Richard Kirshenbaum recently vented on the kinds of collectors he doesn’t like but in today’s Wall Street Journal he shows off his recently completed duplex apartment which features some of the works in his collection:
Juxtaposing the old and the new is also what dictated his art collection. A 1957 oil painting by Bauhaus artist Josef Albers hangs in the same room as a contemporary drawing by Tara Donovan, a Henry Moore sculpture, a black and white Picasso drawing and a 1960s Alex Katz oil painting of a purple iris against green foliage. The front hall, which has a geometric black, white and gray marble floor modeled after a 17th-century Italian pattern, holds a multicolored oil by the French 20th-century painter Jean Dubuffet.
Mr. Kirshenbaum does most of his work in the library. The carpet is leopard print (“very Jackie O,” he said) and there is a 1950s chair covered in cowhide. There are two 17th-century wood-and-gold-painted columns given to him by his father, and the door frames and moldings are made from black lacquer. “You get inspiration from what’s around you,” he said. He said an Alexander Calder print that hangs in this room called “The Red Sea,” with a sun setting behind a red sea covered with balls, influenced him when he was coming up with ads for Target, while a Man Ray sculpture of an eye has given him some ideas for a logo he is working on for a liquor client.
A New York Ad Man’s Last Campaign (Wall Street Journal)
