When Victims Rule (pdf)

MODERN ART
of all this that Rudi told me I should drop everything and come study
with him, that he would make me rich, and that I would get laid all the
time. ‘You should have seen the knockers on the woman I was just with
in Boston,’ he said.” [LEW, A., 1999, p. 54-55]
In Switzerland, Werner and Gabrielle Merzbacher own “one of the world’s
greatest accumulations of modern art.” [GREEN, D., p. 37] 139 works by 77 artists
were exhibited at the Israel Museum in Jerusalem in 1998. In Los Angeles,
“in the early 1990s,” notes Tom King,
“with his purchased of David Hockney’s Double Portrait, [Jewish Hollywood
mogul David] Geffen began a buying spree that soon made the
art world take note. He built a collection of modern masterpieces that,
for the artists and periods he favored, was unparalleled, including many
of the most valuable works by Jackson Pollock and Jasper Johns. [KING,
T., 2000, p. 477]
In England, Jewish advertising mogul Charles Saatchi and his wife “have
built a collection of modern art that is regarded today as perhaps the most important
of its kind in the world in private hands,” largely concentrating on
“American minimalists.” [FALLON, p. 325] By the 1980s Saatchi was spending
$1 million a year on new art acquisitions. Among his interests was a “heavy investment
in the art of [Jewish painter] Julian Schnabel.” [GLUECK, p. 2, p. 27]
Norman Rosenthal of the British Royal Academy suggested that “the Saatchis
are probably the most important collectors of modern art in anywhere in the
world.” [FALLON, p. 335] Political artist Hans Haacke once held an exhibition
(called “Taking Stock”) “which was an attack on the Saatchis, their advertising
empire, and on Mrs. Thatcher [the British Prime Minister who was built to
power with the help of Saatchi advertising].” [FALLON, p. 334]
Kevin Goldman even suggests that:
“Advertising is an industry in which the amount of money to be made
rivals the fortunes made by investment bankers and robber barons. Indeed,
one [advertising] man, Charles Saatchi, made so much money in
advertising that he was able to control the world’s contemporary art
market.” [GOLDMAN, p. 21]
“The Saatchi Collection,” says Alison Fendley, “has been a focus of debate
in the world of contemporary art since it opened to the public in 1985. Little is
known about the inner workings of the Saatchi Gallery; even today, its finances
are mysterious.” [FENDLEY, p. 6]
Looking for an ikat, “a rare textile from Uzbekistan?” Try Guido Goldman,
who in the last twenty years has amassed the largest private ikat collection from
Central Asia in the world. (Goldman’s father, Nachum, was the “President of
the World Jewish Congress and key player in a host of other Jewish organizations.”)
[CEMBALEST, HOW, p. 11])
Suits of armor? Medieval artifacts? Judaica? Barry Trupin “owned one of the
largest private collections of Judaica in America, as well as a world-renowned
collection of medieval artifacts and suits of armor. His pride and joy was a suit
of armor from Hever Castle in England that had belonged to Henry II. Trupin
1508