While it’s important to anticipate how technology might change the art market in the future, it is useful to learn how top collectors got started in the past.
On the National Gallery of Art’s website, you can read a fascinating
personal essay (“Reminisces
and Reflections on Collecting”) in which collector Raymond Horowitz
explains how he and his wife Margaret got their start in the 1960s. Although
Raymond and Margaret Horowitz are both now deceased, they are widely recognized for their superb collection of paintings, pastels,
watercolors, and drawings created by American artists in the late nineteenth
and early twentieth centuries. They were among the first collectors to dedicate
themselves to American impressionism.
In the essay, Horowitz talked about why art collecting can
be a life-enhancing experience. He reminds us that all collectors start
somewhere, and it’s important to buy what you love, regardless of what others
may think of your taste.
Raymond Horowitz said that although he always had an
interest in art, he never set out to become a collector. In the late 1950s, a
close friend who was a collector of nineteenth and twentieth century American
representational painting gave him a French drawing as a birthday present. To
reciprocate, he gave his friend an American drawing as a Christmas
present. As the gift exchange continued,
Horowitz and his wife scouted galleries specializing in American art and read a
lot on the subject. Having become immersed in the subject, they decided to buy
some inexpensive works on paper in 1960. Horowitz called it “more of a lark
than anything serious.”
Although they had not yet embraced the idea of becoming
collectors, they continued to visit galleries regularly. One day in 1961, they
bought a painting “that had immediate and irresistible appeal.”
By 1962, they had acquired more than 20 diverse works in
various mediums: “It was only at that time, when we could be more analytical
about our acquisitions that we came to the realization that we were greatly attracted
to lyrical, representational, but non-academic painting; painting that
expressed a definite sensibility ad certain moods and feelings – warmth,
tenderness, intimacy, optimism.” They noticed that there was a certain
cohesion and unity in their choices.
Although “American impressionism” is a commonly recognized
today, Horowitz notes that there was very little interest in it when they
started their collection. He said it was considered unfashionable: “In fact, we
were ridiculed as ‘square’ by most of our chums who had an interest in art.” As
collectors, they deliberately set out to find examples of turn-of-the-twentieth-century
American paintings that looked less dismal than those they saw in many auction
houses and art galleries.
When they decided to focus on their collection, the
Horowitzes started taking collecting and the connoisseurship seriously: “We
constantly talked to other collectors, art historians, museum curators, and
dealers, trying to learn as much as possible. We traveled to museums, large and
small, to look at works we had seen in reproduction, and we read everything
that remotely bordered on our field.”
“The Horowitz Collection” first got public attention in 1966,
when the curator of American art at the Metropolitan Museum agreed to briefly store
some of their paintings while they were moving from one apartment to another.
Another curator at the museum came across the paintings and asked to include
some of them in the museum’s summer loan show.
As Margaret and Ray
Horowitz became more knowledgeable and focused collectors, they recognized some
mistakes in their purchases. So they weeded out their collection through
trades, donations, exchanges, and sales.
Continuous refinement is a part of the collecting process, said
Horowitz, who likens a collection to a living organism: “If you stop
collecting, the collection becomes a lifeless thing, merely decoration on the
walls.”
For art lovers who might hesitate to narrow the focus of
their collecting, Raymond Horowitz said: “The fact that one collects in a
narrow field does not mean that one’s field of vision must be narrow. Indeed
the opposite is true. The passion for discovery is heightened and concentrated,
and the search to see behind the curtain becomes more intense. Collecting,
looking, and reading become an adventure in innovation, in seeing things in new
ways, and refreshing your ideas about life – and this is what art is all
about.”
I encourage novice collectors to read the full essay on the
National Gallery of Art website. Adapted from a talk Horowitz delivered at an art
conference, the essay provides context for a lot of the advice you will read in
educational publications for new collectors.
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