A Look at Celebrity Art Collecting

The Daily Beast recently ran an article on celebrities and art collecting.  There is nothing new about celebrities buying art or setting collecting trends and promoting pop culture.  The article looks beyond collecting in general and looks at some of the reason for strong celebrity interest, include being patrons of the arts to art as an investment for financial gains and profits.

The Daily Beast reports

But if celebrities and art have made much stranger bedfellows in the past, what accounts for today’s attraction bordering on infatuation? The answer, I’m afraid, is mostly money—much of it of the bad sort that’s recklessly tossed in after good (Madonna’s collection, for example, is reportedly mostly made up of material-girl kitsch: art-deco sculptures, Damien Hirst dot paintings, and pictures by Tamara de Lempicka, trash just one degree removed from poster art). A group of especially impulsive über-consumers with palaces and penthouses for homes, 21st-century celebrities increasingly flock to art as a financial investment. In this way, entertainment, sports, and political boldface names prove no different than other high-net-worth individuals new to the art game. Buyers rather than collectors of art, they are just as ­likely to sell, or flip, a great work rather than steward it into a mu­seum collection. Truth is, most celebrities buy art like stocks—as much to sell as to keep. Only difference being, when they do so, they’re likely hiding behind a baseball cap, or a well-heeled adviser.

“There’s a lot of froth in the art market currently, which brings out buyers like celebrities. But just because one celebrity or half a dozen exhibit less than stellar taste, that doesn’t really affect the market.” That’s Thea Westreich, among the most well-heeled and experienced art advisers in the business. The high-flying head of Thea Westreich Art Advisory Services in New York, and recent author, with her husband Ethan Wagner, of the just released Collecting Art for Love, Money and More, Westreich is a professional who emphasizes the need for collectors to have a long-term relationship with art. A woman far too prudent to name famous names, she patiently explains that rather than being motivated by unique factors, celebrity collectors often act like arrogant newbies instead. “Virtually all of the celebrities we have dealt with come to the market thinking they know it all,” she says. “But some are open to reliable, certifiable information about art, which they learn to value.

On the other hand, others simply are not.”Still, to be a proper celebrity these days, it appears you need to acquire at least a few showy baubles. Word is that Brangelina are Banksy fans; di Caprio, Jane Fonda, and Hugh Grant all have a soft spot for Warhol; Jay-Z owns works by Ed Ruscha, David Hammons, Laurie Simmons; and Elton John has a solid collection of photography (including masterpieces by Henri Cartier-Bresson, Diane Arbus, and Helmut Newton). Even the Beckhams have a Hirst, one of the artist’s heart-shaped canvases covered in dead butterflies. But of all the celebrity purchases, none has been more newsworthy than Eric Clapton’s Gerhard Richter investment. The seller of the world’s most expensive artwork made by a living artist, Clapton walked away last year from Sotheby’s $34.2 million richer. A 965 percent return on investment, he remains the poster boy for celebrity collecting—just as his flush exception confirms the rule against these kinds of spectacular gains.

Source: The Daily Beast/Newsweek