|
|
 |
|
| Shared Passions |
Artful Beginnings
Aline Sullivan
08/02/2004
|
| We are far better served, advisors suggest, by investing in the best works
of lesser-known artists than to buy second- or third-rate works by even
the most revered names. |
Center of Gravity
Not all collectors begin with a theme, but one usually
emerges as a collection grows. A successful real estate developer in France has
decorated each of his three homes with paintings by an artist from his hometown;
he feels comforted by the images of the village square and other places that
framed his childhood. A couple in New York hark back to their social and
cultural origins by collecting works of American artists who also came of age in
the early 1980s.
Like them, we must find our own lodestones, and this may
take time. “As you buy, your eye gets better, and you start to like better and
better things,” says Robert Hiscox, founder and chairman of the Lloyd’s of
London underwriting agency that bears his name, and a notable collector (and
insurer) of contemporary art. He notes that his own tastes have evolved from
“truly awful” representational art to increasingly abstract works to what he
jokes is “truly obscure.” He has long been a collector of Lucian Freud and
Francis Bacon. He has recently acquired an oil painting by Roland Hicks of a
spilled bottle of typing correction fluid entitled, The More I Gave, the Less I
Got. Many works are on exhibit in his offices and at public spaces in
London.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
