Dear Friends:  After a splendid 22 stop book tour of New England in August, with well over 400 books signed, Love’s Attraction is now the top-selling hardback fiction at Barnes & Noble in New England.  Thanks to all the wonderful booksellers I met and readers I had a chance to chat with: and fond hopes Love’s Attraction brings you joy as summer eases into fall.

It was a great pleasure for me to share both my enthusiasm for art and how a life in art has become integral to my fiction writing at the Corner Bookstore on the Upper East Side of NYC. Lenny, Matt, Davi, Nick, and Chris were the most welcoming and enthusiastic hosts at this haven for great books and humanistic values.

I hope I was able to portray how art both in the fictional world of Love’s Attraction, and in our lives, goes way beyond the simply beautiful…and leads us to a deeper, perhaps more profound understanding of other lives and other places–and the feelings we all share.

(Twelfth in a series of posts on the Art of Collecting)

With the recent publication of my latest novel, Love’s Attraction, I often get asked about how my experience as an art historian, collector, and adviser affects by fiction writing.  The answer is simple: a lot.

Read David’s post on Art.sy

(Eleventh in a series of posts on the Art of Collecting.)

There is no harder won goal than the cultivation of connoisseurship, whether in art, music, literature, film, theater, dance—or, dare I say it . . . life.

Read David’s post on Art.sy

(Tenth in a series of posts on the Art of Collecting)

In my search for Ross Braught, I had spoken to Braught’s studio assistant who had helped Braught pack up all his artworks when he left Kansas City in 1962; Tom Russell described how they had meticulously unstretched scores of canvases and carefully rolled them up and put them in heavy-duty storage tubes.  A life’s work rolled up and stored—somewhere!  I was at my wits end—a dead end.

Read David’s post on Art.sy

(Ninth in a series of posts on the Art of Collecting.)

Collecting is all about opening yourself to chance discoveries and letting your curiosity lead you seriously astray!  And occasionally getting justice for the worthy….

Read David’s post on Art.sy

(Eighth in a Series of posts on the Art of Collecting.)

        Some have called it the collecting disease, the collecting bug—a diabolical obsession that fills your walls, then your closets, then every available nook and cranny of your home, crowding out cats and dogs, and dinner guests—turning the children’s rooms to storage bins when they move out—yes, it happens!  For the born collector there is no cure except penury and the thing that comes before taxes.  Passionate collecting is not a life style but a way of life.  It is about living with art because living without is only half a life.

As a young collector, I was drawn to the art of Whistler, the intimacy of the etching medium, and then to scenes of Venice.  And so for many years I pursued etchings by Whistler and his American and British followers from the 1880s into the 1940s.  This time frame encompassed the great etching revival of the late nineteenth and early twentieth century.  My focused collecting and the pleasure of living with these prints and studying them closely allowed me four extraordinary insights: there were only a handful of reallygreat artists working in the etching medium during this period; the anxiety of influence the artists faced with the supreme example of Whistler looming over them was huge; the challenge of rendering Venice, that most color-saturated of all places, in a black and white medium forced these artists to innovate like mad; and the very best grappled with the sheer terror of discovering a fresh take on Venice—desperate to avoid a Venetian potboiler.  What I realized: almost without exception, over long careers, these artists did their best work in Venice.  And I uncovered some great lost geniuses like Clifford Addams and Donald Shaw MacLaughlan—and the brilliant early Venetian etchings of John Marin from 1907.  Seeking out these works from dealers and auctions accelerated my learning curve in connoisseurship and market savvy, while indulging my love of Venice—over 200 prints and going strong!

Twenty years ago when I was the arts editor at Voice of America, I had the thrill of interviewing and making documentaries on many contemporary artists.  Wolf Kahn, Paul Resika, and Rackstraw Downes were just a few I had the privilege of working with.  I quickly found myself an avid collector of their work.  Watching them painting and discussing the trials and tribulations of their artistic struggle was an education in the ups and downs of the creative process.  And a fuller appreciation of their hard-won triumphs.  You become a fan, a supporter, a cheerleader for the artists’ ongoing success—sometimes a patron and sponsor. Living with their art, something of their inner life touches on yours in the way of an abiding friendship.

As a rule of thumb, if you collect contemporary art, you might look at the financial aspects in the same way you approach a trip to Las Vegas: I’ll wager a certain amount of money that I can afford to lose, and, win-or-lose, I’m going to enjoy the action.  Most contemporary art will not go up in value by the time you turn over your collection to your children—or a museum!  But if you have enjoyed the artwork and refined your connoisseurship, supported worthy artists and their ecosystem of galleries, you have played a worthy role in the cultural life of our times.  To increase the odds that your collection will retain and possibly gain in value, you should buy the best artists from the finest galleries that you can afford.  History and the market’s judgment on an artist’s work are fickle, unfair, and full of black swan events that often work against even the greatest artists.  Quality (your ultimate gold standard)—backed by reputable and market-savvy galleries (savvy artists, too), a large well-heeled collector base, and the support of institutional curators—is the best predictor of long-term value.