«IT'S CALLED GOSSIP AND OF COURSE IT'S AN OBSESSION OF MINE»

Adam Lindemann’s view of Robert Scull, the collector who sold his collection at that 1973 auction and was pilloried for it, has to be put in the context of Lindemann’s own brush with infamy when he allegedly flipped Jeff Koons’s Hanging Heart back to the gallerist he bought it from for a profit of almost $20 million. (“Our role is against the dealers,” says Lindemann at one point. “We try to get one over on the dealers.”) Lindemann refuses to comment on the Koons deal specifically, saying only that “I never bought anything I intended to resell” while his wife looks on with a priceless look of skepticism. And he does then admit that he has flipped art in the past. But the bigger message of this interview, I think, is that what we’re seeing here is a plutocrat at play. Lindemann loves buying and selling art — probably more than he loves the art itself. And he can easily afford to lose millions of dollars if a deal goes wrong. It’s a fun game for him. But it does ultimately put the lie to the idea that art is some kind of long-term store of value, rather than a plaything for plutocrats.

Reuters
April 27 2010