In Search of Patrons

October 6, 2024

Google ‘famous arts patrons,’ and you’ll get a cornucopia of names ranging from Beyoncé to Dorothy and Herbert Vogel. With such a broad spectrum of personalities--some you know many you don’t—I began to wonder: is a patron a collector? Or vice versa? And with the advent of greedy-guts billionaire tech dudes, does anyone in today’s world know what an arts patron actually is?

When I was a young whippersnapper, my Mum took me to see the film Pollock. (I’m not quite sure why she took me to see this film, but I think it was as much about her wanting to see it and also wanting to educate me. That she created a beast of foreign and independent cinema, is an entry for another day.) As she gave me no introduction of who or what I was to see, I remember dragging my feet and wondering why I was being forced to see this boring movie about a dude I didn’t know. Like all great Mother’s, mine was a master at subversion; fifteen minutes into the movie I was hooked. I desperately wanted to be an actor at the age and couldn’t understand what Ed Harris was doing. It was like I was being taken into this world of 1940’s artistic explosion by what I did not know.

There are three things I walked away with from that movie: 1) Relationships between men and women are complicated, and between two artists a hot hellish mess; 2) Tobe an artist, you have to be maniacal, both in your focus and temperament (that scene where DeKooning and other artists are standing around at a party, humble-bragging while viciously complimenting, is a scene of beauty); 3) Who, what or why was Peggy Guggenheim?

Everyone knows the Guggenheim name. There’s a big building on Museum Mile that grace sit. But I’d hazard that it’s Peggy not Solomon R. that did oodles for the arts.With ‘less’ than what her cousins had, Peggy used her fervent charisma to forge relationships with artists. By living with artists and writers, she became acquainted with their way of life and in turn knew what they needed. It wasn’t just about boosting their confidence, but about organising and selling their work; the business end of things that so many creatives have trouble with. And just as much as she collected, she championed, making her a true arts patron in my book.

I love that so many of the greatest arts patrons have been women. From the Baroness Pannonica de Koeningswarter to Catherine the Great, these brilliant head strong with impeccable taste fostered everything from movements to buildings, with the desire to share with the greater world was is too often guarded by the upper-classes.We live in a time when we need arts patrons more than ever. In a world that is getting more expensive with the money going who-knows-where, and attacks on feminine getting more prevalent, the masses need culture to keep hope alive. History has shown that it’s women who keep societies going too. The great balance of human existence is the conquering of the male and the nurturing of the feminine. But there needs to be both. The scales can never be too tipped in one direction or another,they need to work in tandem, yet where is that now? There are far too many collectors and not enough patrons, and a troubling sign of our times is that we cannot differentiate between the two. How can David and Ezra Nahmad be called patrons next to Dorothy and Herbert Vogel? One pair amassed an extraordinary art collection through modest means, that they then gave away to the Smithsonian.The other buy art, store it, drive up the prices then sell it for billions without knowing the difference between underpainting and sgraffito.

The greatest story being told in Pollock is that many great artists wouldn’t have changed our lives through their art without patrons. Whether they were Lee Krasner’s or Madame de Pompadour’s, someone enabled so they could create. Sorry Beyhive, your Queen B is not a patron. An arts patron is a curious philanthropist who sees incredible talent and nurtures it to greatness through sponsorship,whether personal or financial. Many are predestinately wealthy with sizeable collections of art. But what separates the Single Lady from the Bebop Baroness is the desire to give art, not hinder it.