
How a Working-Class Couple Amassed a Priceless Art Collection - MarlonPro
http://mentalfloss.com/article/48844/how-working-class-couple-amassed-priceless-art-collection
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johndavidback
What I find the most interesting is that they were not disingenuous at all.
Meaning, they bought work that they loved, not attempted to get high value art
for low cost from known artists. This speaks volumes. It was about the love of
art more than anything.

They were just on a shoestring budget and the only way to get their paws on it
was to be frugal and skilled about acquiring it.

Great read.

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PilateDeGuerre
The couple profiled in this piece are the subjects of the documentary _Herb
and Dorothy_. I gave it a watch and I was entertained. It is available on
Netflix streaming[1].

[1] <http://dvd.netflix.com/Movie/Herb-Dorothy/70117555>

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beilabs
I remember watching this documentary a few years ago. Outstanding piece of
work, really stunned that they valued their collection more than wealth.

I remember one of the pieces of their collection was a few inches of frayed
rope with a nail through it. Art is always in the eye of the beholder, they
always bought what they personally liked.

Sad to hear that Herb passed away a few years ago. Their like may never been
seen again...

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beat
Technically, their collection was worth many millions of dollars, if they'd
parted it out rather than donating it.

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jpdoctor
I have no idea what this story has to do with HN, yet I loved every word of
it.

Thanks for posting.

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robg
_What to Submit

On-Topic: Anything that good hackers would find interesting. That includes
more than hacking and startups. If you had to reduce it to a sentence, the
answer might be: anything that gratifies one's intellectual curiosity._

<http://ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html>

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noonespecial
This is how you curate. Like a boss.

Curation is a severely under-appreciated art form. Its fascinating that they
could realistically judge their own artistic talents to be lacking and then go
find everyone else's.

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melindajb
donations to arts organizations are way down...would be great to see the
denizens of hacker news get serious about art, of any kind.

If you want to try collecting yourself try the many open studios in SF. You
can find many works for under $1000 and plenty under $500. Here's an example:
<http://www.artspan.org/sfopenstudios>

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beat
For a totally alternative and HN-relevant take on this subject, see
[http://www.nytimes.com/2013/04/04/fashion/art-and-
techology-...](http://www.nytimes.com/2013/04/04/fashion/art-and-techology-a-
clash-of-cultures.html?pagewanted=all&_r=1&), a NY Times article about the
uncomfortable relationship between the traditional art collecting world and
the new tech millionaires. As someone actively involved in the art world
(photography, music, dance, and theater) as well as the tech world, this
article made sense to me. A lot of it, though, gets down to the art world
simply not understanding their (potential) customers. The art cognoscenti have
traditionally sold a sense of elitism and insiderism that is, frankly, alien
to most programmers. If they want rich programmers to support the world of
fine art, they need to find a way to make it valuable in non-financial terms.
Programmers simply don't value "taste" the same way (see PG's excellent essay
on taste here for a different take).

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ciclista
Beautiful read. Something to be said for dedications and small steps.

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nazgulnarsil
There is an art to being a patron of the arts.

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eugenejen
Exactly what I thought. The master piece of herb and Dorothy is their life
time meta art of modern art collection at shoestring budget.

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msutherl
As an art+tech person, I highly encourage those of you with money to spare to
make inroads into the art world and support those of us who perceive and
express that which is new, strange, and beautiful about this world. Artists
are always at the forefront of technological and social change. You owe more
to them than you know.

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6d0debc071
When's the last time a full-time artist, in the classical sense of collectable
canvases, made something that was a major contribution to human welfare?

With older artists it's easier to see - technology and art tended to overlap
because it was a means to express ideas. But more recently? It seems that art-
based philanthropy as a utilitarian endeavour would be difficult to justify.

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msutherl
It doesn't really work like that. This concept of individuals making major
contributions is an artefact of the way stories about human history are
written. Artists perceive the future and share what they see through aesthetic
means. This gives everybody (who's looking) a way of seeing beyond their own
experience into the unknown. Without art, we are all trapped in the present.

I don't have any external justification for this beyond the fact that many
people that I know who do important work refer regularly to art to inspire and
help them push their ideas.

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6d0debc071
It seems unlikely that artists have a unique future-perceiving faculty. There
are some science fiction authors who are fairly decent, but if you're trying
to sell classical art as a thing you need something more than some hand waving
about us all, other than artists, being trapped in the present.

Maybe some people want things they've seen in startrek or in comics or sci-fi
stories and the like, get inspired by great engineering feats that they see in
their day to day - that kind of thing. But decent sci-fi has a fair bit of
research behind it and most of the science-fiction related art would seem to
be fairly well endorsed by those who enjoy it anyway. Not really a venture
into the world of art and support artists kind of thing.

I find it very hard to believe that art in a 'involve yourself with art' and
'support the artists you owe more than you know' kind of sense has anything to
do with inspiring people with regards to the future. I don't see the
relationship between the sort of stuff that's generally passed off as art and
anything to which one could aspire.

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msutherl
> the sort of stuff that's generally passed off as art

I'm not sure what you're referring to here, but it's surely not relevant. 99%
of everything is shit. The only things that matter are the things that matter.
That you don't know about them is not my concern.

Yes, science fiction serves a similar role. Fine art also informs science
fiction. And vice versa. But they are different things that reveal different
aspects of our culture, its evolution, and its direction. There is not only a
single sense of 'seeing the future' that may be fulfilled by one or another
discipline!

You sound like somebody who simply lacks an education in fine art. You would
not be aware of the the influence of art if you were not immersed in, or if
you hadn't studied in depth a culture that values, understands and makes use
of it. I would argue further that cultures who do not value art in some form
are impoverished, for they lack that particular perspective of highly
sensitive people.

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smackfu
Is this still possible today? From my experience, it seems very expensive to
buy original art (that isn't prints). Just materials cost tends to make decent
sized paintings $500+.

It's hard to be a working-class collector when there are a lot of upper-
middle-class people who just want decorations for their walls.

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diydsp
Very much so... but don't forget, you have to fish where the fish are. They
collected in NYC, an environment which facilitates art collection- many
artists move there. It also appears the couple had no children?

If you're looking for good, cheap art, try looking around in a town which has
a small art school. They always have graduation show and students work very
hard on those pieces. And if you're interested in the valuation of art, be
sure to attend an art history class.

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beat
You could easily liken it to being angel investors in Silicon Valley. A middle
class couple might become great at it, but they wouldn't be able to pull it
off in Sheboygan.

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sixQuarks
wow, what a great story. People following their true passions.

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contingencies
Priceless? If you look at art from the perspective of monetary value, you miss
the point. These people didn't. They win.

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madaxe
Nice story - and very much the way it should be. Buy what you love, and if
it's an investment, it's a bonus. I have a collection of 50's and 60's Italian
abstract and cubist art that festoons my home, because I love it - bought it
all piecemeal over the last 15 years or so, never paying more than £30 or so
for a piece. One of the artists I've collected is becoming "significant",
sadly (some 20 years posthumously), which means I can no longer collect his
work without paying through the nose. Tum ti tum.

