The works these four art stars acquire are eclectic and personal, providing plenty of source material for their own impressive creativity.
Jeff Koons believes that all great artists make reference to other artists, so he’s hung a varied selection of works in his bedroom. On the back wall, from left: Nicolas Poussin’s 17th-century ‘‘Jupiter and Antiope or Venus and Satyr’’; Édouard Manet’s ‘‘Quatre Pommes,’’ 1882; Pablo Picasso’s ‘‘Deux Personnages (Marie- Thérèse et sa soeur lisant),’’ 1934, and ‘‘Tête de Femme (Dora Maar),’’ 1941; René Magritte’s ‘‘Les idées claires,’’ 1955.
Photograph by Stefan Ruiz. Produced by Gay Gassmann.
Jeff Koons
When Jeff Koons speaks about the “biological” subtext of his art, he’s alluding to the sexual references embedded within. (Think of the hoses and tanks of his vacuum cleaners, the crevices and shanks of his stainless steel balloon figures.) When Koons looks at the art he collects — old and modern masters including Picasso, Dalí and Courbet — he sees much the same thing.
The composition of a William-Adolphe Bouguereau nude that welcomes visitors to the Upper East Side townhouse he shares with his wife, Justine, and their six children is “vaginal,” he says, while a Manet painting of a boat displays “aspects of boat gender.” (To Koons, ships are metaphors for sexuality.) The Picasso portrait in his living room combines the faces of two women. “The whole thing is phallic.” In his bedroom, where nearly every painting — by Poussin, Magritte, Fragonard and more — is a celebration of desire, another Picasso depicting the artist making love is “about conquest, both artistic and sexual.”
If it seems as if he has a one-track mind, let it be said that the art in his possession affects his whole being. “I think art is about transcendence and consciousness, making connections to things in the world,” he says. “Your excitement comes from the senses.” But he doesn’t collect just because it turns him on. It also provides him with material for his own work. There’s another reason, too. “It’s collecting human history. That’s the way I look at it.”
COMIC RELIEF Brian Donnelly, a.k.a. KAWS, pays tribute to his favorite graphic and pop artists in his new studio in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, which he built with the interior design firm Wonderwall. His collection includes (top left) Peter Saul‘s ‘‘Untitled (Bathroom),’’ 1960, and (top center) ‘‘Superman,’’ 1963; (to his right) Joyce Pensato’s ‘‘Erased Mickey,’’ 2004; and (on the side table) his own ‘‘Wood Companion,’’ 2011.
Photograph by Stefan Ruiz. Produced by Gay Gassmann.
KAWS
“I’m like a cat lady, but with drawings and paintings,” says Brian Donnelly, the 39-year-old artist known as KAWS. Earnings from the sales of the wildly popular, limited-edition toys based on “Companion,” a melancholic Mickey Mouse-like sculpture, enabled him to acquire art that might naturally appeal to a formally trained painter who came out of graffiti and skate culture. (KAWS was his graffiti tag, chosen because he liked “the interaction of the lettering.”)
The collection reflects his refined, comic-book aesthetic in works by Raymond Pettibon, H. C. Westermann, R. Crumb, Ed Ruscha, the Chicago Imagists Karl Wirsum and Jim Nutt, and Peter Saul, whose cartoonish paintings make searing social commentary. “I have Sauls everywhere,” Donnelly says. “It’s crazy how much stuff today looks like his work.” He also owns 28 small canvases by the Japanese graphic artist Tadanori Yokoo (comic updates on paintings by Henri Rousseau), a charcoal by Joyce Pensato (a painter of cartoon figures) and a 1965 collage of comic-book cutouts by Ray Yoshida, a teacher of Nutt’s. “I grew up with a Keith Haring poster,” Donnelly says, but “I always wanted a drawing.” He has it now.
All of these works are modestly scaled, so more of them will fit in the offices above Donnelly’s sleek, two-story painting studio in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, while other pieces are displayed in the nearby apartment he shares with his wife, the painter Julia Chiang. “It’s really different when you go to a gallery or museum and then walk into your kitchen and look at something again,” he says.
SPARE ROOM While Ugo Rondinone’s furniture collection is made up of blue-chip names like Charlotte Perriand and Ettore Sottsass, the artists he collects at his new Harlem space are more diversified, with works like (from left): Sarah Lucas’s ‘‘Michael,’’ 1999; Joe Brainard’s ‘‘Flowers” collage, 1970; Valentin Carron’s ‘‘Le Souffleteur,’’ 2005; and Latifa Echakhch’s ‘‘Frame,’’ 2012 (on the floor).
Photograph by Stefan Ruiz. Produced by Gay Gassmann.
Ugo Rondinone
Ugo Rondinone collects the work of other artists for the same reason he makes his own. “Art energizes me,” he says. That’s an understatement, considering his own prodigious output — paintings of soft-edged targets, neon rainbow signs, cast-aluminum olive trees, huge masks, scholar’s rocks amped up to monumental scale.
“I believe in the spirituality and the magic of an artwork,” says Rondinone, a Swiss-born New Yorker, 49, who can hardly remember a time when he didn’t own art by other people.
At first, they were other Swiss artists, Meret Oppenheim and Fischli and Weiss, and friends like Urs Fischer and Valentin Carron. Later, some pieces were by game changers like the British Pop artist Clive Barker or the button-pushing Sarah Lucas. The nearly 200 works in his collection today will soon have a new home in the 15,500-square-foot deconsecrated church in Harlem where he is building a studio and exhibition space. Most are by artists who are underappreciated by the market — Bruno Gironcoli (his teacher), Alan Shields, Nancy Grossman, Joe Brainard, Ann Craven and Sam Gilliam, among them. “They’re the ones I can afford,” says Rondinone, who also curates impressive group exhibitions of rare or unknown works by the artists he prizes, often dedicating the shows to the poet John Giorno, his romantic partner since 1997. But Rondinone also loves the early-20th-century Romantic landscapes of the American painter Louis Michel Eilshemius. (He owns 20.)
MUSEUM QUALITY Chuck Close never spent time in this NoHo living room when it was a minimalist, white space. But now that he’s painted it, he likes to admire works like (centered above cabinet) Thomas Willeboirts Bosschaert’s ‘‘Cleopatra With an Asp,’’ 17th century; (above fireplace) Antonio Molinari’s ‘‘Heiliger Bartholomäus,’’ 17th century; (on floor, right) a bust by Kiki Smith; and (far right) a Roman marble head of the Emperor Hadrian, circa A.D. 117-138.
Photograph by Stefan Ruiz. Produced by Gay Gassmann.
Chuck Close
Painting and photographing the human face — recently Barack Obama’s — is Chuck Close’s primary occupation, but portraiture also consumes his domestic life. The living room of his NoHo apartment doubles as a gallery for Dutch, Flemish and Italian old masters like van Dyck, Rembrandt, Titian and Tintoretto, as well as for African art.
A white marble bust of Hadrian, carved from life in the second century A.D., sits near a window, while a gilded Italian altarpiece, dated 1310, hangs over a Gerrit Rietveld cabinet. “When I studied Greek and Roman art,” Close says, “I didn’t know or care who the subjects were. Now I’m thinking, Hey, who’s Hadrian? Turns out he was a gay emperor. And a pacifist.”
Close, who is 73, has been bound to a motorized wheelchair since 1988, when a spinal artery collapse caused near-total paralysis. That didn’t dampen his enthusiasm for either making art or collecting it, and other things as well, like flea-market washboards and antique welders’ masks that he places “somewhere between the African art and Darth Vader.” Strangely, he says, “I’m not acquisitive.” Yet on either side of an interior hallway are dozens of portraits, small drawings, photographs and paintings, many by artists Close has painted. They include Willem de Kooning, Eric Fischl, Cindy Sherman, Irving Penn and Alex Katz, as well as Jacob Lawrence, Diane Arbus and Man Ray. Most were trades, though a cut-paper collage by Ray Johnson was a purchase. One section of the work is blank, removed by the artist after Close requested a 20 percent discount. “Contemporary art is the most overpriced, overvalued stuff — thank God,” he says. “But old masters are the most powerful.”
這四位著名藝術家收藏的藝術品風格各異，很有個性，為他們各自令人欽佩的創造力提供了很多素材。
傑夫·昆斯認為，所有偉大的藝術家都借鑒其他藝術家，所以他在卧室里懸掛各種作品。後面牆上左起：尼古拉斯·普珊(Nicolas Poussin)17世紀的《朱庇特和安提俄珀或維納斯和薩梯》(Jupiter and Antiope or Venus and Satyr)；愛德華·馬奈(Édouard Manet)的《四個蘋果》(Quatre Pommes)，1882；巴勃羅·畢加索(Pablo Picasso)的《兩個人》(Deux Personnages)，1934；《妻子的頭》(Tête de Femme)，1941；勒內·馬格里特(René Magritte)的《清晰的想法》(Les idées claires)，1955。
Photograph by Stefan Ruiz. Produced by Gay Gassmann.
傑夫·昆斯(Jeff Koons)：當傑夫·昆斯談論自己藝術作品的「生物性」內涵時，他指的是其中隱藏的性暗示（想想他設計的吸塵器上的軟管和機箱以及不鏽鋼氣球人物的縫隙和腿）。昆斯收藏的藝術品來自古代和現代的藝術大師，包括畢加索(Picasso)、達利(Dalí)和庫爾貝(Courbet)。昆斯從這些藝術品中看到的是同樣的東西。
他和妻子賈斯汀妮(Justine)以及六個孩子居住在上東區的聯排別墅中。威廉-阿道夫·布格羅(William-Adolphe Bouguereau)畫的裸女在歡迎客人們的來到。他說那幅畫描繪的是「陰道」，而馬奈(Manet)畫的小船展示的是「船的性別」（在昆斯看來，船象徵著性慾）。他客廳里畢加索的肖像畫是兩個女人臉的組合。「整幅畫象徵著生殖器。」他卧室里有普珊(Poussin)、馬格里特(Magritte)和弗拉戈納爾(Fragonard)等人的作品，幾乎全是在讚美性慾。畢加索的另一幅描繪自己做愛的畫是「關於征服的，藝術上和性上的征服」。
他似乎只有單一思維，或者說他擁有的藝術品影響了他的全部。「我覺得藝術是關於超越和意識的，是和世界上的事物發生聯繫，」他說，「你的興奮來自感覺。」但是他收藏這些藝術品不僅是因為它們激發了他的性慾。它們也給他提供了創作素材。另外還有一個原因。「我是在收藏人類歷史。我是這麼看的。」
卡伍斯在他位於布魯克林威廉斯堡的新工作室里對他喜歡的平面和波普藝術家們表示敬意。（左上）彼得·索爾的《無名（浴室）》(Untitled [Bathroom])，1960；（上中）《超人》(Superman)，1963；（他右邊）喬伊斯·彭薩托的《被抹去的米老鼠》(『Erased Mickey)，2004；（桌子上）他自己的《木頭夥伴》(Wood Companion)，2011。
Photograph by Stefan Ruiz. Produced by Gay Gassmann.
卡伍斯(KAWS)：「我像個貓夫人，不過我收藏的是素描和油畫，」39歲的藝術家布萊恩·唐納利(Brian Donnelly)說。他更為人知的名字是卡伍斯。他根據「夥伴」（Companion，一個米老鼠似的憂鬱的雕塑）設計的限量版玩具大受歡迎。玩具的銷售收入讓他能夠購買一些藝術品。這些藝術品吸引這位出身塗鴉和滑板文化而後接受正式培訓的畫家似乎是很自然的事情（卡伍斯是他塗鴉作品的署名，他選這個名字是因為喜歡這個名字「字母間的互動」）。
他的藏品反映出他精妙的漫畫審美傾向。這些作品來自雷蒙德·佩蒂伯恩(Raymond Pettibon)，H·C·韋斯特曼(H. C. Westermann)，R·克拉姆(R. Crumb)，埃德·拉斯查(Ed Ruscha)，芝加哥意象派藝術家卡爾·威瑟姆(Karl Wirsum)和吉姆·納特(Jim Nutt)，以及彼得·索爾(Peter Saul)。索爾的卡通式油畫引發了熱烈的社會評論。「我在哪兒都能看到索爾式的作品，」唐納利說，「不可思議的是現在很多東西都看起來像他的作品。」他還有日本平面藝術家橫尾忠則的28幅小油畫（是對亨利·盧梭[Henri Rousseau]油畫的漫畫升級），喬伊斯·彭薩托（Joyce Pensato，一位卡通人物畫家）的木炭畫，以及雷·吉田（Ray Yoshida，納特的一位老師）1965年創作的漫畫書拼貼畫。唐納利說「我從小就有凱斯·哈林(Keith Haring)的一張海報」，但是「我一直想擁有他的一幅油畫」。現在他擁有了。
所有這些作品體積都不大，所以唐納利位於布魯克林威廉斯堡的兩層豪華繪畫室上面的辦公室里會有更多這樣的作品，而其他一些作品則展示在他和妻子、畫家朱莉婭·蔣(Julia Chiang)附近的家中。「你在畫廊或博物館與在自家廚房看同一件作品的感覺是不同的，」他說。
烏戈·羅迪納在哈萊姆區新展廳里的藏品更多樣化：莎拉·盧卡斯的《邁克爾》(Michael)，1999；喬·布雷納德的《花朵》拼貼畫，1970；瓦倫汀·卡倫的《扇耳光的人》(Le Souffleteur)，2005；拉季法·埃卡切(Latifa Echakhch)的《框架》(Frame)，2012（在地板上）。
Photograph by Stefan Ruiz. Produced by Gay Gassmann.
烏戈·羅迪納(Ugo Rondinone)：烏戈·羅迪納收藏其他藝術家作品的原因與自己創作的原因是一樣的。「藝術激發我的活力，」他說。他這是自謙，因為他自己的作品十分巨大：邊緣模糊的靶心、霓虹招牌、鋁鑄橄欖樹、巨大的面具和藝術家的岩石規模都大得驚人。
「我相信藝術品具有靈性和魔力，」羅迪納說。49歲的羅迪納是瑞士出生的紐約人，他一向愛收藏其他人的作品。
他最初收藏的是其他瑞士藝術家的作品，比如梅列特·奧本海姆(Meret Oppenheim)，菲施利(Fischli)和韋斯(Weiss)，以及朋友們的作品，比如烏爾斯·費舍爾(Urs Fischer)和瓦倫汀·卡倫(Valentin Carron)。後來收藏的是一些改變遊戲規則的人的作品，比如英國波普藝術家克里夫·巴克(Clive Barker)或者富於刺激性的莎拉·盧卡斯(Sarah Lucas)。如今，他收藏的近200件作品將很快搬到哈林區的新家。他把那裡的一座15500平方英尺的教堂改建成了一個工作室和展廳。這些作品大多來自那些未被市場充分賞識的藝術家，比如他的老師布魯諾·吉隆考利(Bruno Gironcoli)，艾倫·希爾茲(Alan Shields)，南希·格羅斯曼(Nancy Grossman)，喬·布雷納德(Joe Brainard)，安·克拉文(Ann Craven)和山姆·吉列姆(Sam Gilliam)。「它們是我買得起的作品，」羅迪納說。他還策划了一些讓人印象深刻的集體展覽，展出的是他賞識的一些藝術家的罕見的或不出名的作品，通常他把這些展覽獻給他從1997年起的戀人、詩人約翰·吉奧諾(John Giorno)。但是羅迪納也很喜歡20世紀初美國畫家路易斯·邁克爾·艾爾希米厄斯(Louis Michel Eilshemius)的浪漫風景畫（他有20幅這樣的畫）。
查克·克洛斯客廳里的藏品：（櫥柜上方正中）托馬斯·威利波茨·波斯查多特(Thomas Willeboirts Bosschaert)的《克利奧帕特拉和毒蛇》(Cleopatra With an Asp)，17世紀；（壁爐上方）安東尼奧·莫利納里(Antonio Molinari)的《海利格爾·巴塞羅繆斯》(Heiliger Bartholomäus)，17世紀；（地板上，右邊）奇奇·史密斯(Kiki Smith)雕刻的半身像；（最右邊）羅馬皇帝哈德良的半身像，大約創作於117年至138年。
Photograph by Stefan Ruiz. Produced by Gay Gassmann.
查克·克洛斯(Chuck Close)：查克·克洛斯的主要工作是肖像繪畫和攝影，最近的對象是貝拉克·奧巴馬(Barack Obama)，但是肖像畫也佔據他的家庭生活。他NoHo公寓的客廳同時也是荷蘭、佛蘭德和意大利早期繪畫大師的展廳，比如范·戴克(van Dyck)，倫布蘭特(Rembrandt)，提香(Titian)和丁托列托(Tintoretto)，另外還有一些非洲藝術作品。
窗邊放着哈德良(Hadrian)的白色大理石半身雕像，它是在公元二世紀以他本人為模特雕刻的。1310年的一件意大利鍍金祭壇飾品懸掛在格里特·里特韋爾(Gerrit Rietveld)設計的櫥柜上方。「我當時學希臘和羅馬藝術時，」克洛斯說，「不知道也不關心那些創作對象是誰。現在我在想，嘿，誰是哈德良？最後發現他是個同性戀皇帝。還是個和平主義者。」
73歲的克洛斯從1988年起就被困在機動輪椅上，當時脊動脈栓塞差點讓他完全癱瘓。那並沒有削弱他創作或收藏藝術品的熱情。他也收藏其他一些東西，比如放在「非洲藝術品和達斯·維德(Darth Vader)之間」的跳蚤市場的搓板和老式焊工面具。奇怪的是，他說，「我沒有佔有慾。」但是室內走廊的兩邊有幾十幅肖像畫、小幅素描、攝影作品和油畫，克洛斯給這些作品的作者們大都畫過肖像，包括威廉·德·庫寧(Willem de Kooning)，埃里克·費舍爾(Eric Fischl)，辛迪·謝爾曼(Cindy Sherman)，歐文·佩恩(Irving Penn)和亞歷克斯·卡茨(Alex Katz)，以及雅可布·勞倫斯(Jacob Lawrence)，黛安·阿布斯(Diane Arbus)和曼·雷(Man Ray)。這些作品大多是交換來的，不過雷·約翰遜(Ray Johnson)的剪貼畫是買來的。那件作品有一塊空白，是在克洛斯要求打八折之後被約翰遜去掉的。「當代藝術品要價過高，是價值最被高估的作品——感謝上帝，」他說，「但是早期繪畫大師是最強大的。」
本文最初發表於2013年12月5日的T Magazine。
翻譯：王相宜
