Man with an ear for Madonna and an eye for the pre-raphaelites
One of the most successful talent spotters in the record industry flew into London from the US last weekend to promote his new autobiography. Seymour Stein is the famous A&R (artist and repertoire) man who first signed Madonna, Talking Heads, Depeche Mode, The Ramones and The Pretenders to his label, Sire, and who coined the phrase “New Wave Music”.
Less well-known is Stein’s passion for art, a glimpse of which can be seen at Sotheby’s next month, when it sells 27 works from his collection.
Stein, now 76, is dismissive about his musical abilities. “I can’t play an instrument and I can’t produce,” he told me recently. “I’m a record business entrepreneur. But because I [had no] formal notion of technique or virtuosity, I was able to spot the genius rejects, who couldn’t sing or play by conventional standards, but who possessed something unique.”
It took him a little longer to discover that he had an “eye” as well as an “ear”. In his early 20s, he worked for Roland Rennie of Polydor Records, handling big stars of the time such as The Who, the Bee Gees and Jimi Hendrix. Because Rennie usually arrived late for work at their offices near Bond Street, Stein often found time to wander into Sotheby’s, where he discovered Chinese export porcelain and art deco – both of which were very cheap to buy at the time.
“Antiques,” he writes in his book, “seemed like a natural partner for records; you had to learn genres, meet dealers, spot details, figure out value and, above all, find the treasures. Now I found a way of banking the cash [he made from records] back into art. If you were really smart, antiques even offered the best interest rates, plus, of course, waking up to all these exquisite objects.”
Stein was also drawn to 19th century symbolism and the preraphaelites who were, of course, “new wave” in their day. He also bought a lot of decorative objects in the flea markets in France.
Signing Madonna in 1982 made Stein very wealthy, and in 1985 he bought John William Waterhouse’s 1900 painting, The Siren, a moving portrayal of a mythical legend concerning a beautiful mermaid who lures shipwrecked sailors to their deaths by drowning.
At £82,000, it was a large sum for a Victorian artist. About a year later, he paid a record $120,000 (£90,000) for a painting by Spencer Stanhope, a second wave pre-raphaelite. The Eighties and early Nineties were golden years for him professionally: “Records,” he writes, “were more profitable than film studios, footballers, TV or magazines.”
He spent his money on art and lived the high life. Indeed, his book does not spare the reader his indulgence in sex and cocaine. Come the 21st-century, though, he realised he had too much stuff and, in 2003, handed more than 250 of his paintings, drawings and works of art to Sotheby’s for sale in New York.
In 2015, another 2,400 pieces went under the hammer at Guernsey’s auctioneers in New Jersey, followed by another 174 at neighbouring Rago earlier this year.
The sale catalogue for the Sotheby’s sale features Waterhouse’s
Siren, now valued at between £1-1.5 million.
Other artists in the sale include Edward Burne-jones, Ford Madox Brown and Dante Gabriel Rossetti, alongside seven works by Simeon Solomon, who was an associate of the pre-raphaelites, though less well-known today.
Solomon, one of Stein’s favourite artists, was a controversial figure in his day: a heavy drinker and drug-taker who did time in jail for sodomy. When he was sober, he could draw beautifully, and his dealers, so the story goes, would often keep him locked up until he produced enough art for them to sell.
Interestingly, Stein has competition. Down the road at Christie’s, another collector is selling 27 good-quality works by Solomon.
Given that, over the past couple of years, new collectors seem to be coming into the market for preraphaelite work, it’s possible that today’s visual talent spotters will gobble up every one of them.
Antiques are a natural partner to records; you have to find the treasures