ONLY COLLECT
You don’t have to be a billionaire to amass works of art. Here’s how to go about it

By Moira Daly

TORONTO ART COLLECTOR Aaron Milrad still thinks about the one that got away. It was 1960 and Milrad, then a third-year law student, faced the classic collector’s dilemma: should he spend $250 he had scraped together on the second half of his law-school tuition or on a Harold Town canvas he had discovered at a gallery on Bloor Street?

In the end, Milrad’s sensible lawyer’s head won out over his art-loving heart and he returned the painting to the gallery.
“That picture would have been about $25,000 today,” Milrad says, “but besides that, it was a beautiful work.”

Esthetic enjoyments, the thrill of the hunt or the chance for a big windfall are some of the reasons why those who like art begin collecting. For many, what begins in a small way with one or two canvases or a few treasured objects, soon blossoms into a lifelong obsession.

Photographs of Aaron Milrad's collection by Yuri Dojc

Consider Kenneth Thomson, aka Lord Thomson of Fleet, Canada’s most prominent art collector. Thomson is a communications mogul and the world’s 15th richest man, according to Forbes magazine. His collection, which includes works by Turner, Constable and Rubens, is valued at more than $300 million. But when five palm-sized ivory carvings he had loaned to the Art Gallery of Ontario were stolen and later returned last year, Thomson’s delight confirmed that collecting is often passion over reason. On the day of their return, Thomson said he planned to sleep with the carvings that night.

“I usually have three dogs on my bed,” Thomson said at a news conference. “[Tonight] I’m going to have one dog and five ivories on my bed.” The carvings, valued at $1.5 million, were among the first artworks he acquired, Thomson explained, so they had enormous sentimental value.

You need not be an eccentric press baron, a dot-com billionaire or a distant Medici heir to begin collecting, experts say. Even those of comparatively modest means can amass an interesting, enjoyable and potentially lucrative collection, as long as they are willing to put in the work.

For many, the first step may be overcoming their trepidation about entering the art world, with its occasionally impenetrable artspeak and overabundance of people in unusual glasses. That insecurity is the natural result of a widespread lack of familiarity, says Louise Beaudry, an art consultant in Montreal.

“From a very young age we should be brought into contact with art, so we have an opportunity to develop a critical eye. Otherwise, it is only when we are older and have a big wallet that we start to think about it.”

Beaudry’s firm, Propos d’Art, groupe conseil Inc., helps businesses build collections to fit their corporate images. For a company that works with young professionals, for example, Beaudry created a collection of dynamic, contemporary works to represent the irresistible pull of the future.

Individuals often set off on a particular path for more personal reasons. “Collecting came into my life as a way to explore an identity and a culture,” says Kenneth Montague, a Toronto dentist. Montague’s photography collection, which focuses on black culture in different places and eras, has its roots in his upbringing in Windsor, Ont., in the 1970s. Visits to museums in Detroit with his open-minded parents exposed him to images of and by African-Americans. “They looked impossibly sophisticated and I thought, ‘Someday I will get out of Windsor and that will be me.’”

Milrad’s mother collected British ceramics and his father was a Sunday painter. His collection, which currently hovers around 400 pieces, includes post-Second World War ceramics, sculpture and paintings by abstract artists Jack Bush and Helen Frankenthaler.

Abstract art made since the Second World War is also the focus of theatre impresario David Mirvish’s renowned collection, although he is not sure he would define himself as a collector.

“I am someone who likes to see certain ideas expressed and exhibitions take place and I lend pictures to institutions that have something that they want to say about the artist that interests me,” he says.

Each of us has our own way of looking and our own way of responding, says Mirvish, and that will determine what we collect—or if collecting is even appropriate. When it comes to contemporary art, such as conceptual art or land art, collecting may not be an option, Mirvish points out. “The artist Robert Irwin, for example, has devoted the last 20 years to making art that you can’t collect. He did the renovation and grounds of the Dia Center and the gardens at L.A.’s Getty Museum, both of which are extraordinary, but not collectible in the conventional sense.”

For the most part, however, the art market is broad enough to respond to almost any interest, Mirvish adds. “You can still collect 17th-century Dutch painting, if you want. There is a Jacob van Ruisdael exhibition right now at the L.A. County Museum and a number of those painting are privately owned and still there in the marketplace. And they’re not any more expensive than some contemporary artists who are fashionable at this moment who made pictures last year.”

Familiarity is often the key, says Miriam Shiell, a Toronto art dealer. “Canadians will obviously have a comfort level in buying the art of their own history. That’s not unique to Canadians. Every country has a national art that people collect and they compete over it fiercely to get what they want.”

The ferocity of that competition often drives people into the arms of dealers and consultants. Aspiring collectors should do as much of their own homework as they can by reading widely, visiting shows and nosing around in the backrooms of galleries. Seeking out knowledgeable advice is a good idea, experts agree, both as a way to train the eye and to negotiate a market that has international reach.

Stephen Bulger, a Toronto photographer dealer, Maia Sutnik, head of collections at the AGO and curator Robert Osbourne have all been instrumental in the creation of his collection, Montague says, and have encouraged his curatorial activities under the name Wedge. “Stephen said he didn’t find any problem or fault with a dentist opening a gallery. He was so positive and supportive.”

Dealers can tell you about the history of an artist, their movement and keep you updated, says Milrad. Beyond that, courting dealers can increase your chances of gaining access to the work you covet, says Shiell. “You build a good relationship with these people and when they get something decent, they’ll phone you up.”

Auction houses are another source of information and often the only place to purchase very high profile works. “The auction is the great leveler because that’s where all the retailers buy,” says Valerie Brown, head of the Ontario central division for Waddington’s, a Toronto-based auction house. “Personally, I’m always very happy when I am bidding against a dealer, because if I get the next bid, I know I’ve saved a lot of money.”

Regardless of where you buy, buy what you love and buy the best that you can afford, the experts say. “You can’t predict if a painting is going to go up or down,” says Mirvish, “but the intrinsic value is the quality of the vision and the object. If those are there, the financial side seems to take care of itself.”

Photographs by Jürgen Schadeberg courtesy of Kenneth Montague

Collecting art is also one of the few private endeavours with enormous potential to give back, collectors agree. For Mirvish, that means participating in the conversation about art in numerous ways. Milrad is continually donating works from his collection to institutions large and small. Montague, meanwhile, has been spending less time doing root canal and more time acting as an exhibition sponsor. Wedge also runs programs for children who can’t access art by traditional means. “You’ve got to put your money where your mouth is,” Montague says. “Sharing is what this is about.”

Even when you think you’ve got it all under control, remember that one of the great joys of collecting is the surprises it brings, Mirvish says. After viewing the haunting paintings of Vilhelm Hammershoi, a Danish artist, at a 1983 exhibition in London, Mirvish spotted a Hammershoi hanging in a gallery window. He and his wife were in a cab on the way to the airport. Mirvish asked the driver to stop and wait, and half an hour later, he came out with his Hammershoi—one of only two he knows about in Canada. “My picture is from about 1909,” he says, still amazed. “I don’t collect 1909 art.”

It is, indeed, about the journey and not the destination, says Catriona Jeffries, a Vancouver gallery owner. “Do you buy five or 10 works, slap your hands together and say, ‘That’s that’? Or do you allow yourself to go on a cultural exploration that will last a lifetime?”

The rewards of connoisseurship will come over time, says Beaudry. “It is like tasting wine. At first you might try something very cheap, but somewhere along the line, someone will offer you something much, much better.”

FORGERY: NOT A PRETTY PICTURE

As criminals go, forgers have had an easy ride. Often seen as gentlemanly scamps or misunderstood folk heroes, tales of their exploits are celebrated as frequently as they are condemned.

Certainly, the good fakers can be as inventive and free-spirited as any “real” artist. “You wake up in the morning and you just feel like today is a Picasso day, today is a Monet day,” convicted forger John Myatt once said. Myatt used K-Y jelly to add body to his brush strokes. In 2003, after spending just four months in jail in 1999, he put his authentic fakes up for sale in a British gallery. Prices ranged up to $10,000 US.

Bake your canvas at 80 C for a day if you want it to crack from top to bottom, advises famous British faker Leo Stevenson, who describes his work as “inventions in the style of Old Masters.” Worried that your phoney, gilded artifact looks too shiny and new? No problem, said flamboyant Italian forger Icilio Federico Joni in his 1936 autobiography, Affairs of a Painter. Try soaking the stump of a Tuscan cigar in water for a day to make a useful glaze.

While modern science has spawned many sophisticated techniques to uncover fakes, there is still no foolproof filter, experts say. More than half the objects brought into the Royal Ontario Museum by the public are fakes, estimates Dan Rahimi, executive director of gallery development, while the rate is about one in 100 for objects in the museum’s collection or that it acquires.

Even experienced collectors can have the wool pulled over their eyes. Just ask Taylor Thomson, only daughter of businessman Kenneth Thomson, a prominent collector of Canadian art. Taylor Thomson purchased a pair of gilded urns, allegedly made in 1760, for £1.9 million ($4 million) at Christie’s in London in 1994, beating out U.S. oil heiress Ann Getty. Experts later told her they were inferior 19th-century imitations. Thomson sued the auction house and the cash-strapped British nobleman who had put the urns up for sale, and in May 2004, a British judge ruled in her favour.

More fakers and forgers will feel the long arm of the law if the U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation has anything to say about it. This past March, the agency introduced a special squad of eight art-savvy agents. Art fraud does not a pretty picture make, said FBI spokesman Bill Carter. “It’s an ugly criminal specialty and we’re seeing more of it all the time.”