15
THE LICHTENBERGS AS ART
So I could see not sculptural characteristics in reality, but I could see an interest in the description of space. I think their collecting interests broad- ened from that point, but it is something that I see as the line that connects what others might see as disparately different photographs.
SH:
That’s interesting. So that is one of the red threads that you felt.
GH:
It is interesting to take guests there or be there at the house when Joe shows the collection and then to run into a collector or curator later and have a conversation and mention that Joe and Charlotte’s interest in collecting had begun to a certain extent in sculpture and that you could see that in the collection itself, and see a kind of light bulb go off in the person’s (guest, collector, or curator) head.
SH:
From there, in terms of the evolution of the relationship and your role with the Lichtenbergs, how did that develop in terms of broadening your mutual interests?
GH:
Well, my interest in photography is from the perspective of the dealer, and the curatorial work that I do in my own gallery is with intention extremely ecumenical. Joe and Charlotte’s collection fi rst and foremost seems to be something they relate to emotionally. So often my situation with collectors like Joe and Charlotte is learning them. The history of photography is not so great that it is something you can’t grasp after a period of time. And then as new things introduce themselves into the photo world, the art world, they are added into your knowledge of it. What is interesting is that Joe’s collec- tion in terms of dates is thorough, stretches across the greater expanse of the history of photography including nineteenth century work and reaching all the way into very contemporary work. And it is not relegated into only black and white photographs, but involves color and in some cases involves variations in approaches to the mediums.
So to be more direct about answering your question, more often than not after the beginning, there were occasions in which I suggested looking at cer- tain things. But Joe was an adventurer and he went to shows regularly wher- ever he was. Not only in Washington but in New York or San Francisco, and his travels in Europe. He always made time to go to see photo galleries and museum shows. And that was never exclusively of photography. He often went to see other shows in museums as well. So he kept a vital relationship with the visual language of art which informed collecting. So we could talk about him as a photo collector, but really he is an art collector that special- izes in collecting photographs.
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SH:
I have gone with Joe to galleries and museums, and he is quite a guide.
GH:
He is passionate! And it is fun! I think they are private collectors by the way you use those terms or those words, but they have never been any- thing except generous when it comes to sharing the collection with people.
Any time I have had a new employee, the fi rst thing that comes out of Joe’s mouth is, “You should visit Charlotte and me at the house and I will take you through the collection.” So he has a generous spirit. I think he has a cer- tain political or civic consciousness.
SH:
Even though Joe may write and do certain things individually, he always engages in groups, bringing people in, and he enjoys that dialogue.
In talking about the private collection over time, and also the range of work, we were wondering what would you say were the highlights of the collection?
GH:
There are photographs within the collections which the authorities would point out are highlights of the collection. And anyone who has studied pho- tography can identify the superstars and signifi cant fi gures in the history of photography. The way Joe and Charlotte collect, is fi rst emotional. The col- lection has lesser-known or even anonymous photographers and is consist- ent with collecting purely for aesthetic reasons. Sometimes the most mean- ingful or signifi cant photograph in a collection may be the least famous. It may be the least valuable, but may be the most meaningful.
SH:
I know they have strong relationships to individual photographs, and I have my own personal favorites. Do you feel there are any gaps in Joe’s collection as you look at it from your perspective?
GH:
Well, that is a question that comes up in conversations between Joe and me.
How does this new addition to the collection fi t in? You are asking a dealer here [laughs]. There is always room for more. Are there gaps? I never walk into the house and feel like there is a space on the wall that needs to be fi lled.
Or why don’t they have this or that? But they also don’t have a collection that is purely linear in nature.
Once again their collection is based on aesthetic appreciation of a photo- graph, its formal qualities, and then the emotional relationship they have to the content. I don’t know that there are any gaps other than we may say, “I have never heard this opera before. I love this opera.”
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SH:
What role do you fi nd Joe has, and what role do you fi nd Charlotte has in forming the collection, or how have you seen them work together?
GH:
Well, I think that Joe is more the captain of the ship and Charlotte the fi rst mate. Charlotte has veto power. Because he is a conceptual thinker, Joe is always adding to the idea of what he might add to the collection. I think that Charlotte is much more intuitive and emotional about what she likes.
But you know, the person who can say no often holds the greatest amount of power [laughter].
SH:
One thing that is interesting to me in knowing Joe as an analyst and what he brings to his analytic conceptualizations, and now hearing you talk about what he brings to the study and collection and pleasure of photography, is that they are the same processes, the same Joe moving in another discipline.
GH:
Yes!
SH:
Is the process you have gone through with Joe and Charlotte similar to that with others who collect, or different?
GH:
I think there are different types of art dealers. There are art dealers whose primary strategy is they display a range of objects that are a representative of that dealer’s taste. And their pitch, so to speak, is that you should have that same taste.
The way I have operated in my gallery is that there is a … Life is a rich pageant of experiences and there are so many different wonderful things, and there are so many different wonderful things in art, and there are so many wonderful things within photography. It is not my desire to have you replicate what I think is good taste, but rather for you to have me guide you through as best I can to the richest experience relative to what your interests are.
Working with someone like Joe is great fun because he has an adventur- ous mind and we can pretty much go any place together. He is not playing catch-up to me. And he is not necessarily frightened of certain content. He may not acquire it, Charlotte might veto it. But he can go there intellec- tually and he can appreciate the reasons that a photograph was made. So my relationship and how our relationship has developed is not any different than the relationship that might develop between two people who partner at something. I, because it is my specialty, am exposed to so much more than any others other than those in the profession. As a dealer I see things fi rst.
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I see the behind-the-scene process of how art comes to the public. I often see how the photographs are made, or what the subject matter ambitions might be. I have people who bring artists to me. I have correspondence, for example, with photographers who are working in the Middle East in com- bat. I have emails from them about what they are doing.
So it is not that I feel superior by any intellectual effort. It is just that where I am is at the intersection of a lot of activity in the art world. So when I see things that seem like they might be of interest to Joe, I direct him there.
But for many years now, I would say for the last ten years, I have by and large not acted as a dealer with Joe, but as an advisor. And very often the situation is that he has found a photograph, and he brings either the image to me or he asks me questions about it. I give him what I know about the context of the photograph so he is better prepared to make a decision. With other clients, I am often bringing the photograph to them and I am also giv- ing them the situation or the context around it and some idea about its value relative to the market.
My conversations with Joe are not necessarily about bringing a photograph to him, but about a photograph he is interested in and I might say these are the strengths and weaknesses by comparison to other photographers’ work.
SH:
Has he ever brought someone to your attention whose work you didn’t know?
GH:
Yes, he has.
SH:
Do you fi nd in your experience that the professional life of the collector has a bearing on what he chooses?
GH:
Yes. For better or worse, we live in a city, Washington, D.C., where the notoriety of the city nationally and internationally, is about politics. But the true industry here is by and large law. The major law fi rms and the per- sonality type which gravitates to the law which is text bound, not visual in nature, and/or people who have chosen to represent the interests of others and are not necessarily conspicuous about their own representation. So they are not expressive individuals. It is not easy for them to buy art work which is at the core of who they are and which may reveal a weakness, a strength, or a preference.
Almost every collector we deal with is passionate about their career so the career can’t help but be refl ected in the work that they have purchased.
But that is not often easily seen on the most intimate level, but sometimes it is seen in generalities. For example, in the late 1970s into the early 1980s, law fi rms grew at a rapid pace. The fi rms’ collecting was dominated by abstract painting acquisitions. At fi rst this struck me as odd – that the
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three-piece-suits were building collections that at the time could be diffi cult for the greater part of their staffs to appreciate.
Then it became clear that the reason they were buying abstract work was because there was a great body of work being made here in Washington, particularly in the 60s and 70s, that led to other work in the 70s and 80s, color fi eld work that was without reference to anything in the real world.
You couldn’t see a tree, a boat, a cloud, it was color and gesture and stains.
But it became clear that the reason they were interested in that work beyond its beauty was that it was diffi cult to determine what it actually said in a specifi c way. You couldn’t say this painting was Democratic, Republican, Conservative, Liberal, gay, straight, Jewish, Catholic, Western, Eastern, whatever. It was not there to be read. And that was a quintessential lesson about how people collect in this city, at least for a period. It has changed a great deal. As the demographics have grown younger, how people collect has changed signifi cantly.
I wouldn’t say with Joe that I look at the work and say this is someone who is involved in psychology, because many of the pieces are more or less abstract in nature. A sand dune photographed by Weston is not something that has overt psychological reading like a portrait. So I would not say it is refl ected in that sense. I would say it refl ects Joe and Charlotte in personal- ity, at least not in a professional way. That said, we are working with a col- lector now who is a modernist furniture dealer and objects that he is buying are from a particular time that refl ects a certain kind of design sensibility. So there is one person that directly refl ects a career. For the most part, people buy it because “I like it,” and that is a refl ection of their personality but it is often an oblique relationship.
And I can tell you comic stories about collectors. We worked with a par- ticular couple and they only wanted landscapes. And after numerous pres- entations with no sales, the husband sidled over to me and said, “You know my wife can’t stand the color blue.” Obviously there are paintings that have skies in them that are not blue, but by and large they do have blue. So that is a personality quirk. That is the refl ection of a personality, I think maybe a damaged personality, but all the same [laughing].
SH:
I understand that Joe and Charlotte’s collection is at the Phillips. How did that happen?
GH:
Well, Joe had been open about, open with museum curators and at some point they had spoken to Joe and Charlotte before they spoke to me, but I was approached by the development director at the Phillips – it’s got to be fi ve, six, maybe seven years ago – and asked if maybe the Lichtenbergs might be interested in donating work to the Phillips collection. My answer
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was, “You have to ask them.” That is really my relationship to them. I try to be as helpful as possible to the Phillips, and it is a wonderful place for it to go. And it is great for the Lichtenberg collection to go to a museum that had some photographs in its collection, but nothing to the extent of what Joe and Charlotte are donating to the Phillips. Museums that collect photographs usually have longer histories of collecting photographs, had an intent to collect photographs, and went at it in a particular way. The Phillips collection has never been a collecting museum.
SH:
So it makes a really important contribution to the … GH:
If you look at the other museums in town … the Hirshhorn has never had a curator of photography so they never focused on photography as a medium.
But the photographs they own are usually photographs that are conceptual in nature made by artists who used multiple mediums. The National Gallery has slowly and methodically built their collection on the basis of whom they think are the most important American photographers.
These museums have collected certain artists or they have collected in an encyclopedic fashion. The Corcoran, along with the Metropolitan Museum in New York, were collecting at the beginning of photography. I say the beginning but really around 1875 and after. So for example, Muybridge’s Albums of Animal Locomotion were acquired simultaneously at the Met and the Corcoran as they were published.
What is distinctive about the Phillips’ gift is, and what is so really won- derful for Joe and Charlotte and all the rest of us on their team, is that almost every other photo donation that goes to a museum, I don’t want to say gets buried, but it certainly gets shuffl ed into the deck of a much lar- ger collection. Their donation makes a signifi cant statement and becomes a statement for the museum about photography.
SH:
Yes. So the context is very deep.
With Joe being a psychoanalyst, and “listening with the third ear,” is there something about “seeing with the third eye?” Joe is unusual in many ways as an analyst, as a collector, and as an individual. Do you think there is any- thing about his ability to refl ectively look that informs his acquisitions?
GH:
Well, there are two types of collectors. There is the kind that wants to make their environment feel nice. Sometimes they buy extraordinarily important work to make their environment feel right. They are basically buying to decorate their homes. It is the movie set of their life. And there are other collectors, and Joe and Charlotte fi t into this category, they get up from the
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table and stand in front of an artwork and study it, they are consumed into it, they are engaged intensely. Joe and Charlotte open up to a photograph and this is a different relationship than it being part of the set of your life.
They read the artwork like a book. And I believe that is a unique character- istic. I have worked with collectors that have truly amazing artworks and they show them off well. But there are collectors who are able to stop the self and absorb. In a way, it is a communication with the artist through the artwork. It requires a kind of animism, being willing to play the game. It is being in the fl ow of the artwork.
SH:
That state.
GH:
It really is a state. A meditative state or maybe it is an intellectual exercise.
But it is absorbing or engaging and it requires much more intense effort than it does to decorate your home. But also that goes to something else and this is really the crux of Joe and Charlotte as collectors. I don’t know that they have some enormous sympathy for artists. And that is really kind of besides the point, at least with what I am about to say. What Joe does, what Joe and Charlotte have, is as rare as what it is to be an artist, which is an ability to see differently. And I know this as a dealer that there are few people who come in the gallery who are the equal receiving talent of the sending talent of the artist. Those are people that we need to take care of in a particular way.
We are all capable. But some of us for whatever reasons have been given this gift of being able to see art a certain way, or see art with the same inten- sity as those who make it.
So I have always felt like there was a kind of … it is not Darwinian in the sense of survival of the fi ttest. It is that other part of Darwinism, it is a level of cooperation and complexity between the maker and the receiver. And so what is interesting about art is to stand right in the middle of that point of intense collaboration between the viewer and the artist. Joe and Charlotte occupy that special place.
SH:
Well, that is very beautifully said. Are there any other thoughts or observations?
GH:
No. That’s all I got in my head [laughing].