “diffuse knowledge and to promote public awareness of contemporary art biennials,” I think it should also provide an eye-opening look at the big picture here. Can all of these biennials be supported? For how long? That, I hope. will be part of the “critical reflection” on the total number the Forum promises.

The Forum has Co-Directors – Ute Meta Bauerand Hou Hanru — who will develop the structure and content for this “first get-together of biennale professionals.”

Bauer is “Dean of Fine Art at the Royal College of Art…served as the Director of the Visual Arts Program and as Founding Director of the Program in Art, Culture and Technology at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology…was co-curator of documenta 11, artistic director of the 3rd Berlin Biennale (2004) and was the Founding Director of the Office for Contemporary Art Norway (OCA).”

Hou is “an art critic and curator…[who] worked at San Francisco Art Institute as Director of Exhibitions and Public Program and Chair of Exhibition and Museum Studies (2006-2012)….has curated numerous exhibitions including the Biennials of Johannesburg, Shanghai, Gwangju, Guangzhou (Triennial), Tirana, Venice (French Pavilion, 1999, Chinese Pavilion, 2007), Istanbul, and Lyon….[and] is currently curating the 5th Auckland Triennial.

They’ve not released a program yet, but I hope it’s a realistic one. What we probably do not need is more biennials.

The Gwangju Biennial was, according to Culture360, “the first international art biennale in Asia to be introduced as such to the international community and has established itself as Asia’s oldest and most prestigious Biennales of contemporary art. It is amongst the world’s “most visited” Biennales and attracts a huge international audience every year – alternating between art and design.”

Photo Credits: The Gwangju Biennial 2010/Culture360 Magazine

 

Appalling Situation in Berlin: You Can Help – UPDATED WITH PETITION

UPDATE: Please help by signing the petition here; it asks for disclosure of the impact on the Old Masters and a concrete plan for their display in a different building. It does not oppose expanded galleries for modern art.

You may recall that in late 2010, the German collectors, Ulla and Heiner Pietzsch (pictured below in 2009, at an exhibition of some of their collection), signed an agreement with the state of Berlin to bequeath their internationally renowned collection of modern art to the city. It now appears, however, that the conditions were too stringent — and will result in the emptying of the great Berlin Gemaeldegalerie, which houses the State Museums’ world-class old master paintings collection, and its conversion into a museum that would showcase the Pietzsch collection and related works. The Old Masters, mainly, would go into storage — paintings by Durer, Titian, Caravaggio, Vermeer, Rembrandt, on and on.

Everyone should be appalled by this development — and many in Germany are. They need international support, however, and Jeffrey F. Hamburger, the Kuno Francke Professor of German Art & Culture at Harvard University, is helping to galvanize dissent here. He is seeking signatures from American art historians and museum curators to a protest letter. More on this later.

It is true that the Pietzsch Collection is outstanding. It comprises Surrealist works from Paris and Abstract Expressionist works by the New York School – paintings by Max Ernst, René Magritte, Joan Miró, Salvador Dalí, Paul Delvaux and Jackson Pollock, Ad Reinhardt, Mark Rothko, Robert Motherwell and Barnett Newmann, Frida Kahlo and Diego Rivera. among others. At the time of the agreement, it consisted of about 150 paintings, drawings and sculptures, with an estimated value of €120 million. Announcing the deal, Hermann Parzinger, President of the Foundation of Prussian Cultural Heritage, said: 

Today’s agreement is a decisive step towards integrating the Pietzsch Collection into the National Gallery’s collection at the National Museums in Berlin. I am convinced that the Foundation of Prussian Cultural Heritage will find the space to exhibit the works in the way Heiner and Ulla Pietzsch see fit. [Boldface mine.]

The couple wanted their treasure to go to “the National Gallery in particular,” Heiner Pietzsch said at the time. The announcement referenced above also said this:

The agreement will only come into effect under the condition that Berlin city council places the collection, in its entirety, in the hands of the Foundation of Prussian Cultural Heritage as a permanent loan, and that the Foundation guarantees that parts of the collection are placed on permanent display within its own collection of modern art. [Again, boldface mine.]

On June 12, the German government allocated €10 million to renovate the Gemaeldegalerie to accommodate the Pietzsch collection. But the Old Master collection would have to go – some will be moved to the Bode Museum for display amongst sculpture of the same eras, but much more will, under this plan, go into storage until at least 2018, and probably longer, when it is hoped that a new museum space would be built alongside the Bode.

Many fear that, given the financial outlook, such an expansion will not occur by 2018, and all those wonderful pictures would be locked away in storage for a long, long time.

This plan should not stand. I’ll have more information on how to protest it soon.

Photo Credits: Courtesy of Getty Images via Zimbio

Score Another Point For American Art: Another New Museum

Until I saw the Anschutz Collection on tour a decade or more ago, I didn’t much appreciate Western art. My mistake, because the best of it is very good. And Philip Anschutz has some of the best of it. Now, we’ll all be able to see it again, because in May Anschutz will open the American Museum of Western Art in downtown Denver.

It’s housed in the Navarre Building, built in 1880 and directly across from the Brown Palace. The Victorian building once was a school for girls, then a coed school, then a bordello, then a dining club, then a restaurant. Anschutz bought it in 1997 and restored it. It has been open to the public a couple of hours a week, by appointment, in recent months. In May, it will be open regular hours for walk-ins, though tours by curators will require advanced sign-ups.

Anschutz owns about 650 paintings, made from the early 19th Century to the present, as described on the website:

the museum’s holdings include examples of early American expeditionary painting, Hudson River School and Rocky Mountain School landscapes, 19th century American narrative painting, early American modernism, Expressionism, Cubism and Abstraction, American Regionalism, “New Deal Art”, and even Abstract Expressionism.  

According to the Denver Post,  about 400 of them will be on view, hung in three floors of galleries. The paper also named some of the artists, including Frederic Remington, George Catlin, Charles Marion Russell, Albert Bierstadt, Thomas Moran, Georgia O’Keeffe and Ernest Blumenschein. It added:

The paintings themselves are cohesive in their collective take on the old West — the work is as journalistic as it is artistic. Crossing from realism to abstraction, the paintings depict lush, hilly landscapes, Indian families, frontier settlers, cavalrymen in battle. They can take a wide view of high desert pueblos or offer a closeup of the patterns on native pottery. They are, at times, earthy, colorful, intimate, violent and serene.

The website has a slideshow preview of some works in the collection, including Thomas Eakins’s Cowboys in the Badlands, above, and there’s also the catalogue for Painters and the American West: the Anschutz Collection, which was shown at the Denver Art Museum in 2000.

 Need I say it? This is great news for Denver and for American art, which is having a moment in the sun — the new wing at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston; the renovated wing at the Met, and Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art.