Leonard Lauder, 87, is an inheritor to the Estée Lauder Firms fortune. He been on ARTnews’s annual High 200 Collectors checklist since 1990. In 2013, he promised his Cubism assortment to New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Artwork, and has been a significant donor to the Whitney Museum. The next is an an excerpt from his newly revealed memoir The Firm I Preserve: My Life in Magnificence.
I’ve at all times had the soul of a collector. Ask any collector the way it all started, and also you’ll hear tales about childhood fascinations starting from bottle caps to beetles to baseball playing cards. I used to be no completely different. I began early and have been constructing collections ever since.
I used to be first bitten by the accumulating bug after I was eight years previous and attending a boarding faculty in Miami Seaside. My fellow college students used to gather and commerce postcards of the attractive Artwork Deco motels: “Hey, I’ll provide you with a Shelborne Resort for a Roney Plaza.” (Throughout World Warfare II, virtually the entire grand motels in Miami Seaside had been appropriated by the U.S. Air Drive to deal with cadets—apart from the Shelborne. As one of many few lively motels, its postcards had been significantly prized.)
I ultimately amassed over 125,000 classic postcards. Most had been donated to Boston’s Museum of High-quality Arts, with explicit collections going to the Neue Gallerie in New York, based by my brother, Ronald, and the Newberry Library in Chicago.
Postcards had been the “gateway drug” to my subsequent accumulating ardour: American posters. I acquired my first one in 1943, after I was 10. The Workplace of Warfare Data (OWI) issued a collection of patriotic posters. “Free Lips Sink Ships,” “Meals Is A Weapon—Don’t Waste It,” and, after all, “We Can Do It” (aka “Rosie the Riveter”), in addition to 1000’s of different slogans included into dramatic, vibrant photographs that captured my creativeness. One of the vital memorable: a sailor whose ship was torpedoed, desperately reaching out of the darkish waters beneath the ominous two-word warning of the implications of gossiping about convoy departures, “Somebody Talked!”
I ultimately donated practically 200 American posters to the Metropolitan Museum of Artwork in New York. And accumulating posters was the proper coaching/apply for the last word step for me: accumulating effective artwork. I had grow to be fascinated by trendy artwork again after I was in elementary faculty. I used to be loopy about movies and two or 3 times per week, I’d take the subway on my own—youngsters had a unprecedented quantity of freedom in these days—to observe traditional films on the Museum of Trendy Artwork. If I arrived early or had time after the movie ended, I might wander via the galleries. I didn’t uncover Cubism then, however I skilled the nice satisfaction of savoring an image repeatedly and making it “mine.”
My favourite items had been Pavel Tchelitchew’s Conceal-and-Search, Peter Blume’s The Everlasting Metropolis, and, particularly, Oskar Schlemmer’s The Bauhaus Steps (Bauhaustreppe), which hung over the principle staircase as you entered. What all these photos had in widespread was a brand new viewpoint, a brand new method of issues, so completely different from {a photograph}. Maybe that was the seed that germinated into my love of Cubism.
One other vital second got here in 1966, when Parke-Bernet, the most important auctioneer of effective artwork in the US earlier than being acquired by Sotheby’s, auctioned the gathering of the Pittsburgh industrialist G. David Thompson. It was a unprecedented assortment of Twentieth-century artwork. I went to Parke-Bernet two or 3 times, simply to view the works. It confirmed me how one collector may assemble an awesome group of work by completely different artists but go away his private stamp on them. As numerous as they had been, they had been related by what I got here to name “the collector’s glue.”
Additionally at the back of my thoughts, I feel I questioned why this nice assortment was being damaged up on the market to non-public house owners when it may have shaped the nucleus of a brand new museum or added energy to an present one. My first main artwork buy was from that public sale, a collage by Kurt Schwitters, a German summary artist working within the first half of the Twentieth century. I bear in mind sitting within the salesroom, elevating my hand and being terrified each step of the way in which. I couldn’t imagine that I used to be bidding all that cash—$3,500 was some huge cash for me—however I used to be enchanted by how Schwitters put the assorted items and supplies collectively in a method that was concurrently understandable and incomprehensible. I may take a look at that collage for hours.
I needed to have it.
The Three “O’s”
Each avid collector assembles their assortment for a special purpose: some do it for an funding; some do it to compete with different folks; some do it to brag over their hoard. There’s a narrative about one Japanese collector who cherished his Monet a lot that he requested to be buried with it.
Not me. I accumulate for 2 causes. First, for the fun of making an entire assortment. It’s exhausting for somebody who isn’t a loopy collector to completely perceive how thrilling it’s when you possibly can fill within the lacking aspect of a set. It’s like becoming in the important thing piece in a jigsaw puzzle or fixing a tricky clue in a crossword puzzle. There’s a deep sense of pleasure when the dots are related and all the pieces is sensible.
Observe that I mentioned “full assortment,” not “encyclopedic.” In my view, selectivity at all times performs a significant half in forming a unified assortment. There’s as a lot significance within the works I rejected as in those who made the ultimate lower; I selected them—or not—for his or her high quality, composition, and historic worth. The choices mirror my private imaginative and prescient of the gathering as a complete.
The second purpose I accumulate is to preserve and share what I’m assembling for current and future generations. For me, the last word satisfaction isn’t in possession however in constructing a museum-worthy compilation and giving it away.
The street to assembling a coherent assortment is usually meandering—a minimum of it was in my case. After I began to purchase “critical” artwork, it was actually a hodgepodge of artists and issues that I preferred: Gustav Klimt, Egon Schiele watercolors, and the ultimate research for Schlemmer’s The Bauhaus Steps, the portray I had cherished as a boy.
I used to be prepared to enter debt to purchase my first Klimt portray. Despite the fact that I had a fairly good revenue, I actually didn’t have the means to gather the artwork that I cherished. However my mom used to say, “You solely remorse what you don’t purchase.” I didn’t wish to remorse shedding that Klimt.
The event of the uneducated, untutored eye is a journey. You go from liking the nice to appreciating the higher to loving the very best. My brother Ronald, one of many nice collectors of our time, codified his strategy to accumulating into what he calls “the three O’s”: Oh! Oh, my! Oh, my God!!!
His rule: “Solely go for the third ‘O.’” The third “O” ensures that each piece is the very best it may be. I agree wholeheartedly.
Falling for Cubism
From my early visits to the Museum of Trendy Artwork, I used to be drawn to the Cubist Picassos. They weren’t as straightforward to know because the Impressionist work, corresponding to the nice water lily collection by Monet that was additionally at MoMA. There was at all times a complication, a grittiness that attracted me. I needed to work exhausting to find what was nice about them, however as soon as I did, I fell in love.
I acquired my first Cubist work, by Fernand Léger, in 1976, adopted by Picasso’s 1909 portray Carafe and Candlestick, in 1980. I started educating myself, studying concerning the painters who created Cubism, finding out their photos and philosophy, attending to know the artwork sellers and collectors who specialised of their works. I spent loads of time trying on the artwork at MoMA. I acquired each e book I may lay my arms on, particularly the catalogues raisonnés, these complete, annotated listings of all of the recognized artworks by an artist both in a specific medium or all media. I learn them repeatedly and once more, often whereas I used to be on my train bike within the morning. Every night, I might sit down and take a look at a Cubist portray. Every time, I might see one thing I hadn’t seen earlier than. I cherished studying about them and discovering the hidden secrets and techniques that had been in plain sight.
My textbook was Picasso: The Cubist Years, by Pierre Daix and Joan Rosselet. I pored over that e book virtually every day—though, to be sincere, I used to be extra within the photographs than within the typically dense, scholarly essays. And I at all times stored a watch peeled for the reference of the portray’s proprietor. If the supply mentioned “non-public assortment,” that meant that sometime it would come my method. If it did, I’d be prepared for it.
I used to be growing my eye and my self-confidence. One portray by Picasso—Nôtre Avenir est dans l ’Air, also called The Scallop Shell—significantly fascinated me. I realized all the pieces I may about it and, in 1984, to my delight, acquired it. In the future, I attended a lecture by Kirk Varnedoe, a superb artwork historian and the senior curator of artwork at MoMA. What needs to be projected onto the display screen however Nôtre Avenir. Varnedoe proclaimed, “This is without doubt one of the most vital Cubist photos ever painted.” Why? “As a result of it’s the turning level between the unique Analytical Cubism, which could be very summary, and the later Artificial Cubism, which has many extra parts in it and virtually appears like a collage—a background of whole abstraction and a foreground of objects pasted on high.”
I sat there within the darkened room and mentioned to myself, “That’s my image! May it’s that I’ve the makings of an awesome museum assortment?”
It was a turning level for me. From that second on, I felt assured that I may put collectively a set worthy of the very best museums on this planet.
I made a decision to focus my total accumulating efforts on Cubism and on the 4 artists who created the motion: Georges Braque, Pablo Picasso, Fernand Léger, and Juan Gris. Working at a time of revolutionary concepts—the early days of man-powered flight, Freud’s dream evaluation, Einstein’s idea of relativity—these 4 shattered conventions and blasted open a gateway to trendy artwork. I made up my mind to construct a set “with a connoisseur’s eye,” one that may convey Cubism’s full narrative arc.
All the pieces I selected needed to make the lower. What was the lower? I knew I wished my assortment to go to a museum, however there was extra to it. Many museums have key artistic endeavors which can be virtually at all times on show: consider Van Gogh’s Starry Evening at MoMA or Mona Lisa on the Louvre or Guernica in Madrid’s Museo Reina Sofia. Different works typically have a short second within the highlight, then are taken down. I wished to create a set during which each portray was robust sufficient to make any curator say, “Let’s stick with it longer.”
Happily, there was loads of Cubist artwork out there on the time. It was costly, sure, however the costs had been nowhere close to the stratosphere that work by Impressionist artists commanded.
I used to be one of many few folks purely in Cubism on the time. Christopher Burge, then the chairman of Christie’s in the US, informed me that each time he had an exhibition of up- coming artistic endeavors to be auctioned that included Cubist work, many individuals merely walked previous these photos, with out even glancing at them. They had been so obscure that individuals weren’t fascinated by accumulating them. Again then, the market was a lot stronger for Impressionism and Put up-Impressionism. I solely had sufficient cash to pay attention in a single space, and that was going to be Cubism. Moreover, specializing in the 4 key artists helped me to refine the gathering and preserve my assets in order that I might have funds to purchase the very best each time it got here alongside.
It was the start of 35 years of research, journey, shopping for, promoting, perseverance, errors, and refinement. I put in loads of miles over two continents researching, attending to know the suitable sellers, attending auctions, and “speaking photos off the wall” of personal collections.
I acquired to know the few sellers who specialised in Cubism. One of many earliest classes I realized: by no means be a bottom-fisherman. I at all times paid the value being requested and paid as rapidly as I may. Most artwork sellers by no means had sufficient prepared money, so if they might make a sale with out bargaining and obtain the cost instantly, they’d take into consideration me favorably—and the following time would name me first. That didn’t imply that I acquired all of the calls. However I acquired sufficient to make me joyful.
I’ve no regrets.
I can take a look at the items repeatedly and I’m at all times discovering one thing new. Every artist within the assortment realized from the others, and generally I see a relationship between them for the primary time or a hidden element that had gone beforehand unnoticed, or I study a component of the iconography that has simply been decoded. The collages, for instance, by no means stop to yield new references to the world at massive, to new methods of seeing. And that opens up new interpretations of different photos.
That’s what makes the gathering such a pleasure for me. I’ve no favourite photos. The gathering is a complete, like one piece of material. You may’t pull a single strand out with out all the pieces coming with it.
The results of my efforts would finally grow to be the Leonard A. Lauder Cubist Assortment of some 78 work, drawings, and sculptures, together with 33 Picassos and 17 Braques, which in 2013 was promised to the Metropolitan Museum of Artwork. The information made the entrance web page of the New York Instances—and above the fold, too.
From the e book The Firm I Preserve: My Life in Magnificence by Leonard A. Lauder. ©2020 by Leonard A. Lauder. Reprinted by permission of Harper Enterprise, an imprint of HarperCollins Publishers.