ONTD Original: Celebrities and Their Art Collections 🖼️
Sir Elton John with Man Ray’s “Noire et Blanche.”
Celebrities are just like us in the sense that they have hobbies too, and some of them enjoy collecting art-and a lot of it. With a wide variety of tastes ranging from Old Masters to more contemporary artists and media, these celebs can be found at Art Basel (OG as well as Miami) as well as the auction and gallery circuit. While heavy hitters like John McEnroe prefer to sell art, others are content to enjoy art for arts sake, and many own several pieces from their fav artists.
Post Inspiration: That Madonna’s WWII Artwork post someone made a few weeks ago here. I also want to acknowledge itsme_eloise (who suggested I do a post on celebrity art collections), and espressotorte and squirrels_oh_no who made suggestions and provided useful links.
The Criteria: This list only includes celebs who genuinely love art and having it in their homes (as opposed to “collectors” who buy things only for investment purposes and promptly store them in a warehouse somewhere). That’s not collecting, that’s hoarding; and we shall have none of that here.
Steve Martin
This “Wild and Crazy Guy” has been an avid collector from the age of 21. The comedian owns artworks by contemporary American artists such as Cindy Sherman, Eric Fischl, and Roy Lichtenstein, as well as examples of post-war paintings by Edward Hopper, and a Willem de Kooning drawing. His collection tends to be a bit on the conservative side as it includes only paintings, photography, and drawings and contains little avant-garde, conceptual, or media art.
Not sure which Cindy Sherman he actually owns so here is one of my favorite photographs from her famous “Untitled Film Stills” series.
Fun Fact: Martin considers collecting art as one of his biggest hobbies. In an 1987 interview he stated “Art is so different from what I do that it’s an escape for me… It’s like, good grief, these things are so beautiful-how did this happen?”
Elton John
The Rocket Man knows what type of art he likes, and what he likes is photography and lots of it. His collection includes work by Cindy Sherman, Nan Goldin, and Robert Mapplethorpe along with works by Minor White, Irving Penn, Man Ray, and George Platt Lynes. Not only does he has a veritable museum-quality collection of works, in 2016 he loaned a good portion of his works to the Tate Modern for the show “The Radical Eye: Modernist Photography From the Sir Elton John Collection.”
As most of the Mapplethorpes in Sir Elton’s collection are severely explicit in nature as per ONTD rules we can’t have that here. Anyone who has ever seen his more erotic works knows exactly what I’m talking about. Here is a photograph from his acclaimed “Flower” series instead.
Fun Fact: Elton once owned one of the rare Basquiat/Warhol collaborative pieces, which he consigned to Sotheby’s and sold for a cool $935,000.
Oprah Winfrey
Oprah loves Americana art and has many pieces spread out amongst her various estates; a tour of one of her homes revealed works by sculptor Gaston Lachaise and painter Harry Roseland in her library, and at her Indiana farmhouse a portrait by Thomas Hart Benton called To The Highest Bidder depicts a female slave on the auction block hangs for all to see. Oprah is a big fan of Benton as she also owns his Back From the Fields (1945), which hangs above her mantlepiece.
Portrait of Adele Bloch-Bauer II : Klimt
Fun Fact: Originally purchased in 2006, Oprah auctioned off Gustav Klimt‘s Portrait of Adele Bloch-Bauer II for a cool $150 million dollars (Why, Oprah…Why? It’s a Klimt, goddammit! It was all so beautiful once…*sob*).
Madonna
Madonna supports female artists and has a special fondness for paintings by Frieda Kahlo and Tamara de Lempicka, as she owns several works by both. A particular favorite is Kahlo’s My Birth which she hung in her house as a type of litmus test for people, and has famously stated that she knows she can't fuck with anyone with negative impressions of it. Her fondness for that particular painting is such that she has repeatedly refused to loan it out to different museums for special exhibits (though she did make an exception for The Tate once, lol). Other works in her collection include Man Ray, Diego Rivera, and Salvator Dali. In addition, she also owns Fernand Léger’s Les Deux Bicyclettes, Picasso’s Buste de Femme a la Frange, and is a fan of guerrilla street artists Banksy and JR.
My Birth: Frida Kahlo
Fun Fact: When she and Basquiat were dating he gave her a few paintings but he either destroyed/took them back after they broke up because he was salty, lol.
Sean Puffy Combs
Is a big fan of Kerry James Marshall, and by “big fan” I mean he’s bought some really pricey pieces because the good sir Kerry doesn’t come cheap. Has been spotted at Art Basel: Miami with art advisor to the stars Maria Brito (where he was checking out works by Ruben Ortiz Torres and Julieta Aranda) and is a regular on the art circuit.
Past Times (1997): Kerry James Marshall
Fun Fact: Diddy made history when he made the winning bid on Kerry James Marshall’s Past Times (1997) at Sotheby’s in 2018. The price? A record breaking 21.1 million, the highest price ever for a living African American artist.
Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie
One of the things that is probably being contested in their acrimonious divorce is who gets the $25 million dollar art collection the couple has amassed over the years. Their taste tends to run more towards street artists like Banksy and Dom Pattinson, along with more traditional offerings from Ed Ruscha, Schoony, and Richard Serra.
Picnic: Banksy
Fun Fact: One of my personal favorites from their collection is the Banksy painting Picnic which depicts a rich family having a picnic while starving people look on.
Jane Fonda
Another fan of Americana, Jane Fonda’s collection has a special emphasis on Black Outsider art from the American South. Fonda is currently on the board of the “Souls Grown Deep Foundation & Community Partnership” which champions robust support systems for Black artists from that region. She started collecting their work twenty years ago through late Atlanta art dealer Bill Arnett. Favorite artists include Thornton Dial Sr, his brother Arthur Dial, and Thornton Dial Jr; all of whom worked in mixed media and found objects. Both brothers lived through Jim Crow, and were influenced by the triumphs and tumult of the 1960s civil rights movement-and the leadership of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., which inspired Thornton Sr. to develop “an allegorical style that was abstracted but narrative, conveying concerns both personal and universal.”
Thornton Dial Sr., “Untitled”(1993)
Fun Fact: Jane contributed 14 drawings, paintings, sculptures, and assemblages from her personal collection to Christie’s “Outsider and Vernacular Art” auction that was held last month in New York.
I encourage everyone to check out the Artnet link featured below as there are several celebs in it not mentioned here such as Leonardo DiCaprio, Beyonce and Jay Z, Alicia Keyes, and others. ONTD, what artist work would you collect if you were rich? Discuss.
Die Quellen:
Artnet’s Top 15 Celebrity Art Collectors
Brad and Angie
Steve Martin
Jane Fonda