By Rebecca S. Cohen

For a time, ours was the only garage in the neighborhood that doubled as an art gallery. When Gary and I, already in our mid-40s, married and moved in together, I took the liberty of filling our house with my collection of original prints, drawings, and paintings created, for the most part, by emerging and mid-career regional artists. I installed the bulk of Gary’s collection—an odd assortment of florid masks from Mexico, a large Indian string drawing, a worn assemblage of framed posters extolling the virtues of Harley-Davidson, and a semi-obscene cartoon involving two dogs—where I thought it worked best, in the garage.

As an arts writer and recovering art dealer, I smugly assumed my point of view would prevail. But it soon became apparent that I was living with someone who had an opinion about everything, including issues relating to the visual arts. He wanted the house to reflect his taste as well as mine. What went where would have to be a joint decision.

Together, Gary and I began visiting art museums and commercial galleries. My husband’s questions about artists with whom I was already familiar provided new insight to their work, while our forays into areas that were new to me—for instance, outsider art—turned me on to work I might not have explored alone. It was through these visits that we discovered where our aesthetics overlapped.
Over time, we de-accessioned (gave or threw away) the posters and a number of souvenirs. And, after setting a few ground rules—for example, all works over $100 would be subject to a two-vote approval process—we began purchasing art that intrigued us both. Of course, there were exceptions to the rules.

Once, after solemnly agreeing to a yearlong moratorium on art purchases in favor of pressing household needs, I impulsively bought my husband a wall-mounted sculpture by an artist whose work he particularly admired. Our debt level was compounded by the fact that he had also ignored our pact and purchased a major artwork for me, painted by one of my favorites and delivered and installed by two other artist-friends while we were out to dinner. The “pressing” household needs would have to wait.

My husband and I have now been purchasing art together for more than ten years, and our collection includes a variety of media and styles. Another couple I know decided instead to tightly focus their collecting activities on a little explored area of activity—20th-century Texas Modernism. They exclusively accumulate works by painters Everett Spruce, Bror Utter, Donald Weismann, and their peers; collect source material from the period; and write about and promote the artists’ works. Museums are now coming to them to borrow paintings and sculptures.

But what if neither partner has substantial experience buying art? Young friends on the East Coast called me for advice recently when, for the first time, they stumbled on a painting that caught their attention. “What do you think?” they asked. Married for ten years, they owned only a few fine art prints that the wife had brought with her into the marriage, some artful wedding gifts, and framed needlepoint tapestries. (They had already jettisoned into deep space the husband’s life-size cardboard cutout of Star Trek’s Mr. Spock.) While I did inspect the artist’s web site at their request, I reminded them that artwork should establish a personal rapport with the would-be buyers, not with their friends, family, or decorator. In this case, both husband and wife had responded positively to the painting; both were willing to spend money to own it, but neither wanted to feel that they had overpaid. Their first question to me was one I heard often when I was an art dealer. Would the painting increase in value? If you want a guaranteed return on your money, I told them, talk to your stockbroker or banker. Art is not a particularly liquid investment.

Selecting art is like selecting the person with whom you want to share your life—the best decisions are based on love and respect. “But is the price reasonable?” my friends asked again. I counseled them to peruse the artist’s resume to see if the work had been exhibited in museums, reputable commercial galleries, or juried exhibitions. Had the artist’s paintings been purchased by private or corporate collectors? In order to determine if the price was reasonable, they would need to familiarize themselves with the prices of comparable works by other artists, both those who had and had not achieved substantial recognition. I insisted they spend an afternoon, at the very least, visiting area galleries. At the end of the day, they decided to purchase the painting they loved.

The wife was exuberant. “I’m proud that I have one impressive room that I’d like everyone to see,” she reported, admitting that expensive new purchases usually leave her depressed but that this one, a kind of “enchanted garden” installed in the living room, made her happy every time she encountered it. I asked her husband if the new painting was interacting favorably with the other pictures in the house. “Imagine William Shatner and Paris Hilton sharing the same elevator,” he said, groping for a way to explain that they were already in the market for their next art purchase. “Now what do you think about installing track lighting throughout the downstairs?” I think they’re hooked.

Cohen, recovering art dealer and author of Art Guide Texas (University of Texas Press), is a freelance writer based in Austin. She is currently working on a biography of American-born artist Shirley Goldfarb, who lived and worked in Paris from 1954 until her death in 1980.