The Art collectors || Documentary

[Music] this is the house I grew up in and this is my dad Alan stone he's finally agreed to show me the magic closet ever since I was little I've wondered what was inside there is a little Franz Kline self-portrait I'm gonna hang it up that's a good idea here's a little Tibo pastel beautiful tee ball pastel cake Swiss is money earliest pastels that I ever bought from way back when let's see what we find a blank space well oh yeah I know I know right here how's that beau I think you should hang the tebow well no I'm gonna put that in my in my tomb in the pyramid that's I'm gonna take that with me along with some special oils [Music] [Applause] [Music] in case you can't tell already my father is a collector and he collects all different kinds of things his collection includes clothes tennis balls tools vitamins for vitamins and lots and lots of art [Music] every day I'd come home and I'd say oh my god he brought something else into the house in my younger days I I definitely put up a fight but but I had nothing to say about it it happened regardless so it's it was a losing battle those pieces where the doors opened and there was like white fur and dead birds and then the insects with pans through them those were the most frightening pieces I would say that was what was scary when I think back my entire childhood was like a living art experiment being surrounded by art everywhere all the time didn't seem that strange to me but as I got older I began to wonder what exactly is going on here is this visual explosion a result of dad's passion or is it kind of pathological and how did he get here anyway what was his journey like along the way how did he become involved with some of the most important art and artists of the 20th century I wanted to find out I went into the art business really I was I was drawn into it I couldn't say that intellectually decided to go into it I sort of got sucked into it sort of the way a junkie who gets sucked into a heroin parlor you know I mean I just I found myself thinking about works of art day and night I mean I was obsessed yeah I hate to say it but I was obsessed your your father is an obsessed person yes typical thing is a truck would show up outside I mean one day a truck showed up outside and a huge steer was brought in out of wood and put in the dining room I mean it was it had been a trade sign on top of someplace in the Midwest and this was that this was a huge it was whole thing I mean we're not talking there's some little weathervane here this is huge okay so oh this is a German missionary at the head of a German missionary and this is the head of the daughter of the most powerful chieftain in Hawaii they were caught fooling around and the chief had them beheaded would you get a kind of experience or a high from something there's a tendency to want to repeat that and go after it and finally find more of it it's it's life it's it is it's an addiction and it's like a narcotic the art experience for me is like a narcotic and I and I don't get it from everything but I keep looking for it all right I'm coming hello purchase I can't take you today luckily dad figured out a way to subsidize his art habit he has had a gallery in New York for 46 years but the gallery is not just a place of business for Dad it is where his passion and knowledge about art have thrived [Music] that opened his gallery in 1960 just as New York was becoming the center of the international art world whoa I don't know I like the salty of it that see the sensitivity upstairs you know like those very subtle shades of off-white today dad and I are looking at a new show at his gallery my name is Olympia stone and I'm the youngest of his six daughters Allan stone is one of the great dealers in late 20th century art in New York it makes such a difference in an art scene to have a few people whose taste and sense of balance about what is the right way to deal with an art market that they are there to protect what the artist has painted to support it and to show others what is important about a painting that still looks good boom talk about explosive they always say that that galleries that some galleries have years right and they they listen to hear if you have a reputation at something and then there are some galleries that have eyes and and Allen always had eyes he always he always wanted to see he want them to see everything Allen stone has several qualities which I think distinguish him from other art doors I've met one is that his gallery is in a deeply personal place it's the only place I've ever seen so much just stuff of all different kinds and I think it makes it really one of the rare galleries in New York which has it's totally its own character how did dad get into the art business anyway how in the 1950s did a young man who had done all the so-called right things gone to Harvard gotten married and had children and gone to work in a nice respectable law firm in New York end up running an art gallery I just knew him as an attorney was more interested in looking at objects and he was at legal documents I would go out with Ivan and bellamy and we would wanna look at studios and see maybe six studios and evening wind up and Chinatown then maybe stop off at a construction demolition site and steal a gargoyle or two I was totally frustrated doing legal work all my other my other waking thoughts were involved with painting and the Oracle you know what I saw the excitement of it I was totally an art junkie around this time dad started doing legal work for artists and this is how he first met the soon-to-be famous sculptor John Chamberlin I just love going through the studio which was up a new city in New York and and and seeing his work it was just really thrilling it was the paw three dimensionally chrome sculpture made from old fenders and car parts and things like that and in those days he was he was making a living as a hairdresser up in the new city he was working in a beauty parlor and he was somewhat embarrassed by that which accounted for the way he dressed cuz he dressed very gruffly he dressed like a North Woods of par you know but he was doing these very delicate but when you look at the the the Chamberlain's you know and you understand what he was doing you can I mean a lot of it makes a lot of sense John would come to this law firm list of the offices of this law firm occasionally bringing his latest work to show me and they and that the receptionist would call maintain mr. stone a person is here to see you and of course John was dressed in the most outlandish stuff with a huge beard and so they wouldn't put him in the waiting room with a courier in eyes and the leather chairs they put him in the messenger room with all the other proletariat you know because they didn't want they didn't want him to contaminate the client base our world was comprised of 348 people altogether or so it seemed like a very intimate community and you would see the entire community on Tuesday nights which was the traditional night for art openings and various galleries it were six eight maybe ten galleries that represented the forefront of the contemporary art movement and they would have their openings on Tuesday nights and you would see the same three hundred and forty-eight people galleries like Sidney Janis Martha Jackson and Betty Parsons were among the best-known in New York in the 50s and 60s they showed contemporary American artists and many of those artists could regularly be found downtown where they gathered to discuss the big ideas of the day the first time I went the topic was mendacity and corruption in the art world one of the speaker's was Milton Resnick and the other speaker was a painter buddy mad at Reinhardt and of course neither of these guys had had been selling very much they issued forth this idea that anybody who really was selling their work was was corrupt and they were they were bastardizing the principles of art de Kooning was sitting in front of directly in front of me and he jumped up and he said Milton how can you talk this way Milton you copied my work for years how can you talk about Nunda city and corruption and and then that there was a huge outburst that followed between Resnick and de Kooning or Resnick was saying yes yes but I've gotten over you were you didn't vote me but I've gotten over I've gotten past you you know I'm finished with you I don't need you you know but so the arguments were all like that the group of artists dad is referring to were part of the New York school style of painting out of that group of artists a handful became known as the Abstract Expressionists well the Abstract Expressionists were the first generation of Americans to receive international attention they really established an identity for America and American art and they did so at the time on the basis of reinventing art in a very American language I think we now look at that work and can see how much it grew out of European and previous American art by the time it seemed like it was a revolution of thought and that it had established a whole new kind of vocabulary Pollock de Kooning a Cline they were the people against whom later artists had to react or in some way deal with and I think that that's really defined in a way the history of American art for the last half-century the extent to which American art wishes to define itself in terms of or against the president of Abstract Expressionism during his increasingly frequent forays into the New York art world dad had met his hero Willem de Kooning and his wife Elaine Elaine had saw dad's legal advice about getting a divorce from de Kooning it was clear to me that she didn't actually want a divorce what she wanted really to know is what her rights were as a spouse living apart since she wasn't living with her husband but she she had so much admiration and respect for him she I you know she is a real they they had a very love hate relationship was very volatile Elaine soon became both a friend and a mentor when in fact I did go and into the art gallery business in large part it was at her urging and it was also to satisfy something that was really burning all inside of me I was walking across 82nd Street from Madison to fifth and I saw a for rent sign on a building so I said this is a great place for an art gallery wait what is your father make of oh well when I brought the news to him I mean he was very he what he said to hate to tell you this well know what he said to me I always knew you were a bum but I didn't really expect anything different so he didn't talk to me for about six years when he determined that I was absolutely making a huge life mistake it was like being set free because I was suddenly free of all his expectations I knew it wasn't gonna go over but I knew it was I had to do it I just had to do it there was no alternative and I was it was like I was born then my real birthday was then [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] he said I really want to open a gallery and I said something incredibly icky like whatever makes you happy dear very traditional 50 step they had expected that nice Jewish boy would either become you know a doctor an attorney or an accountant and he was choosing this very peculiar eccentric profession our dealership what was that after all that sensible way to proceed no people then did not do that art was a dangerous business I remember I said to him I say God what do you want to do starve to death he was living by his wits but he seemed to have what a lot of people wish they had which is something telling him that this is what he should do and so despite the odds and in defiance of Stoney dad opened his first art gallery on December 7th 1960 dad staked out his place in the New York art world his earliest exhibitions stirred excitement showing for the first time in the United States artists like say Czar and Kobashi you weren't necessarily selling out your shows earlier not at all as many other shows where we sold nothing so dad was barely breaking even at the gallery when in the summer of 1961 he met an unknown artist looking for gallery representation little did either man know that a piece of art history was in the making I had written some galleries and got no response or said don't bother so I was pretty discouraged and just about to come back home he was sort of resting in the doorway and I saw him and I said can I help you he said no I just want to rest here I said what's that under your arm he said oh it's just there all the paintings but you wouldn't understand it nobody else is when I unrolled his paintings and looked at him I thought they were the silliest paintings that ever I said this guy's not serious you know and then I tacked the paintings up in the apartment among all the other things I had you know de Kooning's in this event I noticed that these things really held her own with anything you know nobody no painting was chasing him off the wall I mean you put Tebow next to the Kooning the Tebow wasn't going anywhere holding his own you know and the images of these marching rows of pies just kept burning themselves into my mind I couldn't get him out of my head his work would make my hands twitch you know and it's pastel work was just incredibly so almost it's really spiritual it's so beautiful so he asked me a very strange question he said how old are you I said I'm 40 40 years old 41 whatever he said you're you're 41 years old you've never had a show in New York I said usually probably have a show now you're gonna get me a show because I'm 40 years old the first Tebow show opened in 1962 and was an immediate hit every painting sold out suddenly magazines like time and life were calling for interviews with Wayne the timing was perfect to this show coordinated itself with the beginning of the pop art movement which dad and Wayne couldn't know yet we're talking about it the growth of the art world in the 60s particularly during the pop art period when the whole atmosphere of the art world became much more buoyant more expansive right more optimistic it had been a very introspective art world before that the Abstract Expressionists were essentially a tormented diagonalized race of people you know was all about personal feelings you know an alienation and with the advent of the pop art movement which would come which was parallel to the expansion of America as a world power the art world grew very dramatically during that interval [Music] this was the side of the gallery this is a gallery and there was a big awning out there yeah and originally the awning was bright orange the gallery poses located on the second floor and there was a long can it be leading out to the curb anyhow it was a very bad condition over the years it was in shreds and Allen never asked to have it replaced by the Falange Lord I remember he said that's my canopy I love it it represents my outlook yeah everybody in the art world knew about that canopy here's a picture on our Barnett Newman de Kooning show in 1962 when we opened our new space on 86th Street this is absolutely a masterpiece and look how small it is and look at the energy and the complexity of it is just it's incredible it's a great example of the fact that good things come in small packages dad's obsession with the work of the Abstract Expressionists and de Kooning in particular began in high school when he saw a touring exhibition and I got from de Kooning a really spiritual feeling a sense of uplift and excitement and if so much so I went back to see that show almost every day and that began my my quest to find de Kooning and see as much of de Kooning's work as I possibly could when I saw this which I still get that that sense of elevation from I just have to have this picture I took all the money that I had and then of course when my father came up and visited me and he saw this and he said all a friend of yours paint I said no dad I bought that he said you spent money on that how much did you spend them so I told him and he went ballistic but boy all I knew is I had something so exciting so great I mean I just so it was just constantly renewing for me to look at that dad opened the 86th Street gallery with a de Kooning Barnett Newman show two artists who he felt represented the opposite ends of the spectrum barn Evan does huge wall like paintings with no specific center they're just walls of color with an occasional zip or a couple of zips passing through you know a quick stripe so the spectator couldn't see the ends of the things I mean it was so big and so the inference was that this painting went on forever continuously so they became continuance of time-space continuum breasts attorneys paintings represented episodes a sort of frozen moments of excitement in space so they became that became the perfect dialogue in a show the the continuum versus the episodic that show put dad's 86th Street Gallery on the map as a destination for all kinds of art lovers [Music] but while things with the gallery were going great the same couldn't be said for dad and Maggie's marriage by the time they divorced in 1965 they had four young daughters to raise Allen always wanted to do what he wanted to do when he wanted to do it and one of the things that would happen would be he'd say I want to go to movies and I would say okay let me see if I can get a sitter well this was not the way it worked you know five minutes later he's out the door to the movies once he had somebody helping him at the gallery there was somebody who would go to the movies the helper in the gallery was my mother Claire Chester I was working seven days a week 24 hours a day really I mean I was never home I think it's one of the most painful experiences anyone's ability blows out some circuits meanwhile the buzz about dads galleries spread an artist began flocking to his doors one of those early artists was Richard estie's who would become one of America's leading photorealist painters I didn't know anybody I just walked in different galleries with slides and show them and all of them were just you know very negative and very what is this you know so finally I just kept going and I've ended up and get your father's or at Allen's the first time I saw Richard work he was doing these impressionistic figure paintings figures sitting and park benches and things like that it was beautifully done I mean the guy was just terrific if he had continued to do that no one would have ever heard of Richard vesties I used to visit him and one time there was something in one of the paintings that was very sharp and articulated and I said gee that was very interesting and I came back again there was old painting like that he looked at it he said well it's great maybe we'll have a show that was this that first show with Richard Dusty's turned out to be one of many in what would be a long and fruitful partnership with Tebow and now st's dad had two studies selling artists and his gallery was gaining an economic foothold but he was still figuring out the art business often by sheer luck by accident someone left a painting to be framed I was sitting in my office and someone else came in and said is that for sale and I said I don't think so but I can find out and I asked the person who wanted me to frame it for them whether there were selling it and they said they would and then all of a sudden I made $1,000 profits from this secondary or resale market gave dad enough money to cover the front room and support the artists he wanted to show without worrying as much if they were actually selling by this time dad had gotten remarried to my mother Claire she continued to work at the gallery you had artists coming in all the time all day long waiting to see Alan he was on the phone all the time and if he wasn't on the phone he was looking at artists slide it was a very exciting time I think to be in the art business because it was just the beginning of things happening in New York New York was just becoming the sort of center of where it was all taking place because you felt like you were part of that the gallery itself his soul was so amazing it was it was just legendary you know because it didn't fit the form of any other gallery from the pre-columbian sculpture to the jar that was filled with a penis pickles on the on the counter there were all these African you know totems it wasn't that there was some just stuff it was what this stuff was while the other galleries sort of were reverent and pristine this gallery was about the making of the art the feeling you got when you walked into that room was that it fueled the juice that everyone needs in order to create anything I walked into that office and I couldn't see him and there was a desk with so much stuff piled up on it that I wasn't sure what it was and and I heard this voice you know say let me see your slides and I said where are you and he said behind the desk just throw them over and so you know I threw them over literally threw them over up in the air and then silence and I just kind of appreciated the silence because it made me feel that somebody was actually really looking at them and then all of a sudden he said come to the other side of the desk and I saw how do I get there he said just follow the sound of my voice it was like The Wizard of Oz you know I didn't burst out laughing the show that I had there that was the that I loved the most was I built the ocean and you know the first wave started really low and then it went higher and higher as you walked to the back to the disjoint boat you know so I decide Alan I knew it was gonna be out of town I took all of the stuff you know everything that had in the gallery the pickle jars and the African stuff and everything and that pushed him into the corner they rotate into this alcohol and then with a friend of mine who built a wall in front of all this stuff so when people would walk in it would be almost like any other gallery and it would with just the show happening there right you know so then Alan came back I thought he would really think it was you know a good idea or something you know but he was totally pissed he was totally pissed [Music] with all the activity and success of the gallery dad was spread even more thinly than before people were always competing for dads time and inevitably that took its toll on family life basically Allen is is one of these inter directed people for whom the rest of the world kind of spins around on the peripheral vision and it's not a deliberate thing on his part certainly he wouldn't deliberately say I'm gonna keep my children waiting on the doorstep for three hours because I'm busy it's just a failure there a lack there I'm not tuning in on others and I think that is as much as as the arc is what's happened in terms of his relationship with his family dad may not have been a perfect father but in his own way he did his best to make time for all of us from a family perspective I mean was dad around a lot when you were little no I have a lot of memories of going with him on studio visits hello John how you doing hey is it a new studio was like visiting a sort of a hallowed place a special place almost idea a religious place you know this is a marijuana bush well one of the fun things are growing up with dad which I think we did because he started the gallery I'm having children so young was that he really took us everywhere we weren't separated from his professional life so when Dad was going on seeing artists studios he just dragged all of us around with him I like both of these a lot this does I think he has an extraordinary connection with what he sees and it's not in any way altered by fashion or style or or his desire to see an artist doing something else it's just being so attuned with whatever creative energy is coming out of that artist that he knows where that work wants to go see these these have a lot of impasto but they don't know cut the mustard these landscapes that's not that bad from the artists point of view or from my point of view sometimes you wish there one more time but I mean everybody says that you wish you have more time with alum but a lot of people are hoping for a piece of Alan's time why I mean there's kind of those old stories of the gold trader if you know the guys who would take the gold coin and go or or smell it you know where the rub or the feel of something and that's kind of the characteristic that I would say that Alan has we would sometimes get to an artist studio in the evening and be 11 o'clock at night we have a little bite of dinner and he'd hit four or five artists to see their work it comes 11 o'clock some of these guys were very in bed and he'd be trying to rock up you know wiping the sleep out of their eyes and things that we thought you went and there is waited to see the Arts they [Music] still haven't figured out still up well they say eventually it all comes he's trying a lot of different things and some of the sudden if the few things I picked up for me really hit it they're very intense and strong and focused and here's other things that are less focus less than tennis but don't quite cut the mustard they're finding their way and he's reaching around trying different things and you saw this too abstract things on the wall which are recent he's really reaching around trying to finds is his song that's what I said yeah between studio visits the artists and the gallery dad's time was consumed by art and sometimes with his art obsession there literally wasn't room for anyone else Allen had a dowry he came with all these things like a hope chest so we moved into this apartment which was very small within a few months I mean I was threading a little path to get from one part of the apartment to the other to walk in the front door and literally get to the kitchen you know how you had to wind your way through all these these these things you know these objects it was like an obstacle course and so I'll never forget one day he went off to the gallery and I didn't happen to go in that morning I can't remember why but I decided I was gonna stay and do some dusting at the apartment because I knew that I just had to get some things cleaned up I couldn't stand it anymore so I started neatly going around on this top of this bureau where the these beautiful little Roman old Roman glass vases and objects that were literally about three or four inches high mean they were tiny and they were very delicate and so I was removing them and dusting little things and all of a sudden I picked one up and it just disintegrated I mean it was just broke I quickly swept them all into a little pile and then I just put all the other objects back and finished what I was doing and I was absolutely panicked because I was positive that if he ever found out he would be so angry because I know how much he cared about each and every one of his objects but I was pretty sure that I was all right because I made I put everything back and everything looked fine and everything looked undisturbed so at the end of the day he came in and he was walking around the apartment all of a sudden he walked over to this area where I had been dusting and he said there's something wrong here something looks changed it's there's something missing and then all of a sudden he looked and he said where is the little Roman piece or something and I said I don't know and he said well the has anyone been here today and I said no and he said well you must know and I kept saying no no I don't know I don't and finally in the end of course he he got it out of me that of course I had broken this piece and he was history he was furious he was furious I mean it was a hundred hundreds of dollars worth of Venetian glass and he was extremely angry anyway so I said I don't ever want you touching anything again no more dusting that's out finished don't do it anymore so I realized at that point that I could no more I couldn't I had to just sort of live with it the way it was which was not easy not easy for me at all before you knew it dad ran out of space in the apartment he needed to find a bigger place to put all his things [Music] well I saw it first one it was empty we came out alan is so proud of how he'd bought this big white elephant that his father called it and asking how he's gonna heat it and how he's gonna what are you gonna do with it and for all these rooms basements and everything what are you ever gonna do with this and I said aren't you gonna feel like rattling around in this oh oh I said I'm gonna make this very homey the house may have started out empty but it didn't take long for dad to create his natural habitat but that desire to fill in every nook and cranny could get him into trouble sometimes we went into the what I call the big room I remember standing there and I remember saying to him now how do you sort of visualize this room and he said well I the way I see it is that we would have you know a few sculptures here and a couple of paintings on the wall and would be a lovely space and you know the piano over here and I said that sounds that sounds terrific you know well of course within weeks the room has suddenly become absolutely chock-a-block full but the crowning thing was he always said he liked the room because it had French doors and that he thought that that you know the French doors were such a great advantage I got two planks I measured the type forty there seemed to be clearance I reared back you know I opened the doors drove by 40 up on the two planks into the room but I measured wrong and I got stuck halfway in and I felt to say foot a little foolish is the understatement of the year I had to call the local garage guy with the tow truck to come and pull tow a car out of my house and of course he had never forgotten that's all he ever talked about was that crazy Allen Stone who was trying to drive cars into his mom and dad's friends who came to visit usually learned a thing or two about dad and his compulsions I did learn later about those fetish figures that Alan used to come down in the middle of the night when he wasn't sleeping and move them around can change them uh you couldn't really tell if you weren't Alan if he does matter because there was so much commotion that I I did really wonder how everybody lived there you know as far as all of you and all that was going on but I guess it was easy to move things and you did both things when you needed well actually we never dared to move anything because when things broke that was beyond terrifying it was reason to hide out from dad for hours or even days if possible and considering there were six girls running around the house it's a miracle more things didn't break mom tried to resist the onslaught even though she was ultimately powerless to stop it in fact it has been one of their most dependable fights over the years mom trying to streamline the operation and dad boarding her at every turn dad brought stuff home every day every day there was stuff in his trunk and Claire it did what didn't take long for Claire to be standing at the door like this saying what are you bringing home now Alan I don't want you to be home one more thing people a twosome good tobacco figures from an auction and I helped him load them in the wagon and he's driving around I see him the next day a following day the wagons still got the to tobacco figures at it I said Alan you're nuts and someone's gonna steal these things he says I can't get him out of the house Claire's there but I mean is it something that you feel like you were born with like a gene yeah yeah who do you think had it stony I've been learning a lot more lately about stony but I never knew he was a collector too he would go to these auctions auction houses in New York and the furniture would arrive we lived in Stanford and we were always moving from this house to a bigger house to accommodate all the furniture was buying he said that he used to go to these auctions to work off nervous energy his lifestyle his house was like a stage setting well you know not not much was it was real everything looked like old ancestors and real old paintings but a lot of it was the air size and wasn't it was all faux yes I'm just he died in 72 and and I I was I had turned the corner by then he told people although he never told me he told people that he's very proud of the fact I was doing so well in the field he never said that to me no the only thing he never said to do that it was that I was probably the luckiest person he ever knew you know things like that while dad's obsessive urge to collect may have come from Stony he is definitely motivated by something else something I was having a hard time putting my finger on so I asked him what he thought caused his compulsive collecting the compulsion to you know collect things your own things is it's hard to explain really you know some precising some psychologists explain it in terms of wanting to perpetuate your life through these objects in other words you can extend your life through the life of the object here serve a classical nail fetish now the magic is kept in the butt and the belly here in this box and the magic consists of animal teeth and fur and bones and so forth and so on and this has a mirror on it you see on the box and the eyes are mirrored and the idea is that the evil spirit sees itself sees his reflection in the mirror and is frightened away so it keeps away the evil spirits you see but I think there is a method to his sort of collecting madness in the way I mean he likes a lot of stimulus and he also he believes in magic I mean he really believes in magic and so he gets from some of the fetish piece of tribal pieces and gets a sense of you know their power how do you feel about all these various spirits and spiritual figures living together in this house I love them it just absolutely this is what energizing how do you think they feel I think they feel they have a home here this is like their and I think maybe this was keeping me alive I'm not getting some of the heavy painted like abstract expressionist stuff have in a sense almost of fetish kind of quality to them that surface some of the surfaces but then on the other side of that he likes like really finely crafted and sort of sleek things like say for instance those bugatti things you know but there's also kind of a fetish quality about that surface even though it's sort of the other other end well I think the the rough tough that sort of tortured surfaces in a fetish you have a repetition of the use of blades or nails or pieces of glass or whatever you're driving it so in that sense it is repetitive and if you want to call it compulsive you could you could call it compulsive say this Congo and nail fetishes you see I mean every every nail or blade that's driven in represents a prayer or contract with the gods to make the crops grow to keep the village safer to get get your mother-in-law these are very exciting things for me and here's a piece by Armand the French sculptor this is made from old antique pistols he calls this fetish clue which is which means nail fetish in French and he's making an analogy to these so is that right because he's a big collector of primitive art okay and he also loves this stuff you see he comes until a studio and he looks around at the work and he starts talking about something else and the whole time he's watching and looking at it and he's responding to it and and then he slowly gets around he says well he says this is this one this one has it doesn't it and if you ask him what is it he says well you know like this and and you know it's some kind of grit it's some it's some kind of visceral response that he has and here's David Beck who knows that with a lot of things I like he's always making fun of me and making comments and here's a piece that he made which is sort of a contemporary fetish figure scene with all the nail sticking out of him I mean like for example say czar was one of the sculptors whose work I like a lot the French sculptor and his services were very worked over and he he was in an exhibition at the modern called new images of man had a lot to do with the imagery that came out of World War two where you have a lot of tortured surfaces and sort of broken figures and I mean you know and or even people like Giacometti whose figures look so sort of gaunt and and needy and and I think that aesthetic is one that has always appealed to me I don't know why I don't know if it has to do with compulsive you know a compulsion maybe because there's something in my in my being that's also you know very sympathetic to that or feels that way you know it's hard it's I I I'm not I don't really like to psychoanalyze my mother I'm not into that disposition okay I like to keep moving and and I don't like to pull the flower out of the ground to see why it's growing okay I dislike to see if the flower is beautiful eyes are wonderful but I don't feel the need to to up brew it and examine it carefully dad may not want to analyze things but I can't help myself dad's obsessions were terrifying most kids think there are monsters under their bed at some point but in our case the monsters were often real the house itself was a little alarming to me I was always convinced that there would be dead bodies and I remember in Alison's room dad had a African mask by the nightlight which as the last thing I saw every night when I turned the light off while I was occupying Alison's room really terrified me so I took my mask and put it somewhere else in the house and every day I come back from school and it was back by the nightlight dad and I never discussed this but I would move it and it would come back his dad has this you know phenomenally organized mind he remembers where everything is and if it's in the wrong place he puts it back you know so after about a week of this I moved back to my room so the mask dad one mask one dad's compulsive collecting had its downside for the artists and dealers he worked with - he never would sell anything and I once had a client who wanted to buy a piece - Sanji figure from him he agreed to sell it and this was a Thursday that said the money he called me said look you'll get your commission but I can't sell this piece you know I happen suspected it and I told the woman you know what had happened so I never asked him to sell anything again you know because I know it's not gonna happen maybe I'll trade you a piece of you like for you enough when I first started with him his somewhat infuriating because he would wanted to work with you know and as opposed to selling somebody else which is ok but I mean it's sort of like whoa and kind of what doesn't get out as much when he goes in to buy things it's not one thing it's usually quantified by fifteen or twenty or the whole damn thing I remember once I I had a client came in to me was looking for a particular Gorky draw Alice I do happen to have that drawer I remember buying it 18 years ago I said can I come up and look at it with the clients I think works in the office were stacked up deep like an ancient library you know and he couldn't find the word he knew was there somewhere in the office but he said it would take him the afternoon to be able to locate the object that was characteristic of the way he massed beautiful objects there isn't any baloney in what he does it's just straight the work has to be something that he's really interested in likes he doesn't want to be told by anybody critics or otherwise what he should be doing or what he's done he's his own special man then he wants to keep it that way being in an artist studio has never lost its thrill for dad throughout the 70s and 80s he was visiting artists all the time some may have been more famous than others but the most important thing to dad was seeing the work and being in the studio the place where the magic happened by the 1980s the gallery was in its prime it was a happening place but big changes were afoot with the beginning of the contemporary art auctions in New York when Christie's first came to New York they started doing the contemporary auctions in the city for the first time I mean it was really fun in the beginning and we did a lot of things with Christie's you know we and Allen was very involved with Christy helped them a lot in the beginning getting their contemporary art section going and then the gallery started sort of losing ground to the auction houses and I think that was very you know a sad to see because I felt like that people got more and more excited about coming to New York just to go to the auctions and less about seeing shows and seeing what was going on in the galleries but it became a more kind of reckless type of collecting in the early 80s and late eighties people began to collect because they've been getting information from all sources that you could collect for profit that that art was an investment up to a certain point as Jim you could say up until nineteen seventy seventy-five you collected art because something that you wanted to have in your life and then it there were certain little auction events that took place which would indicate to a lot of people that are twenty value very dramatically in certain instances and then if you got on a certain bandwagon and you had the information much less the expertise you could collect for profit you know was a disheartening kind of a sentiment when the art market in the 80s late 80s started going berserk the way the banks were getting involved and Citibank was lending money to collect it so they could buy works of art I thought all that kind of hype with fur and healthy for the art market he came into a place and everybody was aware there was going to be some very serious bidding on something he didn't come to sales where I just saw him sitting on his hands he came when he had something to buy and that stirred excitement in the space because it was going to be some fierce bidding and it always was you know he would go to an auction and I always thought that funny-looking how on stone going there and those old ruffled clothes and the you know unpressed pants and all these guys all dressed up to the nines there Alan it would be in the first row buying the de Kooning's for you know seven or eight million dollars or whatever and it just goes to show that's his commitment in the late 80s Alan set a number of records at auction for abstract expressionist works by people like Franz Kline and de Kooning and Gorky and I was with him on a number of these occasions and once I was with him he set a record for Franz Kline painting called 9th Street and on the way out he was accosted by Rita rife in New York Times who was asking him about it and his response was while I tried to get my clients interested in this painting but but no one was so I'm gonna hang in my living room and that is exactly what he did dad's collecting kept apace but after a certain point of density I had stopped noticing still there was no getting around the fact that there was so much stuff which leads to one of dad's favorite stories about me my nickname is Posey by the way Posey stone comes back from the ball she came to the house like this with her arms folded and she walked around the house and looked around came back to me bunch of dad we have too much dad and I said no Posey I have too much you have nothing that was the way it went I think right never forgot that did you both [Music] I've been surprised to hear that there have been blips and dad's voracious appetite for art you know there was a period there when I was looking at a lot of you know the artists young artists of worth when I when there was no buzz I thought maybe my my buzz equipment had gone dead and I thought I said my god maybe I've just I've done so I'm getting so old and all that equipment is just sort of dried up and it's no longer working but then when I saw something then I got that bus ride oh my god thank God it's still alive it's still there yes I would know I think I think it I think yeah yeah I got it I got it yesterday when I had lunch with Alison we would stop by a little antique shop and I saw something there that I got a real buzz from yeah I did and I did there are certain things in a person's life that are that they can do without and there are other things that are so essential to them that if you remove them they would wither and if you removed arch from Allan he would wither I believe that I mean people have different things in their lives that are those things but for him art is nourishment collectors are obviously maniacs on some level they have obsessions that I myself don't understand but I think is in some way very beautiful and has to do with love I guess all of a sudden you started feeling that your work in a way it was no matter what it was and you were really proud sometimes that it could stand in this place and still hold on to itself but in some ways you felt that Allen was the artist you know that he that he had he had the passion and he he was the artist that he was just unbelievable collages you know only instead of using little bits of newspapers and you know strings or whatever you find he would be collecting these these pieces of artwork and creating this incredible collage ova in his home this incredible environment well I don't think it's really that bad yet it'll get working take a look around you'll see this still it's still breathing space [Music] [Applause] I'm gonna put that in my in my tomb in the pyramid that I'm gonna take that with me along with some special oils public [Music] [Music]

Channel: MOVIES FreeVer

Views: 108,600

Keywords: art, artist, art collectors, container, variety, documentary

Id: jb9vMdVxDsA

Length: 61min 26sec (3686 seconds)

Published: Tue Aug 21 2018