Sir Elton John with Man Rayâs âNoire et Blanche.â
Celebrities are just like us in the sense that they have hobbies too, and some of them enjoy collecting artâand a lot of it. With a wide variety of tastes ranging from Old Masters to more contemporary artists and media, these celebs can be found at Art Basel (OG as well as Miami) as well as the auction and gallery circuit. While heavy hitters like John McEnroe prefer to sell art, others are content to enjoy art for arts sake, and many own several pieces of particular favs.
Post Inspiration: That Madonnaâs WWII Artwork post someone posted a few weeks ago. I also want to acknowledge itsme_eloise (who suggested I do a post on celebrity art collections), and espressotorte and squirrels_oh_no who made suggestions and provided useful links.
The Criteria: This list only includes celebs who genuinely love art and having it in their homes (as opposed to âcollectorsâ who buy things only to promptly store them in a warehouse somewhere). Thatâs not collecting, thatâs hoarding; and we shall have none of that here.
Steve Martin
This âWild and Crazy Guyâ has been an avid collector from the age of 21. The comedian owns artworks by contemporary American artists such as Cindy Sherman, Eric Fischl, and Roy Lichtenstein, as well as examples of post-war paintings by Edward Hopper, and a Willem de Kooning drawing. His collection tends to be a bit on the conservative side as it includes only paintings, photography, and drawings and contains little avant-garde, conceptual, or media art.
Not sure which Cindy Sherman he actually owns so here is one of my favorite photographs from her famous âUntitled Film Stillsâ series.
Fun Fact: Martin considers collecting art as one of his biggest hobbies. In an 1987 interview he stated âArt is so different from what I do that itâs an escape for me⌠Itâs like, good grief, these things are so beautifulâhow did this happen?â
Elton John
The Rocket Man knows what type of art he likes, and what he likes is photography and lots of it. His collection includes work by Cindy Sherman, Nan Goldin, and Robert Mapplethorpe along with works by Minor White, Irving Penn, Man Ray, and George Platt Lynes. Not only does he has a veritable museum-quality collection of works, in 2016 he loaned a good portion of his works to the Tate Modern for the show âThe Radical Eye: Modernist Photography From the Sir Elton John Collection.â
As most of the Mapplethorpes in Sir Eltonâs collection are severely explicit in nature as per ONTD rules we canât have that here. Anyone who has ever seen his more erotic works knows exactly what Iâm talking about. Here is a photograph from his acclaimed âFlowerâ series instead.
Fun Fact: Once owned one of the rare Basquiat/Warhol collaborative pieces, which he consigned to Sothebyâs and sold for a cool $935,000.
Oprah Winfrey
Oprah loves Americana art and has many pieces spread out amongst her various estates; a tour of one of her homes revealed works by sculptor Gaston Lachaise and painter Harry Roseland in her library, and at her Indiana farmhouse a portrait by Thomas Hart Benton called To The Highest Bidder depicts a female slave on the auction block hangs for all to see. Oprah is a big fan of Benton as she also owns his Back From the Fields (1945), which hangs above her mantlepiece.
Portrait of Adele Bloch-Bauer II : Klimt
Fun Fact: Originally purchased in 2006, Oprah auctioned off Gustav Klimtâs Portrait of Adele Bloch-Bauer II for a cool $150 million dollars (Why, OprahâŚWhy? Itâs a Klimt, goddammit! It was all so beautiful onceâŚ).
Madonna
Madonna loves the female artists and has a particular fondness for works by Frieda Kahlo and Tamara de Lempicka as she owns several works by both. A particular favorite is Kahloâs My Birthwhich she hung in her house as a type of litmus test for people and has famously stated she knew she couldn’t fuck with anyone with negative impressions of it. Her fondness for that particular painting is such that she has repeatedly refused to loan it out to different museums for special exhibits (though she did make an exception for The Tate once, lol). Other works in her collection include Man Ray, Diego Rivera, and Salvator Dali. In addition, she also owns Fernand LĂŠgerâs Les Deux Bicyclettes, Picassoâs Buste de Femme a la Frange, and is a fan of guerrilla street artists Banksy and JR.
My Birth: Frida Kahlo
Fun Fact: When she and Basquiat were dating he gave her a few paintings but he either destroyed/took them back after they broke up because he was salty, lol.
Sean Puffy Combs
Is a big fan of Kerry James Marshall, and by âbig fanâ I mean heâs bought some really pricey pieces because the good sir Kerry doesnât come cheap. Has been spotted at Art Basel: Miami with art advisor to the stars Maria Brito (where he was checking out works by Ruben Ortiz Torres and Julieta Aranda) and is a regular on the art circuit.
Past Times (1997): Kerry James Marshall
Fun Fact: Diddy made history when he made the winning bid on Kerry James Marshallâs Past Times (1997) at Sothebyâs in 2018. The price? A record breaking 21.1 million, the highest price ever for a living African American artist.
Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie
One of the things that is probably being contested in their acrimous divorce is who gets the $25 million art collection the couple has amassed over the years. Their taste tends to run more towards street artists like Banksy and Dom Pattinson along with more traditional offerings from Ed Ruscha, Schoony, and Richard Serra.
Picnic: Banksy
Fun Fact: One of my personal favorites from their collection is the Banksy painting Picnic which depicts a rich family having a picnic while starving people look on.
Jane Fonda
Another fan of Americana, Jane Fondaâs collection has a special emphasis on Black Outsider art from the American South. Fonda is currently on the board of the âSouls Grown Deep Foundation & Community Partnershipâ which champions robust support systems for Black artists in the South. She started collecting their work twenty years ago, through late Atlanta art dealer Bill Arnett. Favorite artists include Thornton Dial Sr, his brother Arthur Dial, and Thornton Dial Jr; all of whom worked in mixed media and found objects. Both brothers lived through Jim Crow, and were influenced by the triumphs and tumult of the 1960s civil rights movementâand the leadership of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., which inspired Thornton Sr. to develop âan allegorical style that was abstracted but narrative, conveying concerns both personal and universal.â
Thornton Dial Sr., âUntitledâ(1993)
Fun Fact: Jane contributed 14 drawings, paintings, sculptures, and assemblages from her personal collection to Christieâs âOutsider and Vernacular Artâ auction that was held last month in New York.
I encourage everyone to check out the Artnet link featured below as there are several celebs in it not mentioned here such as Leonardo DiCaprio, Beyonce and Jay Z, Alicia Keyes, and others. ONTD, what artistâs work would you collect if you were rich? Discuss.
Die Quellen:
anterrabre
Source link