THE BROAD SPECTRUM:
The Eli and Edye Broad Collections. ARTnews, October 2001
"I used to walk up here with the kids and the dog" muses Eli Broad, standing on a brilliant Southern California day at the ship's prow-like balcony of the Broads' spectacular home in Brentwood, based on original designs by Frank O. Gehry. He looks out over the front lawn, dominated by the four tilting weatherproof steel arcs of Richard Serra's No Problem (1995), whose title-an ironic reference to the massive work's installation process-is suggestive of Broad's own spare-no-efforts approach to everything he does.
Approaching the end of his 60s, Broad is the picture of success in the American corporate world, a presidential figure of distinguished good looks, of legendary wealth, and one of the country's leading collectors of late 20th century art. In a tribute to his collections, a selection from his personal and foundation holdings, Jasper Johns to Jeff Koons: Four Decades of Art from the Broad Collections will be on view this October at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, in an exhibition organized by LACMA's chief curator Stephanie Barron and her colleague Lynn Zelevansky.
"In those days," Broad continues, surveying the shimmering vista of Mandeville Canyon below, "this was all steep hillside with a storm drain down the middle. The site was a blank canvas. No one ever thought this land could be developed."
No one except Eli Broad, who had the resources and the vision for an estate in this remote area of metropolitan Los Angeles. And Broad is a man for whom vision is but a step toward achievement. His wealth, as board Chairman of the vast financial services empire of SunAmerica, derived originally from real estate development, and he worked with his wife, Edye, to write their own program for an ideal home. In 1992 he hired Gehry-"a genius," he insists, "though I know Frank doesn't like me to use that word"-to come up with a design for the unpromising terrain; and Broad admits the experience sorely tried his patience. "Frank took forever to get the design done," he says, believing that Gehry subscribes to the notion that no work of art is ever finished. "I pushed him to finish it, and he wasn't happy to be pushed."
"It's not my building," claims Gehry contentiously, recalling the clash between them. "He's a genius, brilliant," he concedes of Broad, echoing Broad's own assessment of him. "And he's done a lot of good things. He saved Disney Hall, for instance. But he's a control freak. He has his own agenda. He knows best in the end, he thinks he knows better how to build a building than I do. He couldn't tolerate my process."
Reaching an acrimonious impasse, Broad brought in Randy Jefferson of the firm of Langdon Wilson in 1994 as executive architect to create the working drawings and complete the house. And now, years later, it soars elegantly against the rough, hilly landscape, its billowing, stainless steel roofs and assemblage of box-like sculptural forms a clear foreshadowing of Gehry's subsequent work. It's easy to see what Broad means when he suggests that "the ideas for Bilbao and Disney Hall come out of this house."
The interior of the house is spacious, yet surprisingly simple. This is not one of those multi-roomed mansions in neighboring Bel Air, but a continuous flow of adjacent spaces, all visually available and open to access. "We wanted light," explains Broad. "And we wanted a single living area in the main part of the house." Two bridges lead into the main, upper level from the wide exterior arrival courtyard and garages, giving the visitor the sense of leaving dry land to enter the rarefied space of an ocean liner-a metaphor extended in the ship's prow balcony, the long curve of the front facade, the recurrent motif of railings, and a massive water treatment below, as well as the stainless steel "sails" aloft.
Entering through the front door, the visitor is immediately awed by three iconic late 20th century paintings that unambiguously announce the heft and focus of the Broad art collections: Robert Rauschenberg's Untitled (Red Painting), (1954), Roy Lichtenstein's I… I'm Sorry (1965-66), and Cy Twombly's Ilium (One Morning, Ten Years Later), (1964). From here, to the left, lies the living room with its high, vaulted, raw steel ceilings in massive concave and convex forms, its subdued furnishings (including a corner of Gehry cardboard chairs), its vistas of the canyon, and its awesome art works: Anselm Kiefer's vast 130 x 220 inch Zweistromland, (1985/87), hangs above one of the couches, and a glance around the room takes in a tall Andrew Lord clay vase, Andy Warhol's Two Marilyns (1962), Jasper Johns' White Flag on newsprint (1960), and a classic 1962 Lichtenstein, Live Ammo (Blang!). And more. "We needed a lot of wall space," Broad points out with notable understatement as he leads the tour. "So all the windows in the building are corner windows."
From the living room, a wide, asymmetrical passageway leads the length of the house to the master bedroom, accessing virtually all the living space in its leisurely sweep. At the far end, outside the master bedroom door, Ed Ruscha's Bloated Empire (1997), is visible from afar-and the visitor wonders what imp of self-deprecation might have dictated the choice of a work thus titled. "He really wanted that painting," recalls the artist. "And he got it, even though someone else had spoken for it." Broad remembers seeing it first at the Whitney Biennial: "I spoke to the dealer," he says, with the quiet assurance of a man used to getting his way, "and the dealer successfully offered the other collector something else."
To the right of the main passageway, somewhat more enclosed than the other spaces, lie the kitchen and utility room. To the left are two generously-proportioned studies, one Eli's, one Edye's. Hers, slightly the smaller, is enhanced by the exquisite Joan Miro Painting (1933)-one of the earliest of the couple's purchases-and a charming Calder mobile, Blue Crescent and Gong (1953), over the desk. As Broad collections curator Joanne Heyler says, "the intimate setting and the quality reflect Edye's approach. She was the first collector in the family. Today she takes a more quiet interest than Eli in the collections, but she has a strong interest in what's placed in the house." It was Edye's influence, along with the example of the great Hollywood collectors Taft Schreiber, Charles Laughton, and Edward G. Robinson that finally inspired her husband to collect.
Broad's home study, where he works mostly in the early morning hours, is awash in books and papers. "I work seventy to eighty hours a week," he confesses cheerfully. "We're not great socialites, we go out maybe twice a week, and on a typical day, I work at least twelve hours." The art here, as if to avoid distraction, is low-key in both color and scale: a small Jasper Johns Flag from 1993, and The Critic Smiles, a 1969 lead relief painting, also by Johns.
Continuing down the central, irregularly angled stairway, the tour leads into an enclosed lower level atrium. On the west side, toward the canyon, it opens onto the constantly gurgling water treatment and a bridge to a discreet guest house. Designed by the landscape architect Mark Rios in expansive terraces of rough-hewn bluestone from upstate New York, the water display descends through three reflective plateaus to the lawn below. Wide stepping-stones lead out to the garden, interspersed with a population of tiny, round-bellied, whimsical figures created for the site by Tom Otterness: a fisherman, a bloated frog, two street-sweepers piling up a mess of coins.
To the east side of the atrium lies a hidden treasure-a bonus from construction days, when the storm drain's relocation opened up a huge underground space beneath the entry courtyard. Here, in a museum-like setting, the Broads keep a breathtaking trove of large-scale gems from their collection: a stunning chair and ottoman designed by Lichtenstein-a gift from the artist and his wife-along with half a dozen prime Lichtenstein paintings from different periods, Richard Artschwager's huge interior, Tripych V (1972), Bruce Nauman's dangling Ten Heads Circle/Up and Down (1990), and Warhol's Most Wanted Men No. 6, Thomas Francis C. (1964).
This glorious stash is supplemented, here on the lower level, by a display of equal splendor in a spacious hall that doubles as a formal dining area for large parties, paved in a smooth version of the same bluestone used in the water treatment outside; and by a corridor of choice drawings in the guest quarters, including a Matisse odalisque, Nue Couchée from 1923, a Henry Moore drawing, and a rare 1973 Twombly collage.
Sans guests, both spare rooms are also set aside for art. In one, Broad recalls, President Bill Clinton came upon a George Segal installation of a woman sprawled in a wicker chair. Hearing that the figure was Norris Church, the President lit up: "I used to date her," Broad recalls him saying. "Then much later she called to ask if I thought she should go on a book tour with this writer, and I told her, yes." The writer in question, of course, turned out to be Norman Mailer.
These days, since stepping down as CEO of his corporation, Broad maintains an office in a Westwood high-rise, where he devotes his time largely to philanthropic work. In the art field, this includes not only the Broad Art Foundation but also LACMA, where he has been a member of the Executive Committee of the Board of Trustees since 1995. (He was also Founding Chairman and a key board member at the Museum of Contemporary Art for its earliest years, from 1980-1993).
Broad enjoys board membership, he says, "if there's something to achieve. I don't like to maintain the status quo. I'm not a potted plan." Andrea Rich, LACMA's President and Director, is grateful to have him there: "When he came in," she says, "we needed real civic involvement. The museum had been through difficult years, an interregnum of leadership, and he brought a real sense of mission. He was fabulous in enticing civic leaders to get involved, in getting people committed. And he really cares about the institution. He's a man of steely focus. Once he gets it in his head that there's something to be done, he simply bores in. He'll talk to everyone, test every idea" until the job gets done to his satisfaction. "Eli doesn't play," she says.
As for Broad, he lives quite comfortably with the power he wields. "I don't have to be a diplomat," he says simply. "It doesn't have anything to do with money, if you feel good about yourself and know what you're doing. I try to be polite," he adds-even though he realizes that other people don't always see it that way. "From the first day at MOCA, I believed the permanent collection should be on display, that this shouldn't be a Kunsthalle. Some people didn't agree with me, but I let my thoughts be known. I even gave them a million dollars to be sure that it was shown." Says fellow LACMA board member, Peter Norton, "Does he make his gravitas and influence felt when he's championing something? Sure. He's a big, powerful guy and has opinions. But he's not doing it unduly. He has what's called 'a healthy ego.'"
The current task before the LACMA Board is to reconcile a notorious mish-mash of architectural styles into something that looks more like a unified cultural institution. "We want to redo the entire campus," says Broad, enthusiastic about the challenge of finding an architect who can work with the original Pereira buildings, the Pavillion for Japanese Art, the 1984 Anderson addition, and the more recent acquisition of the deco May Company building one block west. Broad recently joined a small group of LACMA leaders on a lightning tour of contemporary architectural highlights in Europe, including, amongst other stops, the Tate Modern in London, the Holocaust Museum in Berlin, and a visit with Rem Koolhaas in Amsterdam.
Asked about the LACMA exhibition this October, Rich disclaims any quid pro quo, though she acknowledges a strong donor relationship between Eli and the museum which includes some significant gifts, most recently Hans Haacke's Oelgemaelde, Hommage a Marcel Broodthaers (1982), and Richard Serra's Inverted House of Cards (1969).
Broad devotes a lesser portion of his time to the Broad Art Foundation, established in 1984 to create a collection of important contemporary art for loan to institutions around the world. "Joanne," he explains, "has a very good staff to oversee the work." A great believer in public institutions, Broad was concerned when he started the foundation that steep prices and the bureaucratic inability to move in a timely fashion together were depriving museums of the power to purchase contemporary works of quality. "A lot of contemporary art is being bought and going into hiding," he believes. "But it should be seen by a much broader public. The more people understand about art, the better off we are as a society." An added benefit to lending art, as he sees it, is that it increases his ability to make new acquisitions without consigning important work to a bank vault or a basement: by the time the foundation started, he says, "our personal collection was of such a size that we would have had to stop collecting."
Yet Broad's philanthropy in art remains a minor financial commitment when compared to his other areas of concern. The Chronicle of Philanthropy of January 25, 2001 ranks the Broads second (after Bill and Melinda Gates) in its list of the most generous of America's donors in 2000, with gifts totalling $137.5 million ("Edye jokes that she'll have to hire a conservator," says Broad, "if I keep giving money away like this.") The Broad Foundation targets efforts to improve management and labor relations in urban school districts, along with other educational and medical research projects. Richard J. Riordan, former mayor of the City of Los Angeles, knows Broad well as a business associate, a civic leader, and a friend: "He doesn't just dole out money to anyone who asks for it," he says. "I've never met anyone who has both the vision and the attention to detail. He values his time both in business and philanthropy. Tough's not the word, but he doesn't waste time with fools." Impatient with old-thinking and the inertia of bureaucracy, Broad says simply, "I'm blessed with the ability to choose bright young people who don't yet know that you can't get things done."
Aside from pressing social issues, Broad, a New York native brought up in Detroit, is passionate about the cultural life of his adoptive city. "I saw the July 4th celebrations in Boston and New York on television," he noted recently, "and in both of these cities, people knew where to go" to find the cultural center. With the new José Rafael Monéo-designed Cathedral of Our Lady of the Angels now joining the Music Center and the Museum of Contemporary Art along Grand Avenue in downtown Los Angeles, Broad was dismayed to see the new addition-the Frank O. Gehry-designed Disney Hall-on the verge of going under. "Eli stepped in after $40 million and nothing to show," says Riordan, "and used his money and influence to effectively bring the project back on track." "You spend a little time," acknowledges Broad modestly. "And a project always needs a little more money."
With Disney Hall now well under construction, Broad has his civic eye on the neighboring 16 acres between the Department of Water and Power tower and City Hall-an area with the potential, he believes, to cinch downtown as a cultural center with the addition of "pedestrian friendly businesses, restaurants and book-shops, cinemas and other attractions."
Broad still finds time for his collecting habits. "It's an intellectual challenge for him," surmises the New York dealer Larry Gagosian, who works frequently with Broad. "It keeps him very young." Prominent among his recent purchases is a small Picasso painting, Femme Assise, bought at $2.6 million from the Sotheby's sale of the Stanley J. Seeger collection. "He had a very visceral response," says Heyler. "He saw it sometime before the auction and we did a lot of research on the painting and its provenance." Says Broad, "I joke about the term 'successful bidder.' It means that you're stupid enough to pay more than anyone else in the world would pay for the object!"
Joking aside, Broad is not one to be thwarted when he wants something. On a visit to Jasper Johns' studio, he saw a picture (Untitled, 1992-94) with which, he says, "I fell in love." He called Leo Castelli on his cell phone on leaving the studio to say he absolutely had to have the painting, but the dealer "hemmed and hawed, and said Jasper didn't want to part with it." Knowing that Johns was buying a farmhouse in Connecticut at the time-and could therefore presumably use the cash, Broad says, "I finally made him an offer he couldn't refuse." Even so, he doesn't always get his way: he cites the occasion when a David Smith Cubi escaped him. "It was a seminal work," he says, "one of only two or three left in private hands." It came up at auction, and he went one and a half times over the estimated price, but then stopped. "I regret letting that one go," he says, disappointed that his own discipline in this case overruled his instinct.
Other recent acquisitions-at undisclosed prices-include Watchman, a major Jasper Johns' painting from 1964, and Lichtenstein's 5-panel Rouen Cathedral, Set III (1969), from the Roy Lichtenstein Foundation. "It's a spectacular picture," notes Heyler. "Our Lichtenstein collection is enormously deep, over 25 works, so there's not a whole lot of gaps. He was interested in this one for its epic size, and the seriality of image."
Broad is not a speculative collector. He's an avid reader of the literature, and usually considers purchases only after an artist has had a few shows in serious galleries, and some critical response. His most recent acquisitions, after thoughtful consideration, include photographic works by Sharon Lockhart and videos by Shirin Neshat. Gagosian, however, credits him with being "very curious about emerging art. He's not afraid of challenging work, that's difficult in terms of subject matter, materials, or medium. And he's loyal as a collector. Even if he's confused by an artist's current work, he gives the benefit of the doubt." John Baldessari is one artist to whom that commitment has been made: "He's discriminating," he says of Broad. "He always looks for very good pieces. These are not like souvenirs on his walls," he adds, "he's quite passionate about collecting." And while he is notably friendly at art events, he maintains a respectful distance from the creative process. "He doesn't try to get inside my head," notes Ruscha, thankfully. "He respects the art, and never tries to uncork the mysteries."
Broad is as assiduous in his buying habits as in everything else. He likes to go to the auctions himself unless there's some conflict, and does his own bidding. He visits the galleries regularly, usually guided by schedules prepared in advance by his staff. Understandably, dealers are happy to see him coming: "He's a very aggressive and very thorough collector," says New York dealer Barbara Gladstone. "He goes after the best, and he has the means to get it." Does he like to haggle prices? Gladstone is diplomatic: "Let's say he's a very good businessman," she says, of the man who famously once used his American Express card to pay for a multi-million dollar Lichtenstein, to get the free air miles.
For relaxation, Broad plays tennis, and works out with a personal trainer three times a week when he's in town. "I'm not someone that's just a couch potato," he protests. He enjoys jet-skiing and sometimes goes mountain biking with friends like Richard Riordan: "He's much better than I am," he admits with a competitive gleam. "But then he rides more often than I do." Does he have any regrets? "I would like to have been a better father while my sons were growing up," he confesses. "I was brought up in a lower middle class family, and was always driven to succeed. In those days, I was working hard. But those are the sacrifices that you make. You can't go back and redo your life."
Like most major collectors, the Broads are concerned about the future of their collections, but have as yet made no commitments. Broad is clear about one thing, however: "We are not going to have our own museum," he says firmly. "And we're not selling any of the art. The collections will go to one or more public institutions." For now, however, there's no sign of Eli Broad slowing down. "A friend told me, you're either at a total stop or going a hundred miles an hour," he says with evident satisfaction. "I enjoy making a difference. I feel especially good about people we've really helped-families and businesses. But I don't do anything in moderation."
