Collector’s Choice

Everything passes. Robust art alone is eternal.

The bust outlasts the citadel.

--Theophile Gautier (L’Art, 1832)

Museum directors, curators and private connoisseurs are constantly surrounded by choice artwork. Is that enough? If they could have one piece of art they don’t yet own or control, from any period, from anywhere in the world--what would it be?

Neoplasticism was the unique geometric style of abstract Dutch painter Piet Mondrian. “I would choose Mondrian’s ‘Victory Boogie Woogie,’ ” which is in a private collection in Connecticut, says Eli Broad, chief executive officer of Kaufman and Broad Inc. and founding chairman of the Museum of Contemporary Art. “Mondrian and other artists fled Europe during World War II and came to New York City. It was the beginning of a new era in art. . . . For me, ‘Victory Boogie Woogie’ signals the end of European dominance and the beginning of American post-World War II art.”

Joan Quinn, a member of the California Arts Council and chairman of the Art in Public Places Program, and her husband, John Quinn, a Los Angeles attorney, collect the works of contemporary California artists. Her choice is a fantasy: a portrait of herself painted by Giovanni Boldini, an Italian artist noted for portraits of nobility and society figures. “Women, in his portraits, appear to be floating on the canvas, walking on clouds,” she says. (Above, Boldini’s “Madame Charles Max,” in the Musee Nationale d’Art Moderne in Paris.)

Richard Koshalek, director of the Museum of Contemporary Art, favors Abstract Expressionism--especially the work of Jackson Pollock, American artist and key figure in the Abstract Expressionist movement. “In 1950, to have commissioned Jackson Pollock to do a room, one painting, or a series of paintings that would occupy a specific space would have been fantastic . The energy of Pollock’s work goes beyond the canvas and creates a powerful, environmental effect.” (Left, “Lavender Mist: Number 1,” in the National Gallery in Washington.)

‘I once said that I would hock my shares in Occidental Petroleum to buy (it) if it is ever offered for sale,” says Dr. Armand Hammer of Pierre Auguste Renoir’s “Luncheon of the Boating Party,” which is part of the Phillips Collection in Washington. Hammer, chairman of the board of Occidental Petroleum, owns three collections himself that tour the world for exhibition. But the Impressionist masterpiece, he says, “captures the laughter and spirit of a magnificent boating party,” and then he adds: “I guess it is so moving to me because it reminds me of the years I spent in Paris as a young man.”

To desire any work in a public gallery, says Robert Wark, curator at the Huntington Library and Art Gallery in San Marino, is an “unrealizable wish”--especially if one’s preferences include William Hogarth, an 18th-Century English artist. “Hogarth’s satirical series of paintings are in public (British) collections already,” Wark says. “I would say, however, I would like a series of narrative paintings similar to, comparable to, the type of ‘Marriage a la Mode’ by Hogarth (in the National Gallery in London).”

The private collection of David L. Wolper consists of 40 Pablo Picasso sculptures and ceramics. If he could have anything, the producer of Emmy-winning miniseries (“Roots,” “The Thorn Birds”) and creator of the opening and closing ceremonies of the 1984 Olympic Games and this year’s rededication of the Statue of Liberty, would like one more Picasso sculpture, one now in the Musee Picasso in Paris. “ ‘Bull’s Head’ is one great piece that I love and I can’t possess,” Wolper says. “It is so simple but fabulous. Picasso was vital; he kept changing. And he must have had a great sense of humor.”

‘The most ravishing, beautiful painting ever created and one of my favorites through time is Velazquez’s ‘Las Meninas’ in the Prado Museum in Madrid,” says Dr. Earl A. (Rusty) Powell III, director of the Los Angeles County Museum of Art. “Diego Velazquez was a Spanish genius. The color achieved is wonderfully rich, resonant, lustrous and transparent. His painting is a mysterious tour de force painting--the highest form of artistic expression.”

Marcia Weisman, art collector and founder of the Museum of Contemporary Art, says that “The Red Studio,” by French master Henri Matisse, is “the first painting I ever fell in love with. I had a poster of it hanging in my dormitory bedroom at Mills College.” Chairman of the Advisory Council of the Arts at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center, Weisman favors this Matisse, which is in New York’s Museum of Modern Art, because, she says, it “has everything. To me, ‘The Red Studio’ is the beginning of what art is today. . . . It represents all that Matisse has ever done--and then some.”

Douglas S. Cramer, executive vice president of Aaron Spelling Productions and co-producer of television’s “Dynasty,” “Love Boat,” “Hotel” and “The Colbys,” has a collection that consists of 400 works by major modern artists. He would add Pablo Picasso’s “Guernica,” now in Madrid’s Prado Museum, “because of its force, strength, and majesty. It seems to sum up so much of what the art of today is about. I love theater and drama, and it (‘Guernica’) never loses the essence of both, captured on canvas.”

‘The Tempest,” a painting by Oskar Kokoschka, is the choice of Robert Gore Rifkind, a Beverly Hills attorney and philanthropist who donated his collection of German Expressionist art to the Los Angeles County Museum of Art in 1983. “When I first saw it in the Kunstmuseum in Basel, Switzerland, I literally felt sucked into the tempest itself. I stared at it for an hour. ‘The Tempest’ is the most passionate depiction of love I have ever seen . . . great love and tenderness combined with an enormous energy and violence of German Expressionism. That is very hard to achieve, very rare and very beautiful.”

‘Landscapes. Seascapes. Country scenes. Townscapes and still life,” says Edward Carter, chairman emeritus and director of Carter Hawley Hale Stores Inc., describing the 50 or so 17th-Century Dutch paintings he and his wife, Hannah, own. His preference: “Jan Vermeer was the greatest artist of the 17th Century. A Vermeer might become available, but I’m not optimistic about that ever happening.” (Left, Vermeer’s “Young Woman With a Water Jug,” in the Metropolitan Museum of Art.)

‘It’s been a dream of mine for a long time,” says Frederick R. Weisman, entrepreneur and philanthropist. Weisman, who has collected contemporary art for more than 30 years, has been wishing for “Mademoiselle Pogany II,” an abstract masterpiece by Romanian sculptor Constantin Brancusi. “It is fantastic and as contemporary as what is happening today,” says Weisman of the polished bronze, currently in a private collection in Paris. “Some day, conceivably, it will become available. Until then--I’m just going to have to keep my hopes up.” (Left, Brancusi’s “A Muse,” in the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston.)