Buying the best you can afford always puts a squeeze on your wallet, but the benefits of this strategy far out weigh the pain.  And I’ve never known a collector, from millionaires on down, who hasn’t bemoaned their Champaign tastes and beer budget.  On the other hand, I’ve known very few collectors who regretted the purchases they had to stretch for.  The real regrets: The magnificent opportunities that got away—you never forget them!  Knowing when to stretch is the key to assembling a great collection.

Why would you spend a lot of money on a work of art, something you may well live with for a lifetime, and not want as fine an example as you can afford?

Artists know very well who are the truly gifted lights in their profession.  Dealers know which of their colleagues have a terrific eye and ability to spot great talent.  Collectors, true connoisseurs, who are passionate about surrounding themselves with great art, know that the better the artist and artwork, the more profound and enduring the aesthetic experience.

A little knowledge—or enthusiasm—coupled with impulse can be a dangerous thing.

But—wait!  In the early going, dial back the testosterone and hold on to your wallet—step back from the iconic work by the artist you’ve heard so much about it the art press, or the summer beach scene that reminds you of favored youthful haunts, or the riveting work of political agitprop dedicated to battle climate change that so gets your motor running . . . and remember the Shirelles post-coital lament: will you still love me tomorrow?  Remember, too, that true collecting, living in daily communion with paintings and prints—when you glance up with a melancholy smile from the pages of Alice Monro to your living room wall—means embracing a partner of many moods and gifts, because the best artwork reflects your mercurial self…and never let’s you go.

If you thought American modernism and abstraction began with the Armory Show of 1913, or that it all begins with Rothko and the Abstract-Expressionists–think again!  Have you forgotten about Whistler’s wonderful dematerialized nocturnes along the Thames?  Ah, but Jimmy W was a one-off and lived long ago and far away–hardly an influence on Rothko?  Not so according to Robert Rosenbaum: “Even Whistler’s favored format, two or three broad zones of the haziest tonalities both fused and separated by the glimmer of a horizon line, announces the structural combination of elemental clarity and infinitely varied subtlety that Rothko would make his own….Milton Avery…a formative influence…also belongs to the Whistlerian, Anglo-American tradition of puritanical aestheticism…..”