“A new cohort of collectors is coming into view. Can they avoid the hype that hurt so many of their recent predecessors?

THE NEXT GENERATION

Every generation sooner or later forgives its parents, pairs off with spouses, picks careers, buys homes and then, inevitably, starts collecting something, anything. The current generation of under-40s is not different: those late baby boomers and early busters, whom the media have been struggling for the past year to pigeonhole, are turning acquisitive en masse and extraordinarily young.

Even  at age 25, they are carrying on art collecting’s oldest traditions. They are perfecting purchasing styles  of impulsive leaps or methodical gap-filling; they are befriending artists; they are poring over academic tomes and auctions catalogues; they are laughtings over early errors; they are serving on museum committees and donating their treasures for tax breaks. And they are thus hoping to win some inmortality, to be remembered for their aesthetic foresight as much as their  knack for moneymaking.

They are accomplishing all this despite the current art-market  downturn and the lack of any dominant artistic or critical school. Moreover, they are manteining an utterly un-‘80s disinterest in investment. In interviews with a score of 40-and-under colletors in the past two months, I heard only one compare his purchases to corporate stock (and he was 40 and thus perhaps an ‘80s relic). All the others gushedimpassioned phrases like “I am interested  in doing service for the artwork and  “I can’think of a single piece I’d sell”.

“What motivate collectors now,” says Soho dealer Andrea Rosen, “is a desire to have a continuum in their lives, in particular to feel a possibility for change in the world,. They view  art as a vehicle that can encourage change and hope and clarity and expansiveness.” Certainly, it’s tempting to believe her-despite a few ominous signs of trouble ahead.

Ali and Dalia Cordero Casal 37 and 35 insurance broker an interior decorator, contemporary art, Caracas

The Cordero Casals- he owns an enormous insurance broker-age, she is an architect as well as a decorator- are known for their broad tastes, which also accommodate photos by Americans Herb Ritts, Annie Leibovitz and Robert Mapplethorpe; dream-scapes by venezuelan painter Jorge Pizzani; and Arman’s 1970 Poubelle (a plexiglas case of garbage, purchased at Sotheby’s 1988 sale of the Andy Warhol State). “The art is omething of taste and of heart, and that’s why the collection is so eclectic,” Ali says. “I don’t know what I want, I just buy, and I love how it all looks together”.

Art & Auction Magazine april 1993. Text by Eve M. Kahn