And then I picked up a piece from Ann Nathan by Juan Perdiguero whose work I admired last year at the Fair but missed. It's another interesting process which I'm just starting to understand.
NICE ARTICLE ON ART CHICAGO 2007 BY KEVIN NANCE - SECOND IN A SERIES
Who says art, politics don't mix?
(http://www.suntimes.com/entertainment/nance/362528,SHO-Sunday-art29.article)
April 29, 2007
BY KEVIN NANCE Critic-at-Large
When he bought the ailing Art Chicago art fair last year, Merchandise Mart president Chris Kennedy began his rebuilding effort by assembling a list of the top contemporary art collectors in America. He asked gallery owners to name their top 10 clients, only to find that he knew most of them -- not through the art world, to which he'd had little connection, but through Democratic Party fund-raising circles. "I'd raised enough money for Democrats in Chicago to recognize almost all of those names," recalls Kennedy, a member of the famous Democratic political family. "It was the strangest thing."
And if Kennedy didn't know some of the names, he soon found someone who did. He was at Chicago's East Bank Club, attending a fund raiser for his old friend Sheldon Whitehouse (a Democrat who was elected a few months later to the U.S. Senate from Rhode Island) when he ran into David Rosen, a Chicago consultant who had raised millions for Democratic candidates from Bill and Hillary Clinton to Rod Blagojevich. "I thought to myself, 'Wow -- this guy probably knows everybody I need to create a relationship with," Kennedy says. "And it has worked out very well."
So it has. As Merchandise Mart vice president Mark Falanga recalls it, Rosen looked at the list of collectors and said, "I know every one of these people."
It's no surprise, then, that Rosen was hired to head Art Chicago's VIP program, drawing on his network of wealthy Democratic campaign donors to draw deep-pocket collectors to Art Chicago, which continues at the Mart through Monday. He was also instrumental in convincing several top-tier Chicago collectors active in Democratic politics -- including Lewis and Susan Manilow, Howard Tullman and Jack Guthman -- to lobby skittish gallerists, collectors and arts institutions on the fair's behalf.
In an interview, Rosen down-plays the significance of his political network to his new job, emphasizing instead his skills as a VIP event planner. "We bring the buyer and seller together, not unlike what I did in political fund raising. No one gave money to President Clinton because I called them, and no one's going to come to Art Chicago because I called them. I just make it easy."
On the other hand, he allows, "A lot of people who give money to Democratic politics end up being contemporary art collectors. And the gallerists are overwhelmingly on the left."
'It's hard to deny'
All this points to a conclusion that many in the art world reached long ago but rarely speak of: Most high-end contemporary art collectors in America -- especially in the art centers of New York, Los Angeles and Chicago -- are Democrats. "It's hard to deny," says Natalie van Straaten, executive director of the Art Dealers Association of Chicago. "There isn't a lot of scientific evidence for it, and it sounds so stereotypical and a bit hard, but it's probably true."
There are exceptions, of course. The Chicago collector with the deepest pockets of all, billionaire hedge-fund manager Kenneth Griffin -- who bought a Jasper Johns painting for $80 million from Hollywood mogul David Geffen last year -- has donated primarily to Republican candidates, including President Bush. (Griffin and his wife told Portfolio magazine that they will be "involved" with U.S. Sen. Barack Obama's presidential campaign, although to what extent was unclear.)
The Griffins aside, though, the top dozen or so contemporary art collectors in Chicago have been prominent supporters of Democratic candidates, especially in presidential campaigns. The Manilows have been major donors to the Clintons and Al Gore, while Guthman championed Richard Gephardt. And led by Penny Pritzker, Obama's fund-raising chair and an art-world maven in her own right, several top local collectors have been key contributors to the senator's campaign war chest."If you look at who raised all the early money for Barack, they're all coming on Thursday night," Kennedy says of Art Chicago's opening-night preview party."If I were running someone's campaign, I would just go from art show to art show and see all my donors."
'Ahead of the curve'
What is it about affiliation with the Democratic Party that correlates to a tendency to buy contemporary art -- as opposed to, say, older work by deceased artists? "A fair portion of contemporary art is ahead of the curve in dealing with dissatisfaction with the social condition," says former Chicago art dealer Paul Klein."I think Democrats are empathic with that."
Guthman, a Chicago attorney who has amassed a large contemporary art collection over the years, agrees."I like to think it's that Democrats look for new ideas, both in their candidates and in the art world. I think we're open to the voices of new artists, who often make political art that takes issue with the status quo."
And Democrats may be more comfortable than Republicans in buying art that hasn't been pre-validated by galleries and museums, Tullman says."Some collectors prefer auctions, safe art that's been vetted, and then there are leading-edge collectors who are dealing with living, young artists who are up-and-coming, which I think is a liberal Democratic tendency. I think when you buy old dead artists, you're not helping anybody, except maybe some gallery. When you buy from a young artist, it's a kind of support system."
A quarter-century ago, he recalls, a young artist delivered a painting to his home."She was spraying the painting, and I asked her if she was using a last fixative. She said no, she was spraying Raid to get the termites and roaches out."No Republican collector, Tullman's hearty laughter implies, would be caught dead buying a painting that needed fumigation.
'We don't talk about politics'
It's a tricky if not-quite-taboo subject in the art world, especially for gallerists. Some top dealers openly support Democratic candidates; some have been known to hold fund-raising events for Democrats in their galleries.
Other dealers tend to be more circumspect."We usually don't talk about politics, especially if they aren't close clients, but sooner or later they get around to dropping a code word that you pick up on," says Thomas McCormick, a Democrat whose West Loop gallery serves many wealthy clients."And they're rarely Republicans."Klein recalls committing a serious faux pas with a collector."I made a mistake, assuming he was a Democrat, only to watch his body language when I said something about the current occupant of the White House. When I watched him cringe, I knew that I'd erred."
The Mart's use of Democratic Party networks to attract collectors even strikes McCormick as running the risk of alienating some Republican collectors. "Certainly within the art world, the more cutting-edge, maybe more difficult work is more heavily collected by liberal people, but I don't want to leave anybody out of the equation," he says."There are a lot of wealthy conservative people who may be Republicans who also have beautiful art in their houses. It may be more conservative -- an Impressionist painting or even a Picasso, which is pretty conservative in this day and age -- but does that mean they aren't just as vital to the art world? They can sit there with their Wine Spectator and their Rolls Royce in the driveway and their Picasso on the wall -- who cares?"
On the other hand, McCormick says with a sly grin, "Ann Coulter probably has a lousy art collection."
knance@suntimes.com