The demand for top-quality collectibles appears to have reached a fever pitch. The international art market has never been stronger, according to a new report commissioned by The European Fine Art Foundation (TEFAF), which organizes the prestigious art fair each March in Maastricht, the Netherlands. And the United States remains the market frontrunner, thanks to the irrepressible passions of America’s top collectors.
 
Each year, Art&Antiques sets out to identify these often mysterious, private and some would say, obsessed individuals. Our criterion is simple: Only serious collectors whose names are synonymous with first-rate artworks in their chosen areas of collecting earn a coveted place on our list.

For several months, a team of four reporters interviewed scores of top museum curators, dealers and other experts to hone the list. As more new names were added, it soon became evident that we could not limit them to our traditional number of 100. For quick reference, we have organized the list according to the specific categories of collecting. But because many collectors are not content to confine their appetites to a single field, several appear in more than one category.

This year, we delve deeper into the minds and hearts of our selected collectors to discover just what it is that drives their seemingly relentless quest for beauty, rarity, value and historical cachet. Collecting is about power and status, love and loss, obsession and addiction, but it is also a conduit for creativity and imagination. At its most refined level, collecting, like art, is a creative act. As the German author and psychoanalyst Peter Subkowski said in a recent discussion on the sensibility of the collector at the Philoctetes Center for the Multidisciplinary Study of Imagination in New York: "Collecting is not about money, collecting is about passion. And the true collector will give his last dollar if he gets the piece of art or inspiration that he’s been looking for. He would even spend his last dime to get it … a collector imagines a better world, a utopia." By Dana Micucci

OLD MASTERS: Lynda and Stewart Resnick
French Flair
When it comes to collecting, the city of Los Angeles typically conjures up images of sleek mansions filled with modern and contemporary art. Yet the iconoclastic collectors Lynda and Stewart Resnick, owners of POM Wonderful Pomegranate Juice, FIJI Water, Teleflora and Paramount Agribusiness, have created a virtual house museum reminiscent of the Frick Collection in New York. They wake up each day to French, Flemish and English paintings from the 17th to 19th centuries by such artists as Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres, François Boucher, Jean-Honoré Fragonard, Peter Paul Rubens and Sir Joshua Reynolds, along with European sculpture spanning five centuries by artists including Antonio Lombardo, Giambologna, Jean-Antoine Houdon and Aristide Maillol. These masterpieces are integrated in their Beverly Hills home with exquisite 18th- and 19th-century French and English antiques; dazzling Art Deco furniture, glass and ceramics; and Asian works of art.

"There are collectors and then there are collectors who are possessed," says Lynda, who began at age 19, when she started her own advertising agency. "We are the latter variety."

Given the couple’s eclectic tastes, Lynda says it is difficult to pinpoint a specific inspiration. "We collect only what we absolutely love and can’t live without, not according to what is in fashion," she adds. "It could be anything of quality. I am such a visual person. I love looking at beauty and can find it almost anywhere.In the end, it’s all about the quiver I get in my gut when I discover a great work of art."

If there is a unifying theme to their fine art collection, it is the emphasis on dynamic figurative works and vibrant painterly imagery. "I also love great draftsmanship and the history behind each work," says Lynda, who serves as Vice Chairman of the Board of Trustees and Chair of the Acquisitions Committee at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art and on the board of the Philadelphia Art Museum. "The real joy for me, though, is being able to own art from various periods and cultures, because art is ultimately about building bridges between people so that we can better understand each other." The Resnicks also enjoy sharing their art through frequent loans to major museums such as the Louvre and The Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York.