Film producer Jason Hoffs, 42, is not sure what direction his beginning art collection—two Alexander Calder gouaches and a small painting by Joan Miró—will eventually take. Right now, he is focusing on more contemporary artists who were prolific enough in their later years to create a decent inventory. He does not yet have the millions it would take to collect the best by his real art heroes—Mark Rothko, Arshile Gorky, Jackson Pollock and Franz Kline—he says from his production offices at DreamWorks. But, like a true collector, he dreams.

	The walls in Preston Haskell’s Florida home are alive with works by Sam Francis, Robert Motherwell, Frank Stella and Willem de Kooning.

“These were the first-generation abstract expressionists who painted around New York in the ’40s and ’50s, and I see them as very cool and heroic,” explains Hoffs, who is executive producer on the Steven Spielberg and Tom Hanks film The Terminal. “These guys started a revolution in art. They were rebels, rejecting the comfortable accessibility of representation and capturing life around them during a very dynamic time in American life. How they were commenting as artists on what went before and how they influenced what came after holds great fascination for me.” Enthralled by the creative process, he and his wife, Jessica, also collect original blueprints by Frank Lloyd Wright.

Heroic energy … freewheeling spirit … riveting composition of barely restrained aggression … bold and dynamic … risk taker. The words used to describe abstract expressionism also define many of its collectors. Abstract art, be it painted by the pioneers or current artists, is undeniably appealing to high achievers.

	Donald Judd, Untitled, 1973

Preston Haskell, chairman of the Haskell Company in Jacksonville, Fla., had been buying abstract art by local contemporaries for a decade until, in his late 30s, he stepped up and made his first major purchase. It was 1980, and he had just built a new family home when he bought Midday 1956, an oil on canvas by Hans Hoffmann, “the original abstractionist,” a refugee from Nazi Germany who taught many key artists of midcentury America. Haskell next made two of his most important buys—a painting by Robert Motherwell, the youngest of the original abstract expressionists, followed by an oil on paper by Willem de Kooning, known for figures and landscapes as well as abstractions. “At that point, my collection began to really take shape,” Haskell explains. As his design-build business expanded, so did the corporate and personal collections. Today, the man who tore down the Gator Bowl and built a new football stadium in Jacksonville has amassed more than 300 contemporary abstract works, including pieces by Kline, Motherwell, Rothko, de Kooning and Helen Frankenthaler, that would leave any museum breathless.

His paintings have probably quadrupled in value, but Haskell insists that has never been a factor. “I do not collect for that reason, and therefore I get an evaluation of a work’s monetary worth only as anecdotal evidence, which, to me, is of very minor consideration.” When he is “moved by an artist,” he makes a commitment. He considers Frank Stella the most exciting among the later generation of abstract artists, and lays claim to three dozen of his works. “The more I read and learn about an artist, the more I want to round out my collection,” Haskell says. Driving him always, he adds, has been his mission to establish “a coherent collection that is balanced and representative of the artists I love and admire.” After giving it a lot of thought, he intends to pass his collection, intact, to a museum.

Why the abstractionists? “I’m fascinated by the mystery, energy, nonobjectivity, the color and the emotional interpretation of the artist’s intent,” Haskell says.

Michael Ovitz, the cofounder of Creative Artists Agency, who received a reported $75 million to walk away from Disney, began collecting seriously after being introduced to art collecting by New York gallery owner Arnold Glimcher. Today, his collection includes Jasper Johns, de Kooning, Robert Rauschenberg, Ellsworth Kelly, Kline and Rothko, and he is on the board of New York’s Museum of Modern Art.

Eli Broad, founder of SunAmerica and Kaufman & Broad, started collecting in 1972 when his wife, Edythe, tired of prints, wanted to buy something of quality and suggested to her husband that they purchase a drawing by Vincent van Gogh for $95,000. He did, but later in the 1980s, sold that to buy a 1954 abstract Untitled (Red Painting) by Rauschenberg, considered one of his best purchases.
Many West Coast billionaires who collect abstract art have had their homes designed by Thomas Beeton, 45, who is himself a collector. “I think it’s about a repressed energy men have,” Beeton says of the abstraction attraction. “These men are taught to feel they must be self-sufficient, have a concrete plan for success. Abstraction is about the removal of order. It allows you to create another world where no one can say what is good or bad, and it frees you to understand your own mind and currency.”

Mark Rothko, Violet Center, 1955, oil on canvas

Abstract art has no monopoly on the male psyche. Broad, who is one of the biggest players in the art world, has a huge collection dominated by pop art works by Andy Warhol and Roy Lichtenstein, abstract pieces by Johns and Cy Twombly and work by ’80s artists such as Jeff Koons and Jean-Michel Basquiat. Ovitz also collects all forms of modern painting, including pop artists, African art, Ming furniture and young emerging artists, prints and photography.

With all their money and so many houses to fill, it is not surprising that most billionaires invest in some form of art, considering it part of a diverse portfolio. However collecting itself is often a major defining characteristic that runs through their career of collecting success after success. 

“Once these men start collecting, it’s like they are bitten by a bug. They are very proud of collections and they become sophisticated very quickly,” says New York designer Geoffrey Bradfield. His spacious Manhattan interiors are predicated on the use of contemporary art. “Clients come to me either because they are collectors, or my enthusiasm rubs off on them and they become collectors.”

Great collectors are almost always driven by such passion, which is the way it should be, says Andrea Feldman Falcione, who collaborates with private clients on building their own personal art collections. Formerly the assistant curator of the Broad Art Foundation, she is now curator of the Ovitz Family Collection, and she believes the guiding principle for a collector should be love. “Of course, I don’t think you should spend $2 million on an artist no one has heard of.”
“Real collectors are obsessed,” says Marc Glimcher, president of PaceWildenstein of his clients. “It was baseball cards when they were kids. Now it’s art. It’s just a mental characteristic of some people, and no matter how successful they are in life, it will direct what they can afford to collect.”

“A true collector will always put money down for the right painting by Guy Rose, William Wendt or Granville Redman,” says Thom Gianetto, co-owner of Edenhurst Gallery, of his collectors of California impressionists. “Some people, no matter how well- funded, won’t step up to the plate to pay for the best example. How serious the obsession and how willing the person is to back it will decide the quality of the collection.”

Art has always been a power and social tool as well as a visible way of enjoying wealth. Collectors gain access to their society’s social and cultural institutions. “It becomes like a club. You see the same people at auctions. It’s a visible way of enjoying wealth. Not all Fortune 500 people were born with a silver spoon,” says Bradfield. “The other thing to remember about why men collect is that once you have a collection that is envied and respected, every museum is after you to donate it or loan it. In New York or Los Angeles or any big city, museums are the great social institutions. To be invited to sit on the board of the Met or the Museum of Modern Art is—to someone ascending the corporate ladder—a huge accolade … a wonderful entrée to another plateau.”

	Mark Rothko, Untitled, 1949, oil on canvas

With prices reaching into the $5 million to $10 million range, gone are the days when major works by once-affordable post–World War II artists were within the reach of your average millionaire. Even minor works on paper done by his heroes, says Hoffs, which might have been considered throwaways in the ’60s and ’70s, are fetching in the six figures. “And works with a flawless provenance are all but out of reach,” he adds. 

Today, only the big guns, with $10 million to $15 million in spare change, can afford to start new collections with major pieces by known artists. What men collect is also about what is available and affordable for them to buy. Glimcher says that his younger collection-building clients take one of two paths: They either eagerly root out the newest, hottest and latest thing in the art world, or they turn to the newer generation of established artists, such as Richard Serra, Robert Mangold, Robert Ryman or Joel Shapiro.

But it is never really about investment, Glimcher says. “Investment sounds cold and rational and grown up. Of course, you are getting something great and of value, but cold investors who want to make money are out of the art world in short order, because it takes too much time and dedication.”

Andrea Feldman Falcione says the men she knows are collecting “all over the board—blue-chip artists such as Gerhard Richter or Ed Ruscha. People are looking into Donald Judd. The same person I know who has Gerhard Richter also has a young Cecily Brown.” Falcione started working with Ovitz four years ago and says he has collected over 300 photographs of every process and format by artists such as Doug Aitken, Thomas Demand and Andreas Gursky. Broad also collected photography, she says, and he feels it has long edged into the mainstream market and “absolutely has investment value.”

Everyone from Madonna to Richard Gere is on the photography bandwagon. Major works by Richard Prince, Thomas Struth and Charles Ray brought up to $368,000 at recent auctions at Sotheby’s. Sally Sirkin Lewis, one of Los Angeles’ top interior designers, says she is buying emerging artists and photography for her clients, much more so than in the ’80s and ’90s, when many of them were Japanese industrialists seeking blue-chip artists like Kline, Frankenthaler, David Smith, Ben Nicholson and Henry Moore. But men, Lewis says, still appreciate abstract art. “It’s just that the budgets and tastes of younger millionaires demand young artists, and prices around $25,000.” She likes Phil Sims of New York, L.A. artist Lawrence Carroll and sculptor Christopher Georgesco.

If Haskell were starting anew, on a mere millionaire’s budget, he says he would collect the same abstract artists he loves, “only as multiples,” which is what he has at his offices. “You can get some absolutely stunning Robert Motherwells or works by Willem de Kooning and Joan Mitchell for $5,000 to $10,000. They are just as wonderful, but there are maybe 50 of them instead of only one.”
Bradfield is interested in contemporary art from World War II on, including Jeff Koons, the spectacle artist whose porcelain sculpture of Michael Jackson and Bubbles brought in $5.6 million at a Christie’s auction. His own collection includes Koons as well as the American painter Kenneth Noland and the late Russian-American sculptor Louise Nevelson. “You only need five pieces of art to have a collection,” Bradfield advises. “Buy the best. Buy one piece every year, and in five years you will have a collection.” 

PaceWildenstein
212.929.7000 and 212.421.3292
www.pacewildenstein.com

Andrea Feldman Falcione
310.300.2430

Thomas Beeton, Beeton & Associates
310.657.5600

Geoffrey Bradfield
212.758.1773

Sally Sirkin Lewis, J. Robert Scott
310.680.4300
www.jrobertscott.com

Thom Gianetto, Edenhurst Gallery
800.611.4545
www.edenhurstgallery.com