A breathtaking portrait hanging in JD’s yet-to-be-sold Chicago home. [Luxist]
art
Adam Sender Displays Art Around Office Other Hedge Fund Managers Wish They Had The Stones To Put Up
By Bess Levin
Put it on the trading floor, or better yet, the lobby and that’ll send a message (“This is how it’s gonna be. You have been warned, so don’t come crying to us when your PM busts out a collar.”).
The art in Aibel (Sender’s curator)’s office at Exis Capital veers into the risque. A photograph by German artist Thomas Ruff depicts a blurry woman in lingerie towering over a man on a leash crawling beside her. Aibel joined Sender in 2006, working alongside curator Todd Levin, who spearheaded Sender’s collection from 1998 to 2008.
Adam Sender Dresses Up Hedge Fund Rooms With Ruscha, Dan Flavin [Bloomberg via BI]
I’m not asking for me, I’m asking for Matthew Schirmer, one of the many people who bought a portrait of McG back when he was a hot-ticket item anyone who’s anyone would proudly display around the house. Now? That people have realized he kinda helped us get into the financial shit-storm du jour with his patented 3-Step Guide For Being Fed Chair (1. Talk like you know your shit, even when you don’t. 2. Cut rates like a Thai hooker with the clap 3. When in doubt, print it out)? No one wants anything to do with him and if you’re unlucky enough to have his picture stinking up your home, like Schirmer, you just want the guy to bite the big one already.
Mr. Schirmer says he had high hopes for the painting when he bought it in 2006 with his brother, Nathan. The money they spent went to a worthy cause, autism research. But Mr. Schirmer says he was hoping to raise even more money for a favorite charity, Autism Speaks.
“We thought, let us ride this wave,” he recalls. Mr. Schirmer paid to have 100 high-quality prints made of the painting. He flew Ms. Crowe to Florida to sign them. Her painting was placed on an easel in the lobby of a Tampa-area bank Mr. Schirmer helped found. Mr. Schirmer anticipated holding charity fund-raisers with the Greenspan painting as a draw.
“There was no interest,” he says. To this day, he hasn’t sold any prints, he says, “not a single one.” The original painting could still recover some value, he says. “I hate to tell you, but we are kind of waiting for him to pass on.
It’s not that Schirmer et al wish Big Al any harm, per se, it’s just that he’s not the sort of thing you want lying around the house, where guests or innocent children might see him.
Brian McAnaney, a lawyer in Stamford, Conn., bought an early Greenspan painting by Ms. Crowe at a charity auction way back for $300. A friend of the artist’s family, he hung the painting in his office, where it remained until he retired. Now he has it hidden away in a closet in his summer house.
“It is a little hard to find a place for Mr. Greenspan in my homes,” Mr. McAnaney says. “He is still there, but in a closet, because it is difficult to find a place for him in a family setting.”
Until our sweet prince finally does take his final bow, though, he’s actually not entirely useless.
I know it sounds crazy but just– hear me out. As you’re aware, nobody gets any real respect in this business until they’ve found themselves some eccentric artist, duped his/her friends/colleagues/peers in the field/just rich people in general into buying said eccentric artist’s pieces for an obscene number of clams, and then having people say you, like, discovered the guy or put his name on the map or something. Unfortunately, Damien Hirst is spoken for. And for that matter, so is his ‘animal-in-formaldehyde’ shtick, which is pretty much exhausted at this point, having done not just the suspended-killer fish for the BSD crowd, but the unicorn as well, for those whose tastes veer more toward the Renaissance Fair-inspired, gay works. It’s always easier to come up with a gimmick in the early days, of course, so the next guy’s really gonna have to think big. Like, animals nailed to a cross big.
In a darkened 19th-century former church near London’s Regent’s Park, Michael Platt sips white wine and contemplates an unusual altar display: a life-size wax gorilla nailed to a wooden cross. The sculpture is a new work by Paul Fryer, a young British artist whom Platt, co-founder of hedge fund firm BlueCrest Capital Management Ltd., has sponsored for the past three years. Like a modern-day Medici, Platt has recouped his investment by selling Fryer’s works to collectors such as French billionaire Francois Pinault.
Mark your calendars ladies because on November 1 Lehman Brothers will start hawking the artwork that once graced the walls of Dick Fuld’s office, executive dining room, gym and lobby. Barclays had one year from the time it purchased Mr. Fuld’s domain to buy the photos and drawings, which the Brits unceremoniously declined, along with the dog. Up for grabs are Lichtenstein’s “I Love Liberty,” expected to go for $25,000, a few $500 photos, and several charcoal drawings Erin Callan did of The Gorilla when they were on better terms. Surely there’s something in there for everyone. Write a check today. If not for a love of art, then do it for the creditors who are owed $250 billion but most especially former prez Joe Gregory, who is waiting for $233 million in deferred comp and is getting antsier with each passing day. We haven’t seen it up close but Callan is said to have gotten the shading on the nipples exactly right. That’s gotta be a collector’s item.
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