The Silverman Collection

Richard Nagy Ltd. Richard Nagy Ltd. The Silverman Collection Preface by Richard Nagy Interview by Roger Bevan Essays by Robert Brown and Christian Witt-Dörring with Yves Macaux Richard Nagy Ltd Old Bond Street London Preface From our first meeting in New York it was clear; Benedict Silverman and I had a rapport. We preferred the same artists and we shared a lust for art and life in a remar kable meeting of minds. We were more in sync than we both knew at the time. I met Benedict in , at his then apartment on East th Street, the year most markets were stagnant if not contracting – stock, real estate and art, all were moribund – and just after he and his wife Jayne had bought the former William Randolph Hearst apartment on Riverside Drive. Benedict was negotiating for the air rights and selling art to fund the cash shortfall. A mutual friend introduced us to each other, hoping I would assist in the sale of a couple of Benedict’s Egon Schiele watercolours. The first, a quirky and difficult subject of , was sold promptly and very successfully – I think even to Benedict’s surprise. A second followed, a watercolour of a reclining woman naked – barring her green slippers – with splayed Richard Nagy Ltd. Richardlegs. It was also placed Nagy with alacrity in a celebrated Ltd. Hollywood collection. While both works were of high quality, I understood why Benedict could part with them. They were not the work of an artist that shouted: ‘This is me – this is what I can do.’ And I understood in the brief time we had spent together that Benedict wanted only art that had that special quality. Looking around the apartment on East th Street, it was evident that his extensive collection of French Art Nouveau and Wiener Werkstätte furniture had just that quality. I was slightly disappointed the art was flowing in the wrong direction; as an art dealer I wanted to be selling to this man. I could feel that with him there was the potential to handle works of art for which I had the greatest appetite. In true Benedict style he assured me that in due course he would be back in the game with renewed gusto. It was a bit longer than he imagined at the time, but in the interim we had become friends. It was some four or five years until we made our first purchase together: Otto Dix’s Venus mit Handschuhen (Venus with Gloves), a work of brilliance from . A rather precious painting, of a young woman nude except for her long black opera gloves, it was conceived as a homage to Lucas Cranach’s Venus, , in the Städel Museum in Frankfurt. The impact of this little painting is, in the first instance, a blow to the solar plexus, before it engages intellectually. It is not the easiest of subjects, but then Benedict embraced the louche and the outcasts from polite society, whom he felt in their brutal honesty had more impact than their more respectful contemporaries. This small painting hung in the apartment in a wonderful juxtaposition with the Dix masterpiece already in the Silverman collection, Selbstbildnis mit Modell (Self-Portrait with Model), . In this near life-size double portrait, the artist depicts himself rigid in his formal self-consciousness, his model so comfortable in her nakedness that her innate sensuality is palpable. Ever the professional, Dix is trying with Herculean restraint, veins pulsing at the temple, to ignore the obvious erotic tension; while the model in control of the situation can afford her relaxed demeanour. This painting, with its discomforting friction, is a master class in to be paid, the painting became available. Some months later the vendor won his Neue Sachlichkeit. case and hundreds of millions of dollars in damages. The next work we went for was Max Beckmann’s Aperitif, . A slice of life, For Benedict the price was the last consideration when reviewing a work for his and a delicious denial of post-war austerity, the beautiful Quappi is in a sophisticated collection. It was first the blow to the guts, then the mental engagement. After that café / club drinking champagne with her cigar-smoking partner. We bid at auction the question of price was one of affordability. Price was not irrelevant, but also not against another friend and connoisseur – in ignorance at the time – who later had the important. Benedict had no interest in art as investment; it was never a motivation. audacity to say the price was crazy. Benedict had a stock response to such criticism: If the verdict was to go forward it was done swiftly and generously. That’s not ‘The point was to acquire the very best work available and to that end I certainly to say, of course, that if there was a dollar on the table he didn’t want it on his side. overpaid on occasion. But as any true collector of passion can testify, settling for second But in all fairness he decided first if a work was of ‘Silverman quality’ and then best is simply not a choice.’ The irony of course is that the collector who buys with how to make the purchase. passion invariably benefits financially by dint of the quality he acquires. And as the Over the years, as one would imagine, the collection that Benedict kindly referred cliché goes, the quality remains long after the price is forgotten. This under-bidder to as ‘our collection’ was the object of an inundation of loan requests from major was someone with whom we were to lock horns with again over the years. Inevitably museums worldwide. The loan is always felt; a work on loan leaves a yawning in a field as narrow as Austrian and German art from before the Second World War, gap on the wall. As reluctant as he was to see them leave, he inevitably acquiesced, one was going to rub up against the same players regularly. The most consistent as he truly wanted to share the pleasure and passion these works of art inspired. of these competitors when it came to work by Schiele and Kubin was the late great Viennese connoisseur Rudolf Leopold. He was well matched with Benedict and both Richardmen caused anxiety in the Nagyother when they were Ltd. interested in the same work. It is Richard Nagy Ltd. fair to say that mutually coveted works were won and lost by both. I think Benedict, in keeping with his nature, was happy with his triumphs and forgot about his losses. Such was our understanding, through years of dining and travelling, that we could walk around a museum exhibition and test each other with the three pieces we would like to take home: invariably our choices were the same, time and time again. And so in , I called Benedict from Switzerland to say I wanted to buy a George Grosz painting of exquisite rarity, a painting from , and one of the very few Dada oil paintings left in private hands. The auction was a bric-a-brac affair, with the painting estimated at $ ,. With only two hours before the sale I telephoned Benedict and described the painting: a Cubo-Futurist work depicting the tightrope of life, a misstep from which could end in a desperate existence on the streets. I asked him to lend me up to $ million dollars so that I could buy the work for stock. This is the man who, with a glass of wine in hand, takes the time to contemplate his Without hesitation he barked, ‘go for it.’ I bought the painting, Tempo der Strasse collection. He considers the creation of the works – who, where and when they were (The Tempo ofthe Street), and given our synchronicity of taste, it was not surprising made and the circumstances – taking time to lose himself in the zeitgeist of central that when he saw it some months later he immediately exclaimed ‘I’m buying it Europe during its greatest turmoil. for the collection!’ Benedict Silverman is a collector for whom I have the greatest respect and The most significant purchase we made, as much in cost as in artistic importance, affection. A broad-minded individual, a connoisseur and a bon vivant, he is a man was the philosophically provocative Die Tafelrunde (Around the Table), –, of sophistication despite a common touch, with whom it is always a pleasure to spend by Schiele. I showed a transparency of the work to Benedict on a Monday and time. He is that rare bird unspoiled by possessions yet affected by the best of them. by Friday he was on a plane from New York to Zurich. After seeing the painting Benedict has taken the decision to disperse his collection in the near future and in all its glory we repaired to a restaurant, where he baldly stated he had to have let others enjoy what he has had for so long. The proceeds will go into a foundation it, despite the lack of cash on hand. He worked out a plan, hocking his future to rescue children from illiteracy. He and his wife Jayne have sponsored The Literacy earnings, and the painting has now become a star of the collection. I relate the story Trust and its Reading Rescue programme for twenty years, so it is fitting that this as an example of a true collector’s response to a great work and as an example of man’s collection has become the means for many thousands of children to have their this collector’s decisiveness.

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