R. GRODEN STUDIO
A guide for collectors
by R. Groden
If I had to formulate one rule for the neophyte collector, it would be this: Buy the painting that looks all wrong over the mantle, over the sofa, or in your favorite room. At least then you will be purchasing the work for the right reason- because you fell in love with it not how it related to your decorating scheme.
Of course a painting should be hung in surroundings as friendly to it as possible; just don't put the cart before the old mule. It's easier to buy a can of paint for your walls than a satisfactory work of art. The person who runs around looking for a painting with lots of blue in it is likely to end up with just that and nothing more.
The first rule of collecting is that you always love, or at very least be intrigued by, a work of art. It should challenge you in some way, even if you can't define the way. You are involved with it, even though you don't know why; you don't have a place for it; you're not sure you can afford it, but you want it in spite of all these things.
If, having seen an object you covet, you go home to "think it over" and wake in the middle of the night in a panic that someone else may purchase it and it might escape you-- it will be lost to you forever and you dash out the first thing in the morning to make it yours--then you are a collector.
If forced for financial reasons to sell a loved work of art, you turn around and spend two thirds of the proceeds on another painting or piece of sculpture you can't resist -- you're caught for life.
What are some of the attributes that make up the true collector? Certainly two of the strongest components are greed, plain unadulterated greed, and plain, unadulterated love. Some people proceed cautiously and with restraint; others are driven on and on, propelled more by desire to possess than anything else.
William Randolph Hearst was the classic example of the latter type of collector. His warehouses bulged with art objects, much of it unseen by him, that had been gathered by agents around the world. There is a grossness about such collecting that is an insult to the work of art; this is true no matter how much is eventually done with the collection.
Unloved paintings hang on many walls; in fact, whole collections--sometimes, fine ones--have been formed with no personal involvment and for the wrong reasons: either social cachet or financial investment. To be a financial investor in art presupposes some ability of selection or, today, the ability to pay a high price for a sure thing, such as paintings by Picasso or Van Gogh.
This dealing in the blue chips of art is done in the hope that the price will escalate even further. Such a collector ends up with as much appreciation of the real pleasures of collecting as a share owner of Reynolds Aluminum Co. has of the power and beauty of a Bessemer furnace or a rolling mill.
The collector who has never made an error has probably been so calculating that he or she has missed half the fun along the way. The person whose enthusiasms and passions for beauty lead them to make mistakes is still more fortunate than the ones who lives with unloved but "safe" paintaings on his or her walls. The attics of the world are filled with yesterday's mistakes--just try not to make costly ones.
A drawing or small painting that you can afford to take achance on is one thing ; but if it's a painting that requires a sizeable investment, it is best to seek expert advice. It might be from a more seasoned collector -an artist friend, an instructor at one of the colleges in your area, or someone in the gallery business.
Gallery owners are, for the most part, deeply commited people, especially here in Maui, Hawaii. If they feel that you are serious about collecting, they will go out of their way to be helpful, not to authenticate or appraise, but to advise. Since they have had to cultivate a degree of detachment in their profession, they will give you an objctive answer if you ask them about a realist painter, for example, when their personal predilection may be for abstract art.
R. Groden ©
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