The Value of Art by Findlay Michael

Author:Findlay, Michael [Findlay, Michael]
Language: deu
Format: epub
Publisher: E-Books der Verlagsgruppe Random House GmbH
Published: 2012-05-23T00:00:00+00:00

SHOWING OFF AT HOME

A prominent collector once told me that when she visited other collectors for dinner, she always asked to use an upstairs bathroom because she wanted to see what art they had in their bedrooms. “People who are serious about art have what they really like where they will see it the most,” she said. “If all the best art is in the living room, they are just in it to show off.” In my experience the show-off paintings are often in the dining room opposite the seated guests.

Not all great works of art are in gracious homes, by any means. Billy Wilder’s modest Brentwood apartment had amazing paintings and drawings crammed cheek by jowl on every wall. More were stacked on the floor under the bed and even behind the bathtub—a lifetime of amazing buys, from Egon Schiele drawings acquired in Berlin just after World War II to recent works by Hockney.

Very different, but close by, the Beverly Hills home of Edith Mayer Goetz and producer husband William Goetz was in the 1950s and 1960s where Hollywood royalty gathered for martinis amid great paintings by Cézanne, Monet, Manet, Renoir, Bonnard, and Picasso (fig. 29). Greeting the guests in the foyer was the almost life-size bronze cast of Degas’ Petite danseuse de quatorze ans (Little Dancer Aged Fourteen) wearing a real skirt and pink ribbon. Edith was the daughter of MGM founder Louis B. Mayer. The actor John Forsythe often dined at the Goetz home, and he told me that while powerful studio bosses, producers, and directors were frequent guests, the only actors and actresses invited to their dinner table were those successful enough to have their names above the movie title on the cinema posters and marquees.

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