A collection is a work of time, love – and money
Everything must go! Those porcelain tureens in the shape of two purple, spotted plaice; that old English brass bucket; the legions of Impressionist paintings; the carved Sepik River paddle; the handsome European furniture; and the Senufo firespitter helmet mask: all of it.
David Rockefeller, grandson of the famous JD, didn’t quite live to see his family’s art collection flogged off to raise money for charity, just as he instructed. The sale, held this week, has been smashing all previous valuation records, with talk of a “Rockefeller premium”, and buyers spurred on by the exhilarating thought that the languid nude they have their eye on has spent years luxuriating on the wall above Rockefeller’s very own desk.
I can understand buyers’ urge to pay more for objects that have political, religious or historic connections or even iconic cultural items, such as outfits worn by popstars. But this ravenous desire to possess a piece of what was once someone’s highly personal art and homeware collection seems a little strange.
Collecting, as the German critic Walter Benjamin explained, is an intensely personal and rather whimsical activity. He collected books – on a rather modest scale by billionaire standards – but I think he was right when he wrote: “The phenomenon of collecting loses its meaning as it loses its personal owner.”
The objects are still beautiful and valuable in their own right, but broken up and taken out of the house in which the Rockefeller family assembled them, they go back to being mere objects, ready for museums or assembly into someone else’s collection. Paying a premium to own one of them will not make you into a business genius or a great philanthropist. Rather the opposite.
Many of the greatest European art collections were actually assembled for public purposes. London recently hosted two sequential exhibitions of Royal collections, of Charles I and Charles II. To stage the Charles I show, the Royal Academy gathered together various pieces that were sold off by the puritanical victors of the Civil War, including a sumptuous panoply of Van Dyck portraits (Charles on his horse, Charles next to his horse, Charles with his wife, Charles in a lavish robe, Charles in a lavish robe with his children and wife, and so on).
Happily, many of these pieces are now back in the Royal Collection, including an enormous set of panels depicting Caesar’s triumphant procession into Rome, usually housed in Hampton Court, and an impressive array of Italian masters, which Charles I brought to England for the first time. Looking at it all, I couldn’t help thinking that if he’d spent as much time governing as he had on posing for portraits, he might have kept his head.
The plump-cheeked Charles II, dressed in a fetching red and white-lace outfit, kept popping up. But in the second exhibition, by the time this fresh-faced boy had grown up in exile, the cheeks had hollowed out and his portraits, mostly by Peter Lely, highlight the large, noble nose and the absurdly luxuriant wig cascading down on either side. The Queen’s Gallery, which staged this second show, has also assembled a set of prints featuring the king, his mistresses, his cities or palaces and his coronation. In the age of Restoration, when printmaking was taking off in London, those keen to banish any doubts about their loyalty could display one of these handsome portraits of the monarch in their houses.
Charles II did manage to reassemble a lot of his father’s art collection and more besides. And he was naturally very keen on ceremonies to restore the glory of the monarchy. For his coronation he had knights parade along the streets wearing lustrous wigs and enormous plumes on their heads. He had a solid-gold communion cup and plate made to replace those that had been melted down by his enemies. He funded scientists and artists, staged un-puritanical activities such as horseraces and plays, and, insofar as he could afford it, he rebuilt palaces. It was all beautiful, impressive, absurd and grotesque. But it seems to have worked. Few wanted to return to the joyless days of Cromwell’s protectorate.
Every monarch worth his salt needs an artistic legacy. I recently visited the island of Majorca, which enjoyed a brief spell of independence during medieval times. James II, king at the start of this period, encouraged the proliferation of religious arts in order to increase the reputation and fame of his territory. The gold altar pieces, with their mournful saints and martyrdoms, look fairly similar to other religious art of the times. The museum housing them doesn’t make much of the island’s Moorish inheritance, as if history only starts with the arrival of Christianity. Something of the previous age continued however: all of the island’s pottery looks distinctly Islamic.
This Moorish element is now seen as a tourist attraction. The Airbnb in which I stayed had a bizarre display of four rather crass china plates moulded into the shape of women’s heads in burkhas, their eyes peering out seductively. It made a change, though not necessarily a welcome one, from the usual Airbnb tat of fake flowers, silver hearts, badly painted beach scenes and gnarled pieces of driftwood.